Psychological Science, 3rd Edition Michael Gazzaniga Todd Heatherton Diane Halpern

1. Psychological Science, 3rd EditionMichael Gazzaniga Todd Heatherton Diane Halpern

2. Thinking and Intelligence 8

3. Questions to Consider: How Does the Mind Represent Information? How Do We Make Decisions and Solve Problems? How Do We Understand Intelligence?

4. How Does the Mind Represent Information? • Mental Images Are Analogical Representations • Concepts Are Symbolic Representations • Schemas Organize Useful Information about Environments

5. Learning Objectives Explain the difference between analogical and symbolic representations and provide examples of each. Describe how concepts and scripts can positively and negatively affect how we think.

6. How Does the Mind Represent Information? • Our thoughts consist of mental representations of the objects and events we learn about in our environments • The two basic types of representation are analogical and symbolic

7. Mental Images Are Analogical Representations • Thoughts can take the form of visual images • Analogical representations have some characteristics of actual objects • Mental visual imagery involves the same underlying brain processes involved in seeing the external world • Symbolic knowledge affects the ways we use visual imagery

8. (a) Analogical representations, such as this picture of a violin, have some characteristics of the objects they represent. (b) Symbolic representations, such as the word violin, are abstract and do not have relationships to the objects.

11. Concepts Are Symbolic Representations • Concepts are mental representations of subtypes of broad knowledge categories • The concept of cat, for example, is a subcategory of animals • Many categories have fuzzy boundaries • We have no simple way of telling a cat from a dog or a rat, for example, since conceptually they are similar (four-legged, hairy animals)

12. Concepts Are Symbolic Representations • Concepts may be formed by defining either attributes, prototypes, or exemplars • Defining attribute model • Concepts characterized by a list of features necessary to determine if an object is in a category • Prototype model • Best example for that category • Exemplar model • Any concept has no single best representation

13. We group objects into categories according to the objects’ shared properties.

14. In the defining attribute model, concepts are organized hierarchically, such that they can be superordinate or subordinate to each other. For example, horns and stringed instruments are subordinate categories of the superordinate category of musical instruments.

15. According to the prototype model, some itemswithin a group or class are more representative (or prototypical) of that category than areother items within that group or class.

17. Schemas Organize Useful Information about Environments • We develop schemas based on our real-life experiences • Scripts are schemas that allow us to infer about the sequence of events in a given context • Scripts and schemas can be problematic • Gender roles • Dictated by culture

18. How Do We Make Decisions and Solve Problems? • People Use Deductive and Inductive Reasoning • Decision Making Often Involves Heuristics • Critical Thinking Skill: Understanding How the Availability and Representativeness Heuristics Can Affect Thinking • Problem Solving Achieves Goals

19. Learning Objectives Distinguish among reasoning, decision making, and problem solving. Explain how confirmation bias, affective forecasting, and framing can lead to errors in decision making.

20. People Use Deductive and Inductive Reasoning • People often use deductive and inductive reasoning to draw valid conclusions • Deductive reasoning is from the general to the specific • Inductive reasoning is from the specific to the general

21. People Use Deductive and Inductive Reasoning • Deductive reasoning: • Use logic to draw specific conclusions under certain assumptions • Syllogisms are formal structures of deduction • For example: If all psychology textbooks are fun to read and this is a psychology textbook, then this textbook will be fun to read

22. People Use Deductive and Inductive Reasoning • Inductive Reasoning: • Determine the validity of a conclusion about a specific instance based on general premises • For example: If you read many psychology textbooks and find them interesting, you can infer that psychology books generally are interesting

23. Decision Making Often Involves Heuristics • In decision making, people use rules to choose among alternatives • Normative models (expected utility theory) view humans as optimal decision makers • Always selecting the outcome that yields the greatest reward

24. Decision Making Often Involves Heuristics • Descriptive models highlight reasoning shortcomings • Mental shortcuts (i.e., heuristics) that sometimes lead to faulty decisions • Algorithm vs. heuristic

26. Decision Making Often Involves Heuristics • Framing: • How information is presented can alter how people perceive it • We select information to confirm our conclusions, to avoid loss or regret or both, and to be consistent with a problem’s framing

27. Decision Making Often Involves Heuristics • Affective forecasting: • People are not good at knowing how they will feel about something in the future • People do not realize how poor they are at predicting their own feelings

28. Potentiallosses affect decision making more thanpotential gains do.

29. Critical Thinking Skill • Understanding how the availability and representativeness heuristics can affect thinking • Availability heuristic is the tendency to rely on information easy to retrieve • Representativeness heuristic is used when we base a decision on the extent to which each option reflects what we already believe • Being aware of heuristics we rely on can help us make more rational decisions

30. Problem Solving Achieves Goals • Problem solving involves reaching a goal • Usually broken down into subgoals • Insights come suddenly, when we see elements of a problem in new ways • Wolfgang Kohler • Norman Maier • Restructuring aids solutions; mental sets and functional fixedness inhibit solutions

34. Problem Solving Achieves Goals • Conscious strategies help problem solve when we get stuck • Working backward • Finding an appropriate analogy • The paradox of choice—too much choice can be frustrating, unsatisfying, and ultimately debilitating • Barry Schwartz

37. How Do We Understand Intelligence? • Intelligence Is Assessed with Psychometric Tests • Critical Thinking Skill: Recognizing and Avoiding Reification • General Intelligence Involves Multiple Components • Intelligence Is Associated with Cognitive Performance • Genes and Environment Influence Intelligence • Group Differences in Intelligence Have Multiple Determinants

38. Learning Objectives List various ways of assessing intelligence, along with the strengths and weaknesses of each. Explain the nature/nurture controversy, and cite evidence for both sides. Describe stereotype threat and explain how it may be a threat to validity.

39. How Do We Understand Intelligence? • Intelligence is humans’ ability to reason, solve problems, think quickly and efficiently, and adapt to environmental challenges

40. Intelligence Is Assessed with Psychometric Tests • The psychometric approach reveals multiple components to intelligence but also a central dimension that has been called general intelligence (g) • The Binet-Simon Intelligence Test • Mental age • Intelligence quotient (IQ)

41. As discussed in Chapter 2, the statistical concept of standard deviation indicates how far people are from an average. The standard deviation for most IQ tests is 15, such that approximately 68 percent of all people fall within 1 standard deviation (they score from 85 to 115) and just over 95 percent of people fall within 2 standard deviations (they score from 70 to 130).

42. Intelligence Is Assessed with Psychometric Tests • The question of intelligence tests’ validity persists, and one significant criticism is cultural bias • All intelligence tests have been criticized on the basis of cultural bias • Other ways of assessing intelligence also have the potential for bias, as when interview questions are ambiguous.

43. Because it does not rely on verbal knowledge, this test is not culturally biased—or is it?

44. Critical Thinking Skill • Recognizing and Avoiding Reification • Reification is the tendency to think about complex traits as though they have a single cause and an objective reality • It’s important to recognize complexity in complex concepts

45. General Intelligence Involves Multiple Components • Charles Spearman concluded that a general intelligence component exists (g) • Fluid intelligence is involved when people solve novel problems • Crystallized intelligence is accumulated knowledge retrieved from memory

46. General Intelligence Involves Multiple Components • Multiple intelligences: • Howard Gardner • Include linguistic, mathematical/logical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, intrapersonal, and interpersonal abilities • Robert Sternberg has proposed that there are three types of intelligence: analytical, creative, and practical

47. General Intelligence Involves Multiple Components • Emotional Intelligence (EQ): • Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand emotions and use them appropriately

48. Intelligence Is Associated with Cognitive Performance • Speed of mental processing (e.g., reaction time, inspection time) is part of intelligence • The relationship of working memory to intelligence seems to involve attention • The size and activity of the brain’s frontal lobes are related to qualities of intelligence • But since brain size is altered by experience, we cannot infer cause from this correlation