Thinking and

Intelligence

8
 Questions to Consider:

How Does the Mind Represent

Information?

How Do We Make Decisions and

Solve Problems?

How Do We Understand Intelligence?

How Does the Mind Represent
Information?
 Mental Images Are Analogical
Representations
 Concepts Are Symbolic
Representations
 Schemas Organize Useful
Information about Environments
Learning Objectives
Explain the difference between
analogical and symbolic
representations and provide
examples of each.

Describe how concepts and scripts

can positively and negatively affect
how we think.
How Does the Mind Represent
Information?
 Our thoughts consist of mental
representations of the objects and events we
learn about in our environments

 The two basic types of representation are

analogical and symbolic
Mental Images Are Analogical
Representations
 Thoughts can take the form of visual images
 Analogical representations have some
characteristics of actual objects
 Mental visual imagery involves the same
underlying brain processes involved in seeing
the external world
 Symbolic knowledge affects the ways we use
visual imagery
(a) Analogical representations, such as this picture of a violin, have some characteristics of the
objects they represent. (b) Symbolic representations, such as the word violin, are abstract and
do not have relationships to the objects.
Concepts Are Symbolic
Representations
 Concepts are mental representations of
subtypes of broad knowledge categories
 The concept of cat, for example, is a subcategory
of animals

 Many categories have fuzzy boundaries

 We have no simple way of telling a cat from a dog or a
rat, for example, since conceptually they are similar
(four-legged, hairy animals)
Concepts Are Symbolic
Representations
 Concepts may be formed by defining either
attributes, prototypes, or exemplars

 Defining attribute model

 Concepts characterized by a list of features necessary to
determine if an object is in a category
 Prototype model
 Best example for that category
 Exemplar model
 Any concept has no single best representation
We group objects into categories according to the objects’ shared properties.
In the defining attribute model, concepts are organized hierarchically, such that they can be
superordinate or subordinate to each other. For example, horns and stringed instruments are
subordinate categories of the superordinate category of musical instruments.
According to the prototype model, some items within a group or class are more representative (or
prototypical) of that category than are other items within that group or class.
Schemas Organize Useful
Information about Environments
 We develop schemas based on our real-life
experiences
 Scripts are schemas that allow us to infer
about the sequence of events in a given
context
 Scripts and schemas can be problematic
 Gender roles
 Dictated by culture
How Do We Make Decisions and
Solve Problems?
 People Use Deductive and Inductive
Reasoning
 Decision Making Often Involves
Heuristics
 Critical Thinking Skill: Understanding
How the Availability and
Representativeness Heuristics Can
Affect Thinking
 Problem Solving Achieves Goals
Learning Objectives
Distinguish among reasoning, decision
making, and problem solving.

Explain how confirmation bias, affective

forecasting, and framing can lead to
errors in decision making.
People Use Deductive and
Inductive Reasoning
 People often use deductive and inductive
reasoning to draw valid conclusions

 Deductive reasoning is from the general to the

specific

 Inductive reasoning is from the specific to the

general
People Use Deductive and
Inductive Reasoning
 Deductive reasoning:

 Use logic to draw specific conclusions under

certain assumptions
 Syllogisms are formal structures of deduction
 For example: If all psychology textbooks are fun to
read and this is a psychology textbook, then this
textbook will be fun to read
People Use Deductive and
Inductive Reasoning
 Inductive Reasoning:

 Determine the validity of a conclusion about a

specific instance based on general premises
 For example: If you read many psychology textbooks
and find them interesting, you can infer that
psychology books generally are interesting
Decision Making Often
Involves Heuristics
 In decision making, people use rules to
choose among alternatives

 Normative models (expected utility theory)

view humans as optimal decision makers
 Always selecting the outcome that yields the
greatest reward
Decision Making Often
Involves Heuristics
 Descriptive models highlight reasoning
shortcomings

 Mental shortcuts (i.e., heuristics) that sometimes lead

to faulty decisions
 Algorithm vs. heuristic
Decision Making Often
Involves Heuristics
 Framing:

 How information is presented can alter how people

perceive it

 We select information to confirm our conclusions, to

avoid loss or regret or both, and to be consistent with
a problem’s framing
Decision Making Often
Involves Heuristics
 Affective forecasting:

 People are not good at knowing how they will feel

about something in the future

 People do not realize how poor they are at

predicting their own feelings
Potential losses affect decision making more than potential gains do.
Critical Thinking Skill
 Understanding how the availability and
representativeness heuristics can affect
thinking
 Availability heuristic is the tendency to rely on
information easy to retrieve
 Representativeness heuristic is used when we
base a decision on the extent to which each option
reflects what we already believe
 Being aware of heuristics we rely on can help us
make more rational decisions
Problem Solving Achieves
Goals
 Problem solving involves reaching a goal
 Usually broken down into subgoals
 Insights come suddenly, when we see elements
of a problem in new ways
 Wolfgang Kohler
 Norman Maier
 Restructuring aids solutions; mental sets and
functional fixedness inhibit solutions
The Tower of Hanoi Problem Exercise
Problem Solving Achieves
Goals
 Conscious strategies help problem solve when we
get stuck
 Working backward
 Finding an appropriate analogy

 The paradox of choice—too much choice can be

frustrating, unsatisfying, and ultimately debilitating
 Barry Schwartz
How Do We Understand
Intelligence?
 Intelligence Is Assessed with Psychometric Tests
 Critical Thinking Skill: Recognizing and Avoiding
Reification
 General Intelligence Involves Multiple
Components
 Intelligence Is Associated with Cognitive
Performance
 Genes and Environment Influence Intelligence
 Group Differences in Intelligence Have Multiple
Determinants
Learning Objectives
List various ways of assessing intelligence,
along with the strengths and weaknesses of
each.

Explain the nature/nurture controversy, and cite

evidence for both sides.

Describe stereotype threat and explain how it

may be a threat to validity.
How Do We Understand
Intelligence?
 Intelligence is humans’ ability to reason,
solve problems, think quickly and efficiently,
and adapt to environmental challenges
Intelligence Is Assessed with
Psychometric Tests
 The psychometric approach reveals multiple
components to intelligence but also a central
dimension that has been called general
intelligence (g)

 The Binet-Simon Intelligence Test

 Mental age
 Intelligence quotient (IQ)
As discussed in Chapter 2, the statistical concept of standard deviation indicates how far people are from an
average. The standard deviation for most IQ tests is 15, such that approximately 68 percent of all people fall within
1 standard deviation (they score from 85 to 115) and just over 95 percent of people fall within 2 standard deviations
(they score from 70 to 130).
Intelligence Is Assessed with
Psychometric Tests
 The question of intelligence tests’ validity
persists, and one significant criticism is
cultural bias

 All intelligence tests have been criticized on the

basis of cultural bias
 Other ways of assessing intelligence also have the
potential for bias, as when interview questions are
ambiguous.
Because it does not rely on verbal knowledge, this test is not culturally biased—or is it?
Critical Thinking Skill
 Recognizing and Avoiding Reification

 Reification is the tendency to think about complex

traits as though they have a single cause and an
objective reality
 It’s important to recognize complexity in complex
concepts
General Intelligence Involves
Multiple Components
 Charles Spearman concluded that a general
intelligence component exists (g)

 Fluid intelligence is involved when people

solve novel problems

 Crystallized intelligence is accumulated

knowledge retrieved from memory
General Intelligence Involves
Multiple Components
 Multiple intelligences:

 Howard Gardner
 Include linguistic, mathematical/logical, spatial,
bodily kinesthetic, intrapersonal, and
interpersonal abilities
 Robert Sternberg has proposed that there are
three types of intelligence: analytical, creative,
and practical
 Emotional Intelligence (EQ):

 Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand

emotions and use them appropriately
 Speed of mental processing (e.g., reaction
time, inspection time) is part of intelligence
 The relationship of working memory to
intelligence seems to involve attention
 The size and activity of the brain’s frontal
lobes are related to qualities of intelligence
 But since brain size is altered by experience, we
cannot infer cause from this correlation
 Behavioral genetics:
 Genes help determine intelligence but it’s
unclear to what extent

 Environmental factors:
 Nutrition, parenting, schooling, and intellectual
opportunities seem to establish where IQ falls
within the genetic limits
Shown are average IQ correlations for family, adoption, and twin study designs. Siblings raised
together show more similarity than siblings raised apart. Parent and child are more similar when the
parent raises the child than when the child is raised by someone else. The highest correlations are
found among mono-zygotic twins, whether they are raised in the same household or not. Overall, the
greater the degree of genetic relation, the greater the correlation in intelligence.
There is a clear correlation between birth order and IQ: Firstborns have an average IQ of 103. Second-born children
have an average IQ very close to 100, except if the firstborn child has died, in which case the average IQ for second-
born children is 103. Third-born children have an average IQ of 99, except if one of the older siblings has died (the
third-borns’ average is 100) or if both older siblings have died (the third-borns’ average is 103). Apparently, having
two older siblings grow up in the same household lowers the third child’s IQ.
 One of the most contentious areas in
psychology concerns group differences in
intelligence.
 Gender:
 Females and males score differently on different
measures of intelligence
 Some measures favor males and others favor
females
 There is no overall sex difference in intelligence.
 Race:
 Differences in intelligence across races cannot be
assumed to be based on genetics

 Important differences across racial groups’

environments are more likely to affect scores on
intelligence tests.

 Many scientists question the idea of race as referring

to anything more than a small number of human
differences, such as skin color
Stereotype threat may lead black students to perform poorly.