Ch 14: Individual Differences in Cognition

significant differences; differences; file drawer problem

An issue in gender difference research concerns built-in biases in the literature: scientific journals are simply much more likely to publish research that reports ___ between or among groups of people than to include research that does not find ___; this is known as the "___" because studies that do not obtain statistically significant results often languish in a researcher's file drawer)

expectancy effects; blind

Another set of problems in interpreting research on gender differences concerns experimenter ___, the tendency for researchers unintentionally to influence the response or behavior of research participants in the direction of the experimenter's hypothesis; in gender difference studies, it is almost impossible for the observer to remain ___ to the participant's gender, thus running the risk of this type of effect

connected knowing; personal connection; acceptance; appreciation; terms; framework; separate knowing; objectivity; rigor; stand apart from; impersonal rules; standards; mastery of; engagement with; separate knowing; connected knowing; cognitive tasks

Belenky et al. (1986) & Feminist Theories: -obtained their data from interviews of 135 women -women were described by the investigators as seeking ___, in which one discovers "truth" through a conscious process of trying to understand; this kind of understanding involves discovery of a ___ between the individual and the thing, event, person, or concept under consideration; it entails an ___ or ___ for the thing, event, person, or concept on its own ___ and within its own ___ -another style of knowing these authors described, termed ___, is perhaps more typical of men and also of women who are socialized in and successful in traditional environments; this kind of knowing strives for ___ and ___--for the learner to "___" the thing, event, person, or concept being understood; the orientation is toward ___ or ___, and learning involves "___" rather than "___" the information to be learned -___ involves a different intellectual style in which one looks for flaws, loopholes, contradictions, or omissions of evidence in arguments or propositions; ___, in contrast, builds on the learner's conviction that the most trustworthy knowledge comes from personal experience rather than the pronouncements of authors--at the heart is the capacity for empathy. -if styles of knowing vary by gender, then this could influence the kinds of ___ men and women find easiest or most appealing

junior high; math classes; seventh; eighth; SAT; boys; girls

Benbow and Stanley (1980, 1983) & Gender Differences in Quantitative Abilities: -used data collected by a talent search that identified extremely able ___ students (the logic here is that until this age, male and female students are exposed to the same ___ in school) -in this data, ___ and ___ graders took the College Board's ___ -they found that ___ outperform ___ on the math section

algorithm; 6; 1-2; improved; errors; oldest; middle-aged; youngest;

Campbell and Charness (1990) & Effects of Aging on Cognition: -gave three groups of adults (20-, 40-, and 60-year-olds) a task in which they learned an ___ for squaring two-digit numbers -participants worked for ___ sessions lasted ___ hours each -practice with the algorithm ___ performance in that ___ declined over sessions -however, adults in the ___ group made more errors than the ___ adults, who in turn made more errors than the ___ adults

deeper principles

Expert/novice difference: experts use their knowledge to form ___ with which to classify objects/instances than novices do (ex: if given a number of paintings, a novice might categorize on the basis of the subject of the picture--landscape, still life, portrait--while an art expert would be likely to categorize on the basis of artist, historical period, composition, and other aspects of the painting that require a certain degree of knowledge)

distinctions

Expert/novice difference: experts will perceive more ___, especially subtle ones, than novices do (ex: an art historian and a layperson unfamiliar with art both stand before a Picasso painting; the layperson "sees" less information than the art historian, who may be effortlessly picking up information about brushstrokes or composition that the novice simply cannot perceive)

linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, interpersonal, naturalistic, existential

Gardner's multiple intelligences:

chess; mid-game configuration; 16; 5; memories; chunk; patterns

Groot (1965) and Chase and Simon (1973) & Expert/Novice Differences: -worked with ____ experts and novices -when shown a chessboard arranged in a ___, an expert chess player could reconstruct the positions of approx. ___ (out of 25) pieces after only a 5-second glance; a chess beginner, given the same board and the same exposure, could reconstruct the portions of only about ___ pieces -they argued that it was not simply that the experts had better ___, but rather that the chess expert used chess knowledge to "___" chess pieces into meaningful configurations (in other words, the experts were able to see ___ that novices failed to see)

verbal ability; undergraduate students; verbal subtest; verbal ability; basic cognitive skills; perceptual matching; physical match; name match; name match; physical match; name match; physical stimulus; conceptual meaning

Hunt, Lunneborg, and Lewis (1975) & Cognitive Ability Differences: -examined a specific hypothesized component of intelligence, ___ -they examined two groups of ___: those with relatively high scores on a ___ similar to the SAT and those with relatively low scores on the same test -the aim of the study was to investigate whether differences in ___, as reflected in standardized scores, might be explained by differences in ___ -one of the tasks was a ____ task in which participants were presented with two letters; in one condition, called "___," they were instructed to respond 'yes' only when the two stimuli match exactly (AA or aa, but not Aa); in another condition, called "___," they were instruction to respond 'yes' if the two stimuli refer to the same letter (AA, aa, and Aa) -they expected the highly verbal students to be especially adept in the ___ condition -both groups were approx. equally fast in the ___ condition, but the highly verbal group performed better in the more complex ___ -they concluded that high verbal ability stems at least in part from an ability to make a conversion rapidly between a ___ and a ___--in this case, recognition of the particular letters

1; 5; gender differences

Hyde (1981) found that even for the highly reliable gender differences, the percentage of variance between people that is accounted for by gender was only between __% and __%. Thus, ___ don't mean much in terms of cognitive capacities, skills, or abilities.

elementary school; unsolvable; failure feedback; mastery orientation; helpless orientation

In a number of studies, Dweck and her colleagues have given older ___-age children a number of puzzles or similar problem-solving tasks. Often the tasks are set up to be ___, and children are given "___"--information that they have failed to complete a particular task correctly. In boys, the ___ was a more likely response to failure, and in girls, the ___ was more likely.

individual differences; intelligence; health; years of formal education; expertise; cognitive style

It is important to keep in mind that difference sin cognitive processing as a function of aging are still subject to ___ from other sources; such factors as ___, ___, ___, ___, and ___ all continue to play important roles.

Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT); careful attention; rapidly; errors; impulsive; slowly; errors; reflective

Kagan et al. (1964) & Cognitive Tempo: -used the ___ in which respondents are asked to find the item in a field of similar images that exactly matches the item shown at the top -finding the exactly matching figure requires their ___ -children tended to fall into one of two categories: those who responded ___ and made many ___ (demonstrating an ___ style) and those who responded ___ and made relatively few ___ (demonstrating a ___ style)

high-mental-ability; average-mental ability; age; ability differences; older; younger; high-ability; average-ability; efficiency; basic cognitive processes; high-ability

Keating and Bobbit (1978) & Cognitive Ability Differences: -conducted three experiments with both ___ (as assessed by a nonverbal intelligence test) and ___ 3rd, 7th, and 11th graders -they found that when they controlled for the effects of ___ (and therefore presumably for developmental level), ___ were still apparent, especially on the more complicated cognitive tasks -in the memory scanning task, ___ children had faster reaction times than ___ children, and within each age group, ___ students were faster than ___ students -they believed that both age and ability differences result from the ___ with which ___ (such as encoding and memory scanning) are carried out -they asserted that ___ children simply acquire, store, and manipulate basic information more rapidly and efficiently than their same-age, normal-ability peers

spatial; nonspatial; second; nonspatial; spatial; socioeconomic status (SES); low; middle; high;

Levine et al. (2005) & SES and Mental Rotation: -gave two ___ tasks and one ___ task to boys and girls over a 1-year period, beginning during the participants' ___-grade year -as expected, they found no gender differences in the ___ task -also as expected, there was an overall gender difference in performance on the two ___ tasks -surprisingly, however, this overall difference showed variation as a function of the children's ___; specifically, ___-SES students did not show any gender difference on the tasks; only ___- and ___-SES students exhibited the traditional male advantage on the spatial tasks

mental rotation; image generation; block letter; script lowercase version; four brackets; X mark; uppercase block letter; image maintenance; pattern; memorize; disappear; pattern; accuracy; males; females; speed

Loring-Meier and Halpern (1999) & Gender Differences in Visuospatial Abilities: -investigated with components of a ___ task showed gender differences -one task, an ___ task, asked participants to imagine a particular ___ by cueing it with a ___ of the letter; following this, a set of ___ would appear, with an ___ appearing somewhere within it; participants needed to decide whether the X appeared within the space where the ___ would be if it had been drawn inside the four brackets -another task, the ___ task, presented participants with a ___ inside brackets which they were asked to ___ and then press a key causing it to ___; after an interval, the screen presented an X in the brackets and participants needed to decide whether the ___ would have covered the X -results showed that, for all four tasks in the study, there was no gender difference in ___; however, on all four tasks, ___ were reliably faster than ___ (indicating gender difference in ___)

elementary school; boys; girls; effect size

Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) believed that boys and girls showed similar levels and patterns of mathematical ability through ___; ___ start outperforming ___ at age 12-13; this conclusion is supported by a medium ___

females; males

Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) concluded that the bulk of studies conducted up until 1974 suggested that although girls and boys showed approximately the same pattern of verbal abilities, after about 11 years of age, and continuing through high school and beyond, ___ outperformed ___ on a variety of verbal tasks, including language comprehension and production, creative writing, verbal analogies, and verbal fluency.

mental rotation; males; females; effect size

Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) reported gender differences in visuospatial abilities as extremely reliable. One task that appears to show reliable gender differences is ___; on average, ___ perform better than ___; this result is supported by years of research on mental rotation tasks, with a large ___

gender difference

More realistic depictions of ___ in performance include large degrees of overlap; so, although one gender may on average score higher than the other (in studies with very large number of people), it is impossible to predict how any individual would score

optional modifiable manners; problem-solving approaches; easily modified; developmental differences; impulsive; field-dependent; reflective; field-independent

Originally, cognitive styles were thought of as ___ or ___ that were independent of both intelligence and age; more recent research has challenged these assumptions; cognitive styles do not appear to be ___ through training; moreover, cognitive styles show ___, younger children are more likely to display ___ and ___ styles, and older children tend to show more ___ and ___ styles (Zelnicker, 1989).

learning styles hypothesis; learning style; learning method; test; crossover interaction

Pashler et al. (2008) & Learning Styles: -looked for evidence for a weaker hypothesis, the ___, which states that learning tailored to a learner's style can allow people to achieve a "better learning outcome" than they would achieve if this tailoring did not take place -in each of the hypothetical experiments they considered, participants were first classified as having ___ A or B and then were randomly assigned to ___ 1 or 2 -later, all participants took the same ___ -the learning styles hypothesis is supported if and only if the learning method that optimized the mean test score of one group is different from the learning method that optimized the mean test score of the other group (known as a ____ between learning style and method)

divided attention; speech recognition; speech discrimination; memory tasks; problem-solving task

Relative to younger adults (20-30s), older adults (60+) show several differences in cognitive abilities and skills; for example, older adults perform less well on tasks of ___, show age-related decrements in ___ and ___, and show declines in memory performance on a variety of ___ as well as on a Tower of Hanoi ___

achievement motivation; mastery-oriented; helpless-oriented

Research by psychologist Carol Dweck and her associates has shown that even in elementary school boys and girls show differential patterns of ___; this term refers to the ways people define and set goals, particularly the goals that are presumed to relate to their own competence; two major patterns of behavior have been identified: a ___ pattern and a ___ pattern

mixed results

Research into different learning styles (visual vs. verbal) has led to ___ in supporting the idea

working memory tasks; spans; processing efficiency

Salthouse and Babcock (1991) & Effects of Aging on Cognition: -studied the performance of adults ages 18 to 87 years on various ___ such as digit span, sentence comprehension, and mental arithmetic -they found that older participants had shorter ___ than younger participants -they hypothesized that the major factor accounting for this was a decline in ___, or the speed with which various elementary cognitive operations could be carried out

verbal comprehension; sensitivity to problems; syllogistic reasoning; number facility; induction; general reasoning; associative memory; span memory; associational fluency; expressional fluency; spontaneous flexibility; perceptual speed; visualization; spatial orientation; length estimation

Some cognitive ability differences include: ___: understand words, sentences, paragraphs; ___: suggest ways to solve problems; ___: draw conclusions from premises; ___: compute arithmetic operations; ___: indicate a principle of relations; ___: find solutions to algebraic problems; ___: recall associated element when given another element; ___: immediately recall a set of elements after one presentation; ___: produce words similar in meaning to a given word; ___: produce different ways of saying the same thing; ___: produce diverse functions and classifications for an object; ___: find instances of a pattern under speeded conditions; ___: mentally manipulate forms to visualize how they would look; ___: visually imagine parts out of place and put them in place; ___: estimate lengths or distance between points

abilities; style

The individual differences of interest to cognitive psychologists are generally of two distinct types: individual differences in ____ (i.e. the capacities to carry out cognitive tasks) and individual differences in ___ (i.e. the characteristic manner in which one approaches cognitive tasks)

biological; socialization

Ultimately, the reasons for gender differences in spatial ability may be found in ___ factors (e.g. lateralization), ___ factors (e.g. access to puzzles and video games), or some combination.

selective attention; attentional control; stimulus organization; cognitive style

Zelnicker (1989) argued that reflectivity/impulsivity and FD/FI are not completely independent dimensions and that each relates to three underlying dimensions: ___, in particular the tendency to respond to whole stimuli or to their parts; ___, the focusing and shifting of attention; and ____, the mental transformation of stimulus input (e.g. mental rotation tasks); he asserted that an individual's ___ "determines the quality of stimulus information accessible for further processing problems."

Hyde and Linn; inconsistent; effect size; 1973; verbal ability

___ (1988) challenged Maccoby and Jacklin's 1974 conclusion about gender differences in verbal abilities; their meta-analysis showed that results between 165 studies were ___, and the ___ was very small, suggesting that even the significant gender differences were rather small; interestingly, studies published before ___ showed a significantly larger gender difference than more recent studies; Hyde and Linn concluded that there are no gender differences in ___, at least currently in the ways that verbal ability is measured

Feminist; rationality; objectivity

___ critiques of psychology make even stronger claims about the different ways men and women approach cognitive tasks; Belenky and collaborators (1986) believed that today's predominant culture, historically dominated by men, has come to prize ___ and ___ over other equally legitimate ways of understanding that may be more common among women.

reflectivity/impulsivity

a cognitive style dimension referring to the extent to which a child delays response during the course of searching for the correct alternative in a context of response uncertainty; also known as cognitive tempo

helpless orientation

a cognitive style in which people fail to set challenging goals and give up rather easily when "the going gets tough"

mastery orientation

a cognitive style in which people set goals to challenge themselves and therefore to increase their competence, understanding, or mastery of something new; these individuals persist when they encounter obstacles or difficulty; often they also appear to enjoy putting in more effort when it is called for

need for cognition

a person's motivation to take on intellectual tasks and challenges; individuals with a high level of this seem to enjoy more of those kinds of endeavors that involve thinking, problem solving, and reasoning and to derive more satisfaction from accomplishing an intellectual challenge (ex: doing crossword or Sudoku puzzles instead of watching TV)

learning style

an individual's preferred or optimal method of acquiring new information

field dependence

cognitive style characterized by reliance on external referents (less able to find the embedded picture in a larger picture); has been associated with individuals who are more likely to rely on other in interpersonal relationships, especially in ambiguous situations

field independence

cognitive style characterized by reliance on internal referents in processing information (easily able to find the embedded picture in a larger picture); has been associated with a generally autonomous manner in interpersonal relationships (people who might be likely to form their own opinions regardless of what their friends think)

cognitive style

people's habitual and preferred means of approaching cognitive tasks; meant to imply certain personality and motivational factors that influence the way a person approaches a cognitive task

Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory

proposed the existence of 9 human intelligences; he argued that our Western culture places certain kinds of intelligence, specifically linguistic and logical-mathematical, on a pedestal, and gives short shrift to the other intelligences; he called for a broader view of people's mental and cognitive abilities

individual differences

stable patterns of performance that differ qualitatively and/or quantitatively across individuals

musical intelligence

the ability to analyze and respond to musical patterns; to compose or perform music

spatial intelligence

the ability to navigate skillfully through both wide and confined spaces; to visualize spatial scenes; to create products with spatial properties

naturalistic intelligence

the ability to recognize flora and fauna of one's environment; to skillfully classify organisms with respect to species and to chart the relationship among different species

logical-mathematical intelligence

the ability to solve problems, design and conduct experiments, draw inferences; the capacity to analyze situations

intrapersonal intelligence

the ability to understand one's own emotions, motivations, intentions, and desires and to use the information for self-regulation

bodily-kinesthetic intelligence

the ability to use one's body to perform artistically or athletically; to create physical products; to use either the whole body or parts of the body skillfully

existential intelligence

the capacity to see one's place in the cosmos, especially in light of such issues as the nature of the human condition, the significance of life, the meaning of death, and the ultimate fate of the world both physical and psychological (note: Gardner is still evaluating whether this capacity fully merits the label "intelligence")

interpersonal intelligence

the capacity to understand other people's emotions, motivations, intentions, and desires; the ability to work effectively with others

linguistic intelligence

the capacity to use language to communicate and to accomplish other goals; sensitivity to subtleties in both written and spoken language; the ability to learn foreign language

expert/novice differences

your level of knowledge in a domain affects your cognition within that domain; many cognitive processes--including perception and recognition; encoding; classification and categorization; and problem solving, reasoning, and decision making about information within the domain of expertise--appear to be affected