Thinking, Language, and Intelligence

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Thinking, Language, and Intelligence
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Horse-trading

• A woman bought a horse for 60 and sold it for
  70. Then she bought the same horse back for 80
  and again sold it, for 90. How much money did
  she make in the horse business?
• How do we reason correctly? How do we solve
  problems?

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Cognitive development

• Cognitive development
• A Change of Mind (Sci Amer Vid, Segment 26 --
  Disc 4)

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Insight (in problem-solving)

• Wolfgang Kohlers experiment on insight by a
  chimpanzee

(PBS video)
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Problems in Problem-solving

• Each card has a letter on one side and a number
  on the other. Which 2 cards should you turn over
  to determine if the following hypothesis is true?
• If a card has a vowel on one side, it has an
  even number on the other side.

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Confirmation bias

• tendency to search for information that confirms
  ones preconceptions

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Nine-dot problem
Your challenge is to draw four straight lines
which go through the middle of all of the dots
without taking the pencil off the paper. You must
start from any position and draw the lines one
after the other without taking your pencil off
the page. Each line starts where the last line
finishes.
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The Matchstick Problem

• How would you arrange six matches to form four
  equilateral triangles?

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The Matchstick Problem

• Solution to the matchstick problem

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Fixation

• inability to see a problem from a new
  perspective

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Availability Heuristic

• estimating the likelihood of events based on
  their availability to us e.g., instances that
  readily come to mind -- like plane crashes
• may lead one to ignore other relevant
  information (e.g., anthrax and antibiotics)

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Overconfidence

• Bay of Pigs
• Pearl Harbor
• Post-Iraq peace

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More problems

• Do you prefer ground beef that is 20 fat or 80
  lean? ?
• Discounts/sales
• Survey questions
• Framing
• the way an issue is posed (framed) can
  significantly affect decisions and judgments

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Belief Perseverance

• clinging to ones initial conceptions after the
  basis on which they were formed has been
  discredited
• e.g., the effect of labeling people with
  psychological disorders

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Have you ever noticed this?
Absence makes the heart grow fonder
He who hesitates is lost
Out of sight, out of mind
Opposites attract
Birds of a feather flock together
Look before you leap
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Problems in reasoning

• Confirmation bias
• Fixation
• Availability heuristic
• Overconfidence GroupThink
• Framing issues
• Belief perseverance
• Over-reliance on folk wisdom

By understanding these impediments to reasoning,
we can make decisions better think more clearly
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Language
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Language Acquisition

• Talkin babies Sci Amer segment 18
  (nature-nurture influences in language
  acquisition babbling)
• Born to talk Sci Amer, Segment 21 (Grammar
  acquisition as a function of brain/environment
  interaction)
• Language centers in the brain Psych DVD
  Segment 16 (A look at brain surgery that tries to
  spare language)

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Gene-Environment interaction

• Genes design the mechanisms for a language, and
  experience activates them as it modifies the brain

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Intelligence

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What is Intelligence?

• Your definition?
• Components?

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Multiple Intelligences

• Gardners eight types (e.g., linguistic, musical,
  naturalist)
• Sternbergs three types
• Analytical
• Creative
• Practical

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Multiple Intelligences

• Emotional Intelligence -- ability to perceive,
  express, understand, and regulate emotions
• Social Intelligence
• Social awareness primal empathy, attunement,
  social cognition
• Social facility synchrony, self-presentation,
  concern for others needs

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Origins of Intelligence Testing

• Alfred Binet
• His goals
• Idea of mental age

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IQ test

• Stanford-Binet
• American revision of Binets intelligence test
• Introduced IQ

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Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

• the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age
  (ca) multiplied by 100
• IQ ma/ca x 100)
• Now, the average performance for a given age is
  assigned a score of 100

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Assessing Intelligence

• Reliability -- the extent to which a test yields
  consistent results
• Validity -- the extent to which a test measures
  or predicts what it is supposed to
• Most criticisms of IQ tests are based on
  validity. Biases?

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Assessing Intelligence

• Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
• widely used intelligence test
• Examples of items

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The Normal Curve
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IQ extremes

• Low scores on the IQ test can indicate
• Mental Retardation
• (scores below 70) and adaptation problems
• Down Syndrome
• retardation and associated physical disorders
  caused by _______________?
• Savant Syndrome
• condition in which a person otherwise limited in
  mental ability has an amazing specific skill (see
  figure 22.1 on Stephen Wiltshire)

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IQ Influences

• Nature-nurture question
• How heritable is intelligence?
• Heritability
• the proportion of variation among individuals
  that we can attribute to genes

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Genetic Influences

• The most genetically similar people have the most
  similar scores

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Genetic Influences

• Group differences and environmental impact