Psychology- Chapter 7: Thinking, Language, and Intelligence

C

Jamie's mother was concerned that her four-year-old daughter ooverregularized plurals and tenses. She took Jamie to Dr. Action, a noted learning theorist, who advised her to... a. wait for Jamie's speech to correct itself b. take her to a speech therapist c. correct her grammar through imitation and repetition d. begin instruction in another language

Motivated reasoning

Making decisions and judgements on the basis of emotion rather than careful evaluation of all the available evidence.

Concepts

Mental category that is used to class together objects, relations, events, abstractions, ideas, or qualities that have common properties.

B

One plausible explanation of the incubation effect is... a. The tendency to allow the unconscious to free up insights. b. Distancing problem solvers from persistent but unproductive mental sets. c. Conscious searching for heuristic devices. d. Spontaneous means-end analysis.

g

Spearman suggested that intelligent behaviors have a common underlying factor, which he labeled __ and specific factors that account for specific abilities.

g

Spearman's symbol for general intelligence, which he believed underlay more specific abilities.

s

Spearman's symbol for specific factors, or s factors, which he believed accounted for individual abilities.

Practical

Sternberg constructed a "triarchic" model of intelligence, including analytical, creative, and _____________ intelligence.

Wechsler scales

Tests developed by David Wechsler for use with children and adults. The Wechsler scales group test questions into a number of separate subtests.

Intelligence quotient (IQ)

The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale yields a score called an ________________ ____________.

Creativity

The ability to do things that are unique and beneficial and to generate novel combinations out of existing elements describes...

Creativity

The ability to generate novel and useful solutions to problems.

Mental age (MA)

The accumulated months of credit that a person earns on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale.

Overregularization

The application of regular grammatical rules for forming inflections (e.g., past tense and plurals) to irregular verbs and nouns.

Heritability

The degree to which the variations in a trait from one person to another can be attributed to, or explained by genetic factors.

Making sounds

True language is distinguished from the communications systems of lower animals by all of the following except.. a. infinite creativity b. displacement c. making sounds d. semanticity

Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale

Used to identify children that are unlikely to benefit from regular classroom instruction. Children that are identified are given special attention.

B

What conclusion may be drawn about problem solving from Maier's studies with Bismarck? a. Only humans can solve problems by means of insight. b. A rat has demonstrated insight under laboratory conditions. c. A rat has demonstrated trial-and-error learning under laboratory conditions. d. Rats are capable of insight under a variety of conditions.

Semanticity

When reading the sentences, "The chicken is ready for dinner," and "The lion is ready for dinner," if you understand which is ready to eat and which is ready to be eaten, you are using the phrase "is ready to eat" with different __________ in each case.

Concepts

___________ are mental categories used to group objects, relations, or events with common properties.

Heuristic

____________ devices are rules of thumb that serve as shortcuts to rapid solutions.

Sternberg's Theory of Intelligence

o Analytical Intelligence- (Academic ability) Abilities to solve problems, compare and contrast, judge, evaluate, and criticize. o Creative Intelligence- (Creativity intelligence) Abilities to invent, discover, suppose, or theorize. o Practical Intelligence- ("Street smarts") Abilities to adapt to the demands of one's environment and apply knowledge in practical solutions.

Insight

o In Gestalt psychology, a sudden perception of relationships among elements of the mentally represented elements of a problem that permits its solution.

Incubation

o In problem solving, a process may sometimes occur when we stand back from a frustrating problems for a while and the solution "suddenly" appears.

Methods of problem solving

o Requires three features to successfully understand a problem. § The parts our mental representation of the problem relate to one another in a meaningful way. § The elements of our mental representation of the problem correspond to the elements of the problem in the outer world. § We have a storehouse of background knowledge that we can apply to the problem.

Infinite creativity

o The capacity to combine words into original sentences. of grammar.

Cognition

· Mental activity involved in understanding processing, and communicating information. Thinking, language, and intelligence.

Heuristics

· Or heuristic devices, rules of thumb that help us simplify and solve problems.

Thinking

· Paying attention to information, representing it mentally, reasoning about it, and making judgements and decisions about it.

Language

· The communication of thoughts and feelings by means of symbols that are arranged according to rules of grammar.

Intelligence quotient (IQ)

(a) originally, a ratio obtained by dividing a child's score (or mental age) on an intelligence test by chronological age. (b) generally, a score on an intelligence scale.

Mental

A ____________ set is the tendency to respond to a new problem with the same approach that helped solve similar problems.

Linguistic

According to the ______________-relativity hypothesis, language structures they way we perceive the world.

There were no overall gender differences in scores

According to the text, Janet Hyde and her colleagues studied the performance of some 7 million children in second through eleventh grades in mathematics and found that...

Heuristics

Algorithms are usually time consuming, whereas ___________ provide a more rapid solution when they work.

Algorithm

An ______________ is a specific procedure for solving a type of problem.

Systematic random search

An algorithm for solving problems in which each possible solution is tested according to a particular set of rules.

Overregularization

Children's use of sentences such as "I standed up" and "Mommy sitted down" are examples of _______________.

Prelinguistic vocalizations

Crying, cooing, babbling in children.

Hierarchical

Eight-year-old Stephanie understands that her dog Boodles is a dog and that all dogs are animals. Stephanie's concept of animal is best characterized as...

Multiple

Gardner proposes the existence of _____________ intelligences, each of which is based in a different area of the brain.

Prototypes

A concept of a category of objects or events that serves as a good example of the category.

Anchoring and adjustment heuristic

A decision-making heuristic in which a presumption or first estimate serves as a cognitive anchor; as we receive additional information, we make adjustments but tend to remain in the proximity of the anchor.

Availability heuristic

A decision-making heuristic in which our estimates of frequency or probability of events are based on how easy it is to find examples.

Representative heuristic

A decision-making heuristic in which people make judgements about samples according to the populations they appear to represent.

Intelligence

A general mental capability that involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.

Means-end analysis

A heuristic device in which we try to solve a problem by evaluating the difference between the current situation and the goal.

Analogy

A partial similarity among things that are different in other ways.

Holophrases

A single word used to express complex meanings. For example, "mama."

Exemplars

A specific example.

Algorithm

A specific procedure for solving a problem that works invariably when it is correctly applied.

Divergent thinking

A thought process that attempts to generate multiple solutions to problems.

Convergent thinking

A thought process that narrows in on the single best solution to a problem.

Analytical, creative, practical

According to Robert Sternberg, the three types of intelligence are...

Primary mental abilities

According to Thurstone, the basic abilities that make up intelligence examples include word fluency and numerical ability.

Language acquisition device (LAD)

In psycholinguistic theory, neural "prewiring" that facilitates the child's learning of grammar.

Framing effect

The influence of wording, or the context in which information is presented, on decision making.

Expertise

The person that creates anagrams are experts.

Semantcity

The quality of language in which words are used as symbols for objects, events, or ideas.

Displacement

The quality of language that permits one to communicate information about objects and events in another time and place.

Mental set

The tendency to respond to a new problem with an approach that was successfully used with similar problems.

Functional fixedness

The tendency to view an object in terms of its name or familiar usuage.

Psycholinguistic theory

The view that language learning involves an interaction between environmental factors and an inborn tendency to acquire language.

Linguistic-relativity hypothesis

The view that language structures the way we view the world. Proposed by Benjamin Whorf in 1956.