PSY 108 Final (Cognitive Psychology) readings

pictures and diagrams during problem solving

it's often helpful to translate a problem into concrete terms, relying on a mental image or a picture

Damage to the brain's left frontal lobe, especially a region known as Broca's area, usually produces a pattern of symptoms known as _______

nonfluent aphasia

what do factor analyses confirm?

- Factor analysis confirms that there is a common element shared by all the components of the IQ test. - this general factor matters across the board, and that's why scores on all the subtests end up correlated with one another.

IQ scores are also correlated with performance outside of the academic world. for ex:

- For example, an IQ score is a strong predictor of how someone will perform on the job

what it is that "intellectual tasks" require

- One requirement, of course, is a set of cognitive skills and capacities (e.g., mental speed or execu- tive control). - A different requirement, however, is the proper attitude toward testing—and a bad attitude (e.g., anxiety about failing, fear of confirming others' negative expectations) can undermine performance

example of stand alone morphemes

- Some morphemes, like "umpire" or "talk," are units that can stand alone, and they usually refer to particular objects, ideas, or actions.

nature vs nurture and intelligence: nature

- We can see the impact of genetic influences on intelligence in the fact that people who resemble each other genetically(twins) also resemble each other in their IQ scores. - This resemblance is in place even if the individuals grow up in different environments.

The Raven's Progressive Matrices Test

- hinges entirely on a person's ability to analyze figures and detect patterns. - This test presents the test taker with a series of grids (these are the "matrices"), and he or she must select an option that completes the pattern in each grid. - This test is designed to minimize influence from verbal skills or background knowledge.

some morphemes can ________ while other are _____

- stand alone - bound

negative of coarticulation

- the [s] you produce while getting ready for one upcoming vowel is actually different from the [s] you produce while getting ready for a different vowel.

problem solving

- the desire to figure out how to reach some goal

morphemes

The smallest units of meaning in a language.

parse

figure out each word's syntactic role in a sentence

syntax

rules that govern the structure of a phrase or sentence.

manner of production

the way in which the airstream is modified as it passes through the vocal tract

predictive validity

- The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior.

example showing that syntax is not based on meaning

- many non-sentences do seem meaningful, and no one's confused when Sesame Street's Cookie Monster insists "Me want cookie."

fluent aphasia

- speech is present but contains little meaningful communication - These patients can talk freely, but what they saymeans very little. ex: "Oh, I'm taking the word the wrong way to say, all of the barbers here whenever they stop you it's going around and around, if you know what I mean, that is tying and tying for repucer, repuceration, well, we were trying the best that we could while another time it was with the beds over there the same thing

example of coarticulation

- while you're producing the [s] sound in "soup," your mouth is getting ready to say the vowel. - While uttering the vowel, you're already starting to move your tongue, lips, and teeth into position for producing the [p].

first step toward phoneme identification is

- you need to "slice" a speech stream into the appropriate segments — a step known as speech segmentation

illumination

a key insight or new idea emerges

phase-structure rules are an example of

descriptive rules

language users are not consciously aware of

phase-structure rules

What do the pragmatics of language involve?

- Paul Grice described the conversational "rules" in terms of a series of maxims that speakers follow and listeners count on

verification

the person confirms that the new idea really does lead to a solution and works out the details

Research also suggests that creative people may have advantages in how _________

they search through memory

mapping in relation to locating analogies

you'll be able to use an analogy only if you figure out how to map the prior case onto the problem now being solved — only if you realize, for example, that converging groups of soldiers correspond to converging rays and that a fortress-to-be-captured corresponds to a tumor-to-be-destroyed.

how do experts think about problems?

in terms of their deep structure

phonemic restoration effect

- When a phoneme in a word is heard even though it is obscured by a noise, such as a cough.

Words are composed of _______

- morphemes

"little-c creativity"

- the everyday sort of creativity

aphasia

impairment of language caused by damage to the brain

another cue that is also useful in parsing is

prosody

Example of Garden Path sentence

- "The old man the ships." - In this sentence, most people read the initial three words as a noun phrase: "the old man." - However, this interpretation leaves the sentence with no verb, so a different interpretation is needed, with the subject of the sentence being "the old" and with "man" being the verb

How should we think about all these results in relation to whorf's hypothesis? second possibility

- A different possibility is more modest — and also more plausible: The language you hear guides what you pay attention to, and what you pay attention to shapes your thinking. - In this view, language does have an influence, but the influence is indirect: The influence works via the mechanisms of atten- tion. -We've mentioned that when English speakers describe an event, our language usually requires that we name (and so pay attention to) the actor who caused the event; when a Spanish speaker describes the same event, her language doesn't have this requirement, and so it doesn't force her to think about the actor - In this way, the structure of each language influences what the person will pay attention to, and the data tell us that this difference in focus has consequences for thinking and for memory.

tree structure

- A style of depiction often used to indicate hierarchical relationships, such as the relationships (specified by phrase structure rules) among the words in a phrase or sentence.

Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

- Chil- dren with this disorder have normal intelligence and no problems with the muscle movements needed to produce language. Nonetheless, they are slow to learn language and, throughout their lives, have difficulty in understanding and producing many sentences. - A disorder in which children fail to develop language normally even though there are no apparent neurological damages or disorders, no general cognitive impairment or delay, no hearing loss, and no abnormal home environment that would explain this failure.

example showing how prosody can direct the listener's attention by specifying the focus or theme of a sentence

- Consider the simple sentence "Sol sipped the soda." - Now, imagine how you'd pronounce this sentence in response to each of these questions: "Was it Sue who sipped the soda?"; "Did Sol gulp the soda?"; or "Did Sol sip the soup?" - You'd probably say the same words ("Sol sipped the soda") in response to each of these queries, but you'd adjust the prosody in order to highlight the information crucial for each question.

evidence that children learn language by deriving broad principles from what they hear

- Consider, for example, how English-speaking children learn to form the past tense. - Initially, they proceed in a word-by-word fashion, so they memorize that the past tense of "play" is "played," the past tense of "climb" is "climbed," and so on - By age 3 or so, however, children seem to realize that they don't have to memorize each word's past tense as a separate vocabulary item. Instead, they realize they can produce the past tense by manipulating morphemes—that is, by adding the "-ed" ending onto a word

example of the maxim of relation

- For example, imagine that someone asks, "What happened to the roast beef?" and gets a reply, "The dog sure looks happy." - Here, your assumption of relevance will most likely lead you to infer that the dog must have stolen the meat.

study showing the phonemic restoration effect

- For example, they might remove the [s] sound in the middle of "legislatures" and replace the [s] with a brief burst of noise. - This now-degraded stimulus can then be presented to participants, embedded in a sentence such as "The state governors met with their respective legi*latures." - When asked about this stimulus, participants insist that they heard the complete word, "legislatures," accompanied by a burst of noise - It seems, then, that they use the context to figure out what the word must have been, but then they insist that they actually heard the word. -In fact, participants are often inaccurate if asked when exactly they heard the noise burst. They can't tell whether they heard the noise during the second syllable of "legislatures" (so that it blotted out the missing [s], forcing them to infer the missing sound) or at some other point (so that they were able to hear the missing [s] with no interference).

ex of the place of articulation

- For example, you close your lips to produce "bilabial" sounds like [p] and [b] - you place your top teeth close to your bottom lip to produce "labiodental" sounds like [f] and [v] - you place your tongue just behind your upper teeth to produce "alveolar" sounds like [t] and [d].

what do garden path sentences suggest?

- Garden-path sentences highlight the risk attached to the strategy of interpreting a sentence as it arrives - The information you need in order to under- stand these sentences arrives only late in the sequence, and so, to avoid an interpretive dead end, you'd be better off remaining neutral about the sentence's meaning until you've gathered enough information.

example of the generativity of language

- Imagine that you've just heard the word "hack" for the first time. You know instantly that someone who does this activity is a "hacker" and that the activity itself is "hacking," and you understand someone who says, "I've been hacked."

evidence for how children learn languages

- In one study, 8-month-old infants heard a 2-minute recording that sounded something like "bidakupadotigolabubidaku." - These syllables were spoken in a monotonous tone, with no difference in stress from one syllable to the next and no pauses in between the syllables. But there was a pattern. - The experimenters had decided in advance to designate the sequence "bidaku" as a word. There- fore, they arranged the sequences so that if the infant heard "bida," then "ku" was sure to follow. For other syllables, there was no such pattern. - The babies reliably detected these patterns. -In a subsequent test, babies showed no surprise if they heard the string "bidakubidakubidaku." From the babies' point of view, these were simply repetitions of a word they already knew. -However, the babies showed surprise if they were presented with the string "dakupadakupadakupa." This wasn't a "word" they had heard before, although they had heard each of its syllables many times. - It seems, then, that the babies had learned the "vocabulary" of this made-up language.

descriptive rules

- rules characterizing the language as it is ordinarily used by fluent speakers and listeners with no regard to if it is correct or not

How do you parse a sentence?

- It seems plausible that you'd wait until the sentence's end, and only then go to work on figuring out the structure. With this strategy, your comprehension might be slowed a little (because you're waiting for the sentence's end), but you'd avoid errors, because your interpretation could be guided by full information about the sentence's content. - It turns out, though, that people don't use this wait-for-all-the-information strategy. Instead, they parse sentences as they hear them, trying to figure out the role of each word the moment it arrives This approach is efficient (since there's no waiting) but, as we'll see, can lead to errors.

are humans biologically prepared for language learning?

- Many researchers claim that we are, and they point to a gene called "FOXP2" - people who have a mutated form of this gene are markedly impaired in their language learning

example of the "maxim of quantity"

- On this point, imagine that you ask someone, "What color are your eyes?" and he responds, "My left eye is blue." - The extra detail here invites you to assume that the speaker specified "left eye" for a reason—and so you'll probably infer that the person's right eye is some other color

How should we think about all these results in relation to whorf's hypothesis? first possibility

- One possibility—in line with Whorf's original hypothesis—is that language has a direct impact on cognition, so that the categories recognized by your language become the categories used in your thought - In this view, language has a unique effect on cognition (because no other factor can shape cognition in this way), and because language's influence is unique, it is also irreversible: Once your lan- guage has led you to think in certain ways, you will forever think in those ways.

you manage to perceive speech accurately and easily. How do you do it?

- Part of the answer lies in the fact that the speech you encounter, day by day, is surprisingly limited in its range. Each of us knows tens of thousands of words, but most of these words are rarely used - In addition, the perception of speech shares a crucial attribute with other types of perception: a reliance on knowledge and expectations that supplement the input and guide your interpretation. - In perceiving speech, therefore, you don't rely just on the stimuli you receive (that's the bottom-up part). Instead, you supplement this input with other knowledge, guided by the context.

How do children learn language?

- Part of the answer rests on the fact that children are exquisitely sensitive to patterns and regularities in what they hear, as though each child were an astute statistician, keeping track of the frequency-of-occurrence of this form or that.

nonfluent aphasia

- People with this disorder can understand language they hear but cannot write or speak. - In extreme cases, a patient with this disorder cannot utter any words at all. - In less severe cases, only a part of the patient's vocabulary is lost, but the patient's speech becomes labored and fragmented, and articulating each word requires special effort. - One early study quoted a patient with aphasia as saying, "Here . . . head . . . operation . . . here . . . speech . . . none . . . talking . . . what . . . illness"

example of: you also make use of another factor: the context (extralinguistic context) in which you encounter sentences

- Put the apple on the towel into the box. - At its start, this sentence seems to be an instruction to put an apple onto a towel; this interpretation must be abandoned, though, when the words "into the box" arrive. - Now, you realize that the box is the apple's destination; "on the towel" is simply a specification of which apple is to be moved. (Which apple should be put into the box? The one that's on the towel.) - In short, this is another gardenpath sentence—initially inviting one analysis but eventually requiring another. - This confusion is avoided, however, if the sentence is spoken in the appropriate setting. - Imagine that two apples are in view, as shown in Figure 10.13 . In this context, a listener hearing the sentence's start ("Put the apple . . .") would immediately see the possibility for confusion (which apple is being referred to?) and so would expect the speaker to specify which one is to be moved. Therefore, when the phrase "on the towel" comes along, the listener immediately understands it (correctly) as the needed specification. There is no confusion and no garden path

phrase-structure rules

- Rules that provide a set of instructions about how individual words can be clumped into higher-order categories and how these categories are combined to create well-formed sentences. - rules stating that the structure of a phrase of a specific type consists of one or more constituents in a particular order - specify the overall organization of the sentence

communication systems of other animals

- These naturally occurring systems, how- ever, are extremely limited—with small vocabularies and little (or perhaps nothing) that corresponds to the rules of syntax that are evident in human language. - it seems that other species (especially those closely related to us) can learn the rudiments of language, but nothing in their performance undercuts the amazing differences between human language capacity and that in other organisms - These systems will certainly not support the sort of generativity that is a prominent feature of human language—and so these other species don't have anything approaching our capacity to produce or understand an unending variety of new sentences.

coarticulation

- This term refers to the fact that in producing speech, you don't utter one phoneme at a time. Instead, the phonemes overlap - the phenomenon in speech whereby attributes of successive speech units overlap in articulatory or acoustic patterns

categorical perception

- This term refers to the fact that people are much better at hearing the differences between categories of sounds than they are at hearing the variations within a category of sounds. - the perception of speech sounds as belonging to discrete categories

Evidence for Whorfian Hypothesis: colors

- To test this claim, one line of work has examined how people perceive colors, building on the fact that some languages have many terms for colors (red, orange, mauve, puce, salmon, fawn, ocher, etc.) and others have few. Do these differences among languages affect perception? -Evidence suggests, in fact, that people who speak languages with a richer color vocabulary may perceive colors differently—making finer and more sharply defined distinctions

how can we distinguish sounds with the manner of production?

- We can distinguish sounds, first, according to how the airflow is restricted; this is referred to as manner of production - air is allowed to move through the nose for some speech sounds but not others. - Similarly, for some speech sounds, the flow of air is fully stopped for a moment (e.g., [p], [b], and [t]). For other sounds, the air passage is restricted, but air continues to flow (e.g., [f], [z], and [r]).

examples of language in other species

- the songs and clicks of dolphins and whales - the dances of honeybees - the various alarm calls of monkeys.

sounds can also be categorized according to where the __________; this is referred to as place of articulation.

- air-flow is restricted

your use of language also depends on ______

- assumptions about how, in general, people communicate with each other - pragmatics

cognitive benefits of bilingualism

- being raised bilingually may encourage better executive control. - As a result, bilinguals may be better at avoiding distraction, switch- ing between competing tasks, or holding information in mind while working on some other task.

what does the Specific Language Impairment (SLI) disorder provide evidence for

- brain mechanisms that are somehow specialized for language learning. - Disruption to these mechanisms throws language off track but seems to leave other aspects of the brain's functioning undisturbed.

overregularization errors

- children over rely on the patterns that they learn from others and produce words that they have never heard someone say before - errors in which a child applies a grammatical rule to a word that does not follow the rule - children say things like "Yesterday we goed" or "Yesterday I runned."

semantic bootstrapping

- children rely on their knowledge of semantic relationships as a basis for figuring out syntax - relying on word meanings to figure out grammatical rules

Broca's area

- controls language expression - an area, usually in the left frontal lobe, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.

another way children learn language is by ________ from what _____

- deriving broad principles - they hear

Language learning may depend on both a _________and a __________.

- human genome -human environment

example that shows how syntax is responsible for which combinations of words are acceptable and which ones are not

- in English you could say, "The boy hit the ball" but not "The boy hit ball the." - Likewise, you could say, "The moose squashed the car" but not "The moose squashed the" or just "Squashed the car."

rule for combining phonemes

- in English, certain sounds (such as the final sound in "going" or "flying") can occur at the end of a word but not at the beginning. - There are also rules governing the adjustments that occur when certain phonemes are uttered one after another. ----For example, consider the "s" ending that marks the English plural — as in "books," "cats," and "tapes." In these cases, the plural is pronounced as an [s]. In other contexts, though, the plural ending is pronounced differently. Say these words out loud: "bags," "duds," "pills." If you listen carefully, you'll realize that these words actually end with a [z] sound, not an [s] sound.

our human biology gives us a fabulous start on ________, but to turn this _____ into ________ we also need a __________.

- language learning - "start" - "language capacity" - communicative partner

What is it that leads you down the garden path? Why do you initially choose one interpretation of a sentence, one parsing, rather than another?

- people usually seek the simplest phrase structure that will accommodate the words heard so far - People also tend to assume that they'll be hearing (or reading) active-voice sentences rather than passive-voice sentences, so they generally interpret a sentence's initial noun phrase as the "doer" of the action and not the recipient - parsing is also influenced by the function words that appear in a sentence and by the various morphemes that signal syntactic role - Parsing is also guided by background knowledge, and in general, people try to parse sentences in a way that makes sense to them. - you also make use of another factor: the context in which you encounter sentences, including the conversational context.

prescriptive rules

- rules describing how language is "supposed to be" - Language that doesn't follow these rules, it's claimed, is "improper" or maybe even "bad." - Presciptive rules change over time and are not stable

"maxim of relation"

- says that speakers should say things that are relevant to the conversation

garden-path sentences

- sentences that suggest one interpretation that turns out to be wrong - A sentence in which the early part biases a syntactic interpretation that turns out to be incorrect - You're initially led to one interpretation (you are, as they say, "led down the garden path"), but this interpretation then turns out to be wrong. So you need to reject your first interpretation and find an alternative

example of how phase structure rules help you to understand sentences

- the NP + VP sequence typically divides a sentence into the "doer" (the NP) and some information about that doer (the VP). - Likewise, the V + NP sequence usually indicates the action described by the sentence and then the recipient of that action. - In this way, the phrase structure of a sentence provides an initial "road map" that's useful in understanding the sentence. - For a simple example, it's syntax that tells us who's doing what when we hear "The boy chased the girl." Without syntax (e.g., if our sentences were merely lists of words, such as "boy, girl, chased"), we'd have no way to know who was the chaser and who (if anyone) was chaser

generativity of language

- the capacity to create an endless series of new combinations, all built from the same set of fundamental units - someone who "knows English" (or someone who knows any language) hasn't just memorized the vocabulary of the language and some set of phrases. - Instead, people who "know English" know how to create new forms within the language: They know how to combine morphemes to create new words, know how to "adjust" phonemes when they're put together into novel combinations

Whorfian hypothesis/linguistic relativity

- the hypothesis that one's language determines the nature of one's thought - He claimed, therefore, that people who speak different languages inevitably think differently

extralinguistic context

- the physical and social setting in which you encounter sentences - The social and physical setting in which an utterance is encountered; usually, cues within this setting guide the interpretation of the utterance.

place of articulation

- the place of construction during the production of phonemes

pragmatics

- the practical use of language that includes the ability to adjust language communication according to audience and context - the appropriate use of language in different contexts

prosody

- the rise and fall of speech intonation and the pattern of pauses. - pitch and rhythm cues in language

phrase-structure rules help you ______ the sentences you hear or read, because ______ in general specifies the _______ among the words in each sentence.

- understand - syntax - relationships

we can also distinguish between sounds that are ______ and those that are not

- voiced

why do foreign languages seem to be spoken so fast?

- we lack the skill needed to segment the forieign stream, so we're unable to "supply" the word boundaries. - As a consequence, we hear what is really there: a continuous, uninterrupted flow of sound.

why is speech segmentation necessary?

- within a stream of speech there are no markers to indicate where one phoneme ends and the next begins. - Likewise, there are, for the most part, no gaps to indicate the boundaries between successive syllables or successive words - Most of us are convinced that there are brief pauses between words in the speech that we hear, and it's these pauses, we assume, that mark the word boundaries. But this perception turns out to be an illusion, and we are "hearing" pauses that aren't actually there.

examples of categorical perception

- you're very sensitive to the differences between, say, a [g] sound and a [k], or the differences between a [d] and a [t]. But you're surprisingly insensitive to differences within each of these categories, so you have a hard time distinguishing, say, one [p] sound from another, somewhat different [p] sound. - Demonstrations of categorical perception generally rely on a series of stimuli, created by computer. The first stimulus in the series might be a [ba] sound. Another stimulus might be a [ba] that has been distorted a tiny bit, to make it a little bit closer to a [pa] sound. A third stimulus might be a [ba] that has been distorted a bit more, so that it's a notch closer to a [pa], and so on. In this way we create a series of stimuli, each slightly different from the one before, ranging from a clear [ba] sound at one extreme, through a series of "compromise" sounds, until we reach at the other extreme a clear [pa] sound. -We hear the sounds as categorical and cant distinguish anything in betweeen ba and pa

example of how Prosody can also render unambiguous a sentence that would otherwise be entirely confusing

-Imagine, therefore, that you heard the sentence "The horse raced past the barn fell." The speaker would probably pause momentarily between "horse" and "raced," and again between "barn" and "fell," making it likely that you'd understand the sentence with no problem. - As a different example, consider two objects you might buy for your home. One is a small box designed as a house for bluebirds. The other is a small box that can be used by any type of bird, and the box happens to be painted blue. In print, we'd call the first of these a "bluebird house," and the second a "blue birdhouse." But now, pronounce these phrases out loud, and you'll notice how prosody serves to distinguish these two structures.

Evidence for Whorfian Hypothesis: description of events

-Languages also differ in how they describe events. -In English, we tend to use active-voice sentences that name the agent of the action, even if the action was accidental ("Sam made a mistake"). - It sounds awkward or evasive to describe these events in other terms ("Mistakes were made"). - In other languages, including Japanese or Spanish, it's common not to mention the agent for an accidental event, and this in turn can shape memory - After viewing videos of accidental events, Japanese and Spanish speakers are less likely than English speakers to remember the person who triggered the accident

Wernicke's area

-controls language reception - a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe

example of pragmatics in English

For example, if someone asks, "Do you know the time?" you understand this as a request that you report the time — even though the question, understood literally, is a yes/no question about the extent of your temporal knowledge.

example of: parsing is also influenced by the function words that appear in a sentence and by the various morphemes that signal syntactic role

For example, people easily grasp the structure of "He gliply rivitched the flidget." That's because the "-ly" morpheme indicates that "glip" is an adverb; the "-ed" identifies "rivitch" as a verb; and "the" signals that "flidget" is a noun—all excellent cues to the sentence structure.

Patients with with damage to a brain site known as Wernicke's area usually suffer from a pattern known as ________.

fluent aphasia

positive of coarticulation

helps to make speech production faster and considerably more fluent.

do people accept Whorf's ambitious proposal?

no because language's impact is neither profound nor permanent

Do bilingual children confuse the two languages they are trying to learn?

no, evidence suggests that they do not

"maxim of quantity"

specifies that a speaker shouldn't be more informative than is necessary

language has a well-defined _____

structure

hill-climbing strategy

- A commonly used strategy in problem solving. If people use this strategy, then whenever their efforts toward solving a problem give them a choice, they will choose the option that carries them closer to the goal. - the heuristic to choose an option that moves you in the direction of the goal

What gives a person more g (general intelligence) or less? proposal two

- A different proposal about g centers on the notion of working-memory capacity (WMC) - WMC is actually a measure of executive control—and so it is a measure of how well people can monitor and direct their own thought processes. - people with a larger WMC do better on many intellectual tasks, including, we now add, tests specifically designed to measure g. -Perhaps, therefore, the people we consider intel- ligent are those who literally have better control of their own thoughts, so they can coordinate their priorities in an appropriate way, override errant impulses, and in general proceed in a deliberate manner when making judgments or solving problems

ill-defined problem

- A problem, such as the search for "happiness," that has no well-stated goal, no clear starting point, and no mechanism for evaluating progress.

means-end analysis heuristic

- A problem-solving heuristic in which the distance to the goal state is decreased systematically by breaking the problem down into subgoals and achieving these subgoals.

Flynn effect

- A worldwide increase in IQ scores over the last several decades, at a rate of about 3 points per decade - This improvement has been observed in relatively affluent nations and also in impoverished nations. - the effect is stronger in measures of fluid intelligence: so it seems to reflect a genuine change in how quickly and flexibly people can think, and not just a worldwide increase in how much information people have. - the Flynn effect cannot be explained genetically. The human genome does change, but not at a speed commensurate with this effect.

highest level of the language structure

- At the highest level of the structure are the ideas intended by the speaker, or the ideas that the listener derives from the input. - These ideas are typically expressed in sentences— coherent sequences of words that express the speaker's intended meaning.

hierarchical model of intelligence

- At the top of the hierarchy is g, contributing to all tasks. At the next level down are the abilities we just mentioned—linguistic and numerical—and several more, including spatial skill, an ability to handle fast-paced mental tasks, and an ability to learn new and unfamiliar materials. Then, at the next level are more specific capacities, each useful for a narrow and specialized set of tasks. - a model of the structure of intelligence in which a broad, general ability factor is at the top of the hierarchy, with a number of specialized ability factors nested underneath

example of stereotype threat

- Concretely, imagine an African American taking an intelligence test. - She might become anxious because she knows this is a test on which members of her group are expected to do poorly. This anxiety might be com- pounded by the thought that her poor performance, if it occurs, will only serve to confirm others' prejudices. - These feelings, in turn, could erode her performance by making it more difficult for her to pay attention and do her best work on the test. -Moreover, given the thought that poor performance is a distinct possibility, she might simply decide not to expend enormous effort — if she's likely to do poorly

example of why problem solving through a problem space is not efficient in every case

- Consider the game of chess. In chess, which move is best at any point in the game depends on what your opponent will be able to do in response to your move, and then what you'll do next. - To make sure you're choosing the best move, therefore, you need to think ahead through a few cycles of play, so that you can select as your current move the one that will lead to the best sequence. - Let's imagine that you decide to look ahead just three cycles of play—three of your moves and three of your opponent's. Some calcula- tion, however, tells us that for three cycles of chess play there are roughly 700 million possibilities for how the game could go; this number immediately rules out the option of considering every possibility.

example of functional fixedness: box, tacks, and matches

- Consider the problem in Figure 13.9. To solve it, you need to cease thinking of the box as a container and instead think of it as a potential platform. - Thus, your chances of solving the problem depend on how you represent the box in your thoughts, and we can show this by encouraging one representation or another. - In a classic study, participants were given the equipment shown in Figure 13.9A: some matches, a box of tacks, and a candle. This configuration (implicitly) underscored the box's conventional function - Other participants were given the same tools, but configured differently. They were given some matches, a pile of tacks, the box (now empty), and a candle. In this setting, the participants were less likely to think of the box as a container for the tacks, and so they were able to think of the box in a new way to solve the problem

example of problem solving via analogy

- Consider the tumor problem. This problem is difficult, but people generally solve it if they use an analogy. - Gick and Holyoak (1980) first had their participants read about a related situation (trying to enter a castle but having to enter from surrounding angles) and then presented them with the tumor problem. - When participants were encouraged to use this hint, 75% were able to solve the tumor problem. Without the hint, only 10% solved the problem.

example of improving problem solving by paying attention to the problem's underlying dynamic

- Cummins (1992) instructed participants in one group to analyze a series of algebra problems one by one. - Participants in a second group were asked to compare the problems to one another, describing what the problems had in common. - The latter instruction forced participants to think about the problems' underlying structure - guided by this perspective, the participants were more likely, later on, to use the training problems as a basis for forming and using analogies.

how should we think about Gardner's claims about multiple intelligences?

- First, his proposal reminds us that a broad range of human achievements are of enormous value, and surely we should celebrate the skill displayed by an artist at her canvas, a skilled dancer in the ballet, or an empathetic clergyman in a hospital room. - Gardner's conception shouldn't be understood as a challenge to conventional intelligence testing. IQ tests were never designed to measure all human talents—so it's no surprise that these tests tell us little about, say, musical intelligence or bodily-kinesthetic intelligence

narrowing the air passageway within the mouth itself

- For example, hiss like a snake again and pay attention to your tongue's position. To produce this sound, you placed your tongue's tip near the roof of your mouth, just behind your teeth; the [s] sound is the sound of the air rushing through the narrow gap you created. - Pronounce an [f] sound; in this case, the sound is produced by air rushing between your bottom lip and your top teeth.

theory of multiple intelligences

- Gardner's intelligence theory that proposes that there are eight distinct spheres of intelligence - Three of these are assessed in standard IQ tests: linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, and spatial intelligence. - But Gardner also argues that we should acknowledge musical intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (the ability to learn and create complex patterns of movement), interpersonal intelligence (the ability to understand other people), intrapersonal intelligence (the ability to understand ourselves), and naturalistic intelligence (the ability to understand patterns in nature).

What about the validity of the IQ test?

- If intelligence tests truly measure what they're supposed to, then someone's score on the test should enable us to predict how well that person will do in settings that require intelligence. - And here, too, the results are impressive.

choosing multiple categories from this model

- If we choose tasks from two different categories — say, a verbal task and one requiring arithmetic — we should still find a correlation in performance, because no matter how different these tasks seem, they do have something in common: They both draw on g. - If we choose tasks from the same category, though — say, two verbal tasks or two quantitative tasks—we should find a higher correlation because these tasks have two things in common: They both draw on g, and they both draw on the more specialized capacity needed for just that category

example of experts thinking about their problems in terms of their deep structure

- In one study, participants were asked to categorize simple physics problems - Novices tended to place together all the problems involving river currents, all the problems involving springs, and so on, in each case focusing on the surface form of the problem. - In contrast, experts (Ph.D. students in physics) ignored these details of the problems and, instead, sorted according to the physical principles relevant to the problems' solution.

example of why uninstructed use of analogies is rare

- In solving the tumor problem, people seem to ask themselves: "What else do I know about tumors?" - This search will help them remember other situations in which they thought about tumors, but it won't lead them to the "general and fortress" problem. - This (potential) analogue will therefore lie dormant in memory and provide no help.

intelligence tests and test-retest reliability

- Intelligence tests have strong test-retest reliability. - There is, for example, a high correlation between measurements of someone's IQ at age 6 and mea- surements of IQ when she's 18. - It's important, though, that IQ scores can change—especially if there's a substantial change in the person's environment

how are highly creative people distinctive from us

- Many of us are smart or particularly skillful in memory search; many of us are willing to take risks and to ignore criticism; many of us live in a cultural setting that might support a new discovery. - What distinguishes creative geniuses, though, is that they are the special people who have all of these ingredients — the right intellectual tools, the right personality characteristics, the good fortune to be living in the right context, and so on.

study showing what the "aha" or illumination stage involves?

- Metcalfe gave her participants a series of "insight problems." - As participants worked on each problem, they rated their progress by using a judgment of "warmth" ("I'm getting warmer . . . , I'm getting warmer . . ."), and these ratings did capture the "moment of insight." - Initially, the participants didn't have a clue how to proceed and gave warmth ratings of 1 or 2; then, abruptly, they saw a way forward, and at that instant their warmth ratings shot up to the top of the scale. - some participants abruptly announced that they were getting "hot" and, moments later, solved the problem. Other participants made the same announcement and, moments later, slammed into a dead end. - It seems, therefore, that when you say "Aha!" it means only that you've discovered a new approach, one that you've not yet considered. - This moment doesn't signal that you've at last discovered a path leading to the solution. Instead, it means only that you've discovered something new to try, with no guarantee that this "something new" will be helpful.

Problem Solving via Analogy

- Often, a problem reminds you of other problems you've solved in the past, and so you can rely on your past experience in tackling the current challenge - you solve the current problem by means of an analogy with other, already solved, problems

example showing the negative aspect of the problem solving set

- One often-discussed example involves the nine-dot problem. - People routinely fail to solve this problem, because—according to some interpretations—they (mistakenly) assume that the lines they draw need to stay inside the "square" defined by the dots. - In one study, participants were told explicitly that to solve the problem their lines would need to go outside the square. The hint provided little benefit, and most participants still failed to find the solution. - Apparently, beliefs about "the box" aren't the obstacle. Even when we eliminate these beliefs, performance remains poor. - In the nine-dot problem, people seem to be victims of their own problem- solving set; to find the solution, they need to change that set.

What gives a person more g (general intelligence) or less? proposal one

- One proposal is simple. Mental processes are quick but do take time, and perhaps the people we consider intelligent are those who are especially fast in these processes. - This speed would enable them to perform intellectual tasks more quickly; it also would give them time for more steps in comparison with those of us who aren't so quick. - some researchers argue that intelligence is created by faster processing, not throughout the brain, but in particular neural pathways — for example, the pathways linking temporal and parietal areas.

what are IQ tests really measuring?

- One proposal is that the tests measure a singular ability that can apply to any content. The idea is that your score on an IQ test reveals your general intelligence, a capacity that provides an advantage on virtually any mental task. - In contrast, some authors argue that there's no such thing as being intelligent in a general way. Instead, they claim, each person has a collection of more specific talents — and so you might be "math smart" but not strong with language, or "highly verbal" but not strong with tasks requiring visualization. From this perspective, if we represent your capacities with a single number — an IQ score — this is only a crude summary of what you can do, because it averages together the things you're good at and the things you're not.

how can we test these proposals to see which one is correct?

- One way to find out relies on the fact that, as we've said, many intelligence tests include numerous subtests. It's therefore instructive to compare a person's score on each subtest with his or her scores on other subtests. - In this way, we can ask: If someone does well on one portion of the test, is she likely to do well across the board? If someone does poorly on one subtest, will he do poorly on other subtests as well? - If we observe these patterns, this would indicate that there is such a thing as intelligence-in-general, a cognitive capacity that shapes how well someone does no matter what the specific task might be.

example of bound morphemes

- Other morphemes get "bound" onto these "free" morphemes and add information crucial for interpretation - Examples of bound morphemes are the past- tense morpheme "ed" and the plural morpheme "s."

IQ scores are also correlated with other life outcomes for example:

- People with higher IQ's tend to end up with higher-prestige careers and are less likely to suffer various life problems (and so are less likely to end up in jail, less likely to become pregnant as teens, and more). - Higher-IQ people even live longer—with various mechanisms contributing to this longevity.

study involving practice intelligence and teaching in school

- Psychologist Robert Sternberg has studied this sort of practical intelligence, with some of his research focused on whether teaching is more effective when instruction is matched to students' abilities (with different forms of instruction for students high in practical ability, students high in analytical ability, and students high in creative ability).

Practical Intelligence

- Some people seem to be "street-smart"—that is, capable of sophisticated reasoning in day-to-day settings—even though they seem to lack the sort of analytical skill needed in a classroom - the ability to solve everyday problems through skilled reasoning that relies on tacit knowledge

reasons for problems found in the incubation stage

- Some researchers argue that incubation is disrupted if you're under pressure to solve the problem. - Other authors focus on how you spend your time during the incubation period, with the suggestion that incubation takes place only if the circumstances allow your thoughts to "wander" during this period.

problem-solving set

- The starting assumptions that a person uses when trying to solve a new problem. - These assumptions are often helpful, because they guide the person away from pointless strategies. - But these assumptions can sometimes steer the person away from worthwhile strategies, so they can be an obstacle to problem solving.

savant syndrome

- These individuals are profoundly disabled, with IQ scores as low as 40 or 50, but each of them has a stunning level of specialized talent. - a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing

"prerequisites" for creativity

- These individuals, first of all, generally have great knowledge and skills in their domain. (This point can't be surprising: If you don't know a lot of chemistry, you can't be a creative chemist. If you're not a skilled storyteller, you can't be a great novelist.) - Second, to be creative, you need certain personality traits: a willingness to take risks, a willingness to ignore criticism, an ability to tolerate ambiguous findings or situations, and an inclination not to "follow the crowd." - Third, highly creative people tend to be motivated by the pleasure of their work rather than by the promise of external rewards. - Fourth, these highly creative people have generally been "in the right place at the right time"— that is, in environments that allowed them freedom, provided them with the appropriate supports, and offered them problems "ripe" for solution with the resources available.

test measuring convergent thinking

- This ability is sometimes measured through the Remote Associates Test - In this test, you're given a trio of words, and you need to find one more word that fits with each of the three. - For example, you might be given the trio cross, rain, and tie; the correct answer is bow (as in crossbow, rainbow, and bowtie)

How to approach ill defined problems

- When confronting ill-defined problems, your best bet is often to create subgoals, because many ill-defined problems have reasonably well-defined parts, and by solving each of these you can move toward solving the overall problem. - A different strategy is to add some structure to the problem by including extra constraints or extra assumptions. In this way, the problem becomes well-defined instead of ill-defined—perhaps with a narrower set of options in how you might approach it, but with a clearly specified goal state and, eventually, a manageable set of operations to try.

how else is language is organized?

- Within each of these levels, people can combine and recombine the units to produce novel utterances— assembling phonemes into brand-new morphemes or assembling words into brand-new phrases. - Crucially, though, not all combinations are possible — so that a new breakfast cereal, for example, might be called "Klof" but would probably seem strange to English speakers if it were called "Ngof."

functional fixedness

- a block to problem solving that comes from thinking about objects in terms of only their typical functions

what is a problem solving heuristic?

- a heuristic is a strategy that narrows your search through the problem space — but (you hope) in a way that still leads to the problem's solution

test-retest reliability

- a method for determining the reliability of a test by comparing a test taker's scores on the same test taken on separate occasions - If we give you a test, wait a while, and then give it again, do we get the same outcome?

stereotype threat

- a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype - a term that describes the negative impact that social stereotypes, once activated, can have on task performance.

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children

- an intelligence test for children between the ages of 6 and 16 inclusive that can be completed without reading or writing. - there are tests to assess general knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension, and a perceptual-reasoning scale includes visual puzzles. - Separate subtests assess working memory and speed of intellectual processing. - The WISC generates an IQ score

because experts think of problems in terms of their deep structure, they are more likely to use

- analogies

test measuring divergent thinking

- asking someone "how many different uses can you think of for a brick?"

Fluid and crystallized intelligence are highly _______

- correlated - if you have a lot of one, you're likely to have a lot of the other

example of the benefits of the problem solving set

- in solving the nine-dot problem, you didn't waste any time wondering whether you should try drawing the lines while holding the pencil between your toes or whether the problem was hard because you were sitting down while you worked on it instead of standing up. - These are foolish ideas, so you brushed past them. - But what identifies them as foolish? It's your problem-solving set, which tells you, among other things, which options are plausible, which ones are physically possible, and so on

Alfred Binet definition of intelligence and how they measured it

- intelligence is a capacity that matters for many aspects of cognitive functioning. - They therefore created a test that included a range of tasks: copying a drawing, repeating a string of digits, understanding a story, doing arithmetic, and so on. Performance was then assessed with a composite score, summing across these various tasks. - the test score was computed as a ratio between someone's "mental age" (the level of development reflected in the test performance) and his or her chronological age. - This ratio was the source of the test's name: The test evaluated a person's "intelligence quotient," or IQ.

Fluid intelligence

- involves the ability to deal with novel problems. - It's the form of intelligence you need when you have no well-practiced routines you can bring to bear on a problem. - fluid intelligence reaches its peak in early adulthood and then declines across the lifespan

Crystallized intelligence

- involves your acquired knowledge, including your verbal knowledge and your repertoire of skills — skills useful for dealing with problems similar to those already encountered. - the ability to retain and use knowledge that was acquired through experience - Crystallized intelligence usually increases with age

in order to locate helpful analogies in memory, you generally need to ______

- look beyond the superficial features of the problem and think instead about the principles governing the problem —focusing on what's sometimes called the problem's "deep structure."

why is the hill climbing strategy of limited use? example of why

- many problems require that you briefly move away from your goal; only then, from this new position, can the problem be solved. - For instance, if you want Mingus to notice you more, it might help if you go away for a while; that way, he'll be more likely to notice you when you come back.

study that demonstrates problems with Wallace's incubation stage

- participants are given a problem to solve. Some participants work on the problem continuously; some are interrupted for a while. - The prediction, based on Wallas's proposal, is that we'll observe better performance in the latter group—the group that can benefit from incubation. - The data, however, are mixed. Some studies do show that time away from a problem helps in finding the problem's solution, but many studies find no effect at all.

Sentences, in turn, are composed of ______, which are composed of ____

- phrases - words

another example of functional fixedness

- plyers and two string problem - person in standing holding on to one string and needs to figure out how to be able to reach the other string using pliers - most people are confused about how this could be solved because they think about how the plyers should be used in their traditional way (fixed) - the correct way to solve the problem is to attach the players to the end of the second string and use it to swing the rope toward you (like a pendulum)

According to Wallas, creative thought proceeds through four stages. what are the stages?

- preparation - incubation - illumination - verification

uninstructed use of analogies is ____

- rare

problem space

- refers to the set of possible pathways to a solution considered by the problem solver - the set of all states that can be reached in solving the problem

Researchers compare problem solving to a process of _____ as though you were ________

- search - navigating through a maze, seeking a path toward your goal

creativity

- the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas - Some people are remarkably flexible in their approaches to problems; they seem easily able to "think outside the box."

emotional intelligence

- the ability to understand one's own emotions and others', as well as the ability to control one's emotions when appropriate - the ability to reason about emotions and to use emotions to enhance reasoning

voicing

- the act of the vocal cords either vibrating (voiced) or not vibrating (unvoiced) in the production of a consonant sound.

general intelligence

- the idea that one general factor underlies intelligence - a general intelligence factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test - Spearman argued that people with a high level of g will have an advantage in virtually every intellectual endeavor.

preparation

- the problem solver gathers information and does some work on the problem, but with little progress.

incubation

- the problem solver sets the problem aside and seems not to be working on it. - Wallas argued that the problem solver continues to work on the problem unconsciously during this stage, so actually the problem's solution is continuing to develop, unseen.

phonemes

- the smallest unit of sound that serves to distinguish words in a language.

"Big-C Creativity"

- the sort of creativity shown by people we count as scientific or artistic geniuses

factor analysis

- this procedure looks for common factors—elements that contribute to multiple subtests and therefore link those subtests - a statistical technique that explains a large number of correlations in terms of a small number of underlying factors

how can we produce sound?

- voicing - narrowing the air passageway within the mouth itself

Measures of Rationality and intelligence

- we all know people who are smart according to their test scores, but who nonetheless ignore facts, are overconfident in their judgment, are insensitive to inconsistencies in their views, and more. - Stanovich argues that we need separate measures of intelligence and rationality - He defines rationlity as the capacity for critically assessing information as it is gathered in the natural environment.

nature vs nurture and intelligence: nurture

- we've known for many years that living in poverty impedes intellectual development, and the effect is cumulative: The longer the child remains in such an environment, the greater the harm. - improving the environment can increase IQ - Studies indicate that the average intelligence score of American (and European) Whites is higher than the average score of African Americans Part of the answer is economic, because Blacks and Whites in the United States often do not have the same opportunities or access to the same resources. A higher proportion of Blacks than Whites are exposed to poor nutrition and poor health care, and as we've mentioned, these environmental factors have a substantial impact on IQ.

why might mind wandering be necessary?

-Recall that in Chapter 9 we described the process of spreading activation through which one mem- ory can activate related memories. - When you simply allow your thoughts to wander, though, the activation can flow wherever the memory connections take it, and this may lead to new ideas being activated. - This process provides no guarantee that helpful or productiveideas will come to mind, only that more (and perhaps unanticipated) ideas will be activated

evidence against Wallaces illumination stage

When we examine creative discoveries in science or art, we usually find that the new ideas emerged, not from some glorious and abrupt leap forward, but instead from a succession of "mini-insights," each moving the process forward in some small way

divergent thinking

an ability to move one's thoughts in novel, unanticipated directions.

convergent thinking

an ability to spot ways in which seemingly distinct ideas might be interconnected

Some authors emphasize a skill a lot creative people have called

convergent thinking

Other authors emphasize the skill creative people have of _______

divergent thinking

it turns out that we can improve problem solving by

encouraging people to pay attention to the problems' underlying dynamic

Then, finally, in spoken language, morphemes are conveyed by sounds called _______

phonemes

validity

the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to