PSY101 EXAM 3

Language Processing

Many brain regions are involved win the 2 major aspects of language processing - understanding language and producing it

Extremes of Intelligence: Low Extreme

Mental retardation (Intellectual disability) is a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence tests score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to normal demands of independent living.

Repressed memories

More recently, people have been accused, and sometimes convicted, of sexual abuse based on repressed memories.

Encoding Failure

Much of what we sense, we fail to encode, and what we fail to encode, we will never remember. Pennies

The Question of Bias

Stereotype threat: a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype. Although intelligence tests seem to be equally predictive of outcomes such as school grades for males and female, and for members of different ethnic groups, the expectations that a test-taker has of himself or herself can affect test performance.

Lewis Terman: The Innate IQ

Subsequently, Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman translated the Binet-Simon into English. The Stanford-Binet is now one of the most widely administered tests of intelligence in the world. Herman used the intelligence quotient as a way of expressing a person's score - Mental age/Chronological age x 100

Obstacles to Problem Solving: The Candle-Mounting Problem Functional Fixedness

Using these materials (matchbox w matches, tags, candle), how would you mount the candle on a bulletin bored? Functional Fixedness: our tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions

Building Blocks of Language

What we would need to create a human language?

Explaining Language Development: Language Acquisition Device

When a young brain does not learn any language, its language-learning capacity never fully develops. As an alternative to Skinner's account, Chomsky argued that we come into the world equipped with a language acquisition device—a neurological system, which when given adequate nurture, allows us to understand and produce language.

Grammar: Semantics and Syntax

a system of rules that enables us to communicate, including rules for deriving meaning from morphemes (semantics) such as adding "ed" to form the past tense (as in "bagged"), and rules for ordering words to form sentences (syntax) such as that adjectives come before nouns (as in "brown bag").

Heritability/Environmental Influences

an estimate of the proportion of the variability in a trait that is attributable to genetic factors (heritability estimates for intelligence range from 50% to 75%) But this graph also shows evidence for a contribution of environmental influences. For example, identical twins separates at birth and reared apart are less similar than those reared together.

Charles Spearman

believed we have one general intelligence - and he had a good reason for believing this.

epidemiology

central discovery: correlation b/w intelligence and life span

What do animals think? - Chaser

"Chaser", trained by psychologists Alliston Reid and John Pilley, knows more than 1,000 words - the largest tested memory of any animal.

Explaining Language Development: Noam Chomsky

"Not only is Skinner's account wrong, but a behaviorist explanation cannot, in principle, ever account for language." - Noam Chomsky

Explaining Language Development: Skinner

"Verbal behavior evidently came into existence when, through a critical step in the evolution of the human species, the vocal musculature became susceptible to operant conditioning." - B.F. Skinner

Ian Deary

...and colleagues at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) retested 80-year-old Scots, using an intelligence tests they had taken as 11-year olds. Across seven decades, scored correlated .66 Using the same sample, these researchers also found that ID correlated w longevity: Among girls scoring in the highest 25%, 70% were alive at age 76, compared to only 45% of the girls who scored in the bottom 25%

The Case of Apes

1. Apes acquire their limited vocabularies w a great deal of difficulty, unlike children. 2. Chimps can make signs to receive a reward, just as a pigeon who pecks at the key receives a reward. However, pigeons have not leaned a language. 3. Chimpanzees use signs meaningfully but lack human syntax.

Ronald Cotton

Arising from this case is the incredible story of Jennifer Thompson, the victim who had identified Cotton. An aspiring college student at the time of the crime, she made it her purpose to study the assailant's face so that he would be brought to justice. She identified the wrong man. Today, Ms. Thompson speaks out about her experiences and the dangers of relying solely upon single eyewitness testimony to convict.

Marvin Anderson

Because Anderson had no criminal record, the officer went to Anderson's employer and obtained a color employment photo identification card. The victim was shown the color identification card and a half dozen black-and-white mug shots and then asked to pick the perpetrator. The victim identified Anderson as her assailant. Within an hour of the photo spread, she was asked to identify her assailant from a lineup...She identified him in the lineup as well.

Effects of framing cont...

But only 4 of 10 students rates condoms as effective against HIV if they were described as having a 5% failure rate. The bottom line: The message matters in shaping people's decisions and judgements.

Theories of Multiple Intelligences: Kim Peek

Can read and remember a page in 8 to 10 seconds, and has memorized verbatim 9,000 books, including the complete works of Shakespeare. Yet he cannot remember to button his clothes.

Gender Similarities and Differences

Greater male variability: Boys are overrepresented in the low extreme and the distribution and the high extreme if the distribution. There are also gender differences in mean levels of mental abilities. Females are better spellers than males, and are better in remembering locations of objects. Males tend to be better win spatial visualization. Even when gender differences are found, there is ALWAYS substantial overlap b/w the score distributions for males and females.

Brain Function: Perceptual speed

How does the "mental machinery" of someone who scores well on intelligence tests differ from that of someone who does not? In the test of perceptual speed above, a stimulus is flashed and is then replaces by a masking image, The critical question is: How long does a person need to glimpse at the stimulus to answer the question correctly?

Using and Misusing Heuristics cont...

How many Ivy league schools are there? 10 How many Classics professors are at each school? 4 Of those 40, what proportion are short and slim? Half Of those 20, what proportion read poetry? Half - 10 How many truck drivers are there? 400,000 Of those 400,000 what proportion are short and slim? 1 in 5 Of those 80k, what proportion read poetry? 1 in 1,000 or 80

Obstacles to Problem Solving: The Matchstick Problem - Fixation

How would you arrange six matches to form four equilateral triangles? Fixation: our inability to see a problem from a new perspective, employing a different mental set.

Repressed memories example

I find myself at the center of an increasingly bitter and fractious controversy. On one side are the "True Believers" who insist that the mind is capable of repressing memories and who accept without reservation or question the authenticity of recovered memories. On the other side are the "Skeptics" who argue that the notion of repression is purely hypothetical and essentially untestable, based as it is on unsubstantiated speculation and anecdotes that are impossible to confirm or deny. - Elizabeth Loftus

The logic of twin studies

If intelligence (or any other trait) is influenced by genetic factors, then the most genetically similar people should have the most similar intelligence test scores.

Forgetting

If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. - William James Whenever I see a date flash on the television...I automatically go back to that day and remember where I was, what I was doing, what day it fell on, and on and on and on and on. It is non-stop, uncontrollable, and totally exhausting. - Jill Price (Diagnosed: Hyperthymesia)

Using and Misusing Heuristics

If you meet a slim, short, man who wears glasses and likes poetry, what do you think his profession would be? Any Ivy league professor of Classics or a truck driver?

Flynn Effect

In every country that has been studies, intelligence test scores rose during the 20th century. As a case in point, in Britain, test scores have risen 27 points since 1942. James Flynn first documented this magnitude.

Memory study

In one study by Loftus and colleagues, participants were asked questions about three events that had actually happened to them as children, and questions about one event that had not happened: getting lost in a shopping mall. By the third interview, approximately 25% of participants remembered the false event as a real event. Thus, it seems to be possible to "implant" false memories.

Early Environmental Influences

In one study, Romanian orphan who had minimal interaction w caregivers were observed to suffer delayed development. On the bright side, "enrichment" experiences such as Head Start and musical straining can enhance intelligence - although the benefits are modest.

Memory Construction: Misinformation and Imagination Effects

In over two thirds of the first 138 postconviction DNA exonerations, mistaken eyewitness identification played a major part in the wrongful conviction. Modern technology is proving what scientists, psychologists, and legal scholars have noted for years: eyewitness identification is often faulty and is the major cause of wrongful convictions. Identifications are even more problematic when they are based on observations made under stress or in less than ideal conditions(e.g. darkness, from a distance).

What Is Intelligence?

Intelligence is a mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solving problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

Gardner's Theory of Intelligence

Intelligence is best thought of as multiple abilities that come in packages.

Using and Misusing Heuristics: The Representativeness Heuristic

Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes.

High Extreme

Lewis Terman identified youth with an IQ over 135, and found that many, though not all, went on to attain high levels of education, and to become professionals—doctors, lawyers, professors, scientists and writers.

The High Extreme: Lubinski and colleagues

found that individual differences in IQ matter even at the high end of the scale. For example, people who has scored in the 99.9 percentiles on the SAT as children were five times more likely to have a scientific patent that whole who has only scored in the 99.1 percentile.

Language

refers to our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we confine them as we think and communicate - "the jewel in the crown of cognition" Language is arbitrary: sounds produced to resemble a word do not reflect the meaning of the word.

Savant syndrome

A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.

Theories of Multiple Intelligences: Stephen Wiltshire

After a 30-minute helicopter ride to the top of a skyscraper, British savant artist Stephen Wiltshire began seven days of drawing that reproduced the Tokoyo skyline.

Misinformation effect

After exposure to misinformation, many people misremember.

Alfred Binet: predicting School Achievement - Mental Age

Alfred Binet, w the help of his assistant Theodore Simon, developed the first standardized test if intelligence for the purpose of identifying French schoolchildren who were in need of special help in school. Also introduced the concept of mental age - the chronological age that most typically correspond to a given level of performance.

Problem Solving: Heuristics

Algorithms are time consuming, and thus we often use heuristics: sample thinking strategies that allow us to solve problems efficiently. Heuristics are usually speedier but more error prone.

Language Development: Native Languages

Children learn their native languages much before learning to add 2+2. After age 1, we learn, on average, 3,500 words a year, amassing 60,000 words by the time we graduate from high school.

Brain Size and Complexity: Chris Langan

Chris Langan's IQ of 190 is about 6 standard deviations about the mean - as is his head size.

Ethnic Similarities and Differences

Differences in intelligence test scores are also found between ethnic groups. However, it is important to keep in mind that nature draws no sharp boundaries between races. Even if the variation between members within a group reflect genetic differences, the average difference between the group may be wholly due to the environment. Imagine that seeds from the same mixture are sewn in different soils. Height differences within each window box will be genetic, but the height difference between the boxes will be environmental

Emotion

Emotions are a mix of physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and consciously experiences thoughts.

Brain Size and Complexity: Lord Byron

English poet Lord Byron had a very large head, and a very large brain - 5 pounds compared to an average of 3 pounds.

Using and Misusing Heuristics: The Availability Heuristic

Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; that is, how readily they come to mind. For example, although flying is much safer than driving, many people insist on driving.

Encoding Failure: Storage Decay

Even after encoding something well, we sometimes later forget it. Hermann Ebbinghaus, who you learned about earlier, learned lists of non-sense syllables and then attempted to re-learn them.

Theories of Multiple Intelligences: Gardner - IQ and Income Correlation

For Gardner, a test score reflecting "general intelligence" is essentially meaningless, bc a person can have weakness in some areas. but strengths in others. Correlation is positive for IQ to income

Origins of Intelligence Tests: Francis Galton

Francis Galton had a fascination w measuring man traits, and devised the first tests of metal ability, which he administered to people in his laboratory at the 1884 London Exposition.

Retroactive Inference

Occurs when new information makes it harder to recall something you learned earlier. Ex: Forgetting an old password quickly after you change it

Proactive Inference

Occurs when something you learned earlier disrupts your recall of something you experience later. Ex: Baseball batter trying to learn how to golf

Cultural Transmission

On the western bank of one Ivory Coast river, a youngster watches as its mother uses a stone hammer to open a nut. On the river's other side, a few miles away, chimps do not follow this custom.

Brain Size and Complexity

One review of 37 brain imaging studies revealed associations b/w intelligence and brain size in specific areas, especially frontal lobes, and the correlation b/w overall brain size and intelligence is around .30

Belief Perseverance

Our tendency to cling to our initial concepts even after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.

Obstacles to Problem Solving: Confirmation bias

Our tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore contradictory evidence.

Overconfidence: Intuitive heuristics

Our use of intuitive heuristics (representative and availability) and our eagerness to confirm the beliefs we already hold (confirmation bias) combine to create overconfidence—a tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our knowledge and judgments. This can create problems, big and small.

Modern Tests of Mental Ability

Over the course of your career as a student, you have taken many tests of mental abilities, including aptitude tests - tests like the ACT that are designed to predict your future performance - and achievement tests - tests designed to asses what you have learned. You may also have taken "intelligence tests"

What do animals think?

Over two decades, Kyoto University researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa has studied chimps' ability to remember and relate numbers. At left, Ai taps in an ascending order randomly displayed numbers.

The Belief Perseverance Phenomenon

Participants read about supposedly new research findings - one supporting use of the death penalty as a deterrent, and the other refuting it. Participants were most impressed with the study that confirmed their own beliefs about the death penalty.

How fast were the cars going when they [smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contacted] each other?

Participants who were asked a leading question (with "smashed") were much more likely to remember broken glass two weeks later than were other participants.

Broca's Area

People w damage to Broca's area have an inability to produce speech

Wernicke's Area

People with damage to Wernicke's area have an inability to understand speech.

The Rationale:

Psychologist Gary Wells' discovery that when shown sequential lineups, people make absolute judgments, which lead to much lower rates of misidentification.

Cognition

Refers to all the mental activities associated w thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Validity

Refers to the extend to which a test measures what is it supposed to measure.

Reliability

Refers to the extent to which a test yields consistent results (scores), as assessed by the constancy of the scores on 2 halves of the test, or on retesting.

Components of Creativity?

Research suggests that people who are highly creative know a lot about their domain (expertise), think about things in novel ways (imagination), are willing to go against trends (personality), and are driven by interest, satisfaction, and challenge rather than external pressure.

The Result:

Sequential lineups cut eyewitness misidentification in half compared to simultaneous lineups. Fewer innocent people go to jail.

Repressed or Constructed Memories of Abuse? - Freud

Sigmund Freud proposed that we repress painful memories to protect our self-concept and minimize anxiety.

Retroactive Inference: Sleep

Sleep may provide some protection against retroactive interference.

Problem Solving: Algorithms

Some problems we solve by trial-and-error, and others by using algorithms: methodical, step by step procedures that guarantee a solution.

Spearman findings

Spearman found that people who do well on one test of mental ability tend to do well on all others, implying that there is a "key ingredient" for success across tests, which he identified using a statistical tool called factor analysis, and which he called the general factor.

Are Tests of Mental Abilities Reliable and Valid?

The SAT and ACT are highly reliable, and they do a reasonably good job of predicting the behaviors they are supposed to predict. In other words, they correlate with college GPA.

Bottom Line of Forgetting

The bottom-line is that forgetting can occur at any memory stage. As we process information, we filter, alter, or lose much of it.

Environment in Creativity

The environment is also important. In a study by creativity researcher Teresa Amiable, participants were asked to write poems. Half were told that their poems would be judged by a panel of English professors, whereas the other half were not. The finding: dear of evaluation led to less creative poems.

The innovation:

The sequential police lineup procedure, in which a witness is shown suspects one at a time instead of all at once (simultaneously).

Two-word speech

The stage of speech development during which a child speaks mainly in two-word statements, as in the sort of telegram (or e-mail) that you may have sent your parents ("send money")

The speaker

The stage of speech development in which a child begins uttering longer phrases

Effects of Framing

The way a message is presented can have striking effects: In one study, 9 of 10 college students related condoms as effective against HIV if they were described as having a "95% success rate"... Framing: the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgements

Standardization

There are 2 major steps in "standardizing" a test, The first is to establish a procedure for administering the tests, and the second is to administer the test to a standardization sample to establish norms for the test, and to determine whether the test has acceptable "measurement properties"

Thinking and Language

There is some evidence that language at least influences thinking. For example, people express different profiles of personality traits depending on the language in which they take the test... and expanding your vocabulary expands your ability to think - and the best way to do that is to read good writing.

Chapter 9

Thinking and Language

Adapting to New Situations

This definition isn't tied to any particular context. For example, adapting to new situations could refer to the transition from living at home to living on your own, or to the transition that Brazilian tribespeople must make as a result of destruction of the rain forest.

Forgetting Curve

This same forgetting curve is found for other types of material: The course of forgetting is initially rapid and levels off with time. This could be because of decay of the physical memory trace.

Theories of Multiple Intelligences: Sternberg's Theory

distinguished among three intelligences 1. Analytic Intelligence - analyzing a math problem, critique a concert, critical thinking 2. Creative Intelligence - coming up with new ideas, poem, art, thinking in novel ways 3. Practical Intelligence - when you put your abilities into practice, using knowledge learned in school to do something in the real world

Creativity

the ability to produce ideas that are both novel and valuable, such as works of art. Or the "turing machine", which can simulate the logic of any computer algorithm Or even the paperclip

Phonemes

the smallest distinctive sound unit in language, such as the b sound in "bag"

Morphemes

the smallest unit that carries meaning in language, including words such as "bag", and parts of words, such as prefixes (e.g., anti for "against")

One-word stage

the stage of speech development during which a child speaks mostly in single words (ex: doggy! fish!)

Babbling

the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds, at first in a way unrelated to household language and then in a way related.