Thinking and Language (Ch 9), Intelligence (Ch 10), & Personality (Ch 13)

Question 1

prototype

Answer 1

a mental image or best example of a category. matching new items to the prototype provides a quick and easy method for including items in a category (as when omparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin)

-categories have fuzzy boundaries as we move away from our prototypes. is a tomoato a fruit?

we more quickly agree a “Robin is a bird” than a “goose is a bird”, because a robin more closely fits the bird prototype

Question 2

algorithm

Answer 2

a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem
-contrasts w/ the usually speedier - but also more error-prone - use of heuristics

-searching every supermarket aisle to find guave juice, rather than checking the bottled jiuce section ( a heuristic)

Question 3

Insight

Answer 3

a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem

• it contrasts w/ strategy-based solutions
• provides sense of satisfaction (figuring out a joke)
• burst of activity in right temporal lobe associated w/ insight

_Johnny sand bird stuck in a hole story

Question 4

confirmation bias

Answer 4

a tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions

business managers are more likely to follow the successfuly careers of those they once hired than to “track the acheivements of those tey rejected”

An atheist may Google “Proof God doesn’t exist”
a theist may Google “Proof God does exist”

Question 5

fixation

Answer 5

the inability to see a problem foom a new perspective
an impediment to problem solving

connecting 3x3 grid of dots with 4 connecting lines.
“staying inside of the box”

Question 6

functional fixedness

Answer 6

a tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving

a person may ransack the house for a screwdriver when a dime would have turned the screw

Question 7

representativeness heuristic

Answer 7

judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match. particular prototyes may lead one to ignore other relevant information
-identifiend by Amos Tvrsky and Daniel Kahneman

a person is short, slim, and likes to read poetry. Is the person morelikely to be a professor of classics at an Ivy Leagu or a truck driver (representativeness heuristic would lead to false answer: “Ivy professor”)

Question 8

Framing

Answer 8

the way an issue is posed

• how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgements
• those who understand the power of framing can use it to influence our decisions

90% of college students rate a condom as effective if it has a supposed 95% success rate” in stopping HIV spread where as 40% rate it effective if told it has a 5% failure rate

Question 9

Phoneme

Answer 9

in language, the smallest distinctive sound unit

to say “bat” we say b,a,t
to say “chat” we say ch, a, t

Question 10

morpheme

Answer 10

• in language the smallest unit that carries meaning
• maybe a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix or suffix)

1 morpheme: I; a; bat
2 morphemes: pre-view; bat-ted

Question 11

syntax

Answer 11

the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language

ex: one rule of English syntax says that adjectives usually come before nouns, so we say “white house”
The english rules of syntax allow hte sentence “They are hunting dogs” given the context, semantics will tell us whether it refers to dogs that seek animlas or people who seek dogs

Question 12

telegraphic speech

Answer 12

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram - “go car” - using mostly nouns and verbs
-the type of speech babies use in their two-word stage, which babies reach when they turn two

Question 13

Whorf’s Linguistic determinism/ Linguistic Relativity

Answer 13

Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think

English has a rich vocabulary for self-focused emotions such as anger

• Jaganese has more words for interpersonal emotions such as sympathy
• many bilinguals report they have different senses of self depending on the language they are using

Question 14

Critical period (for language)

Answer 14

there is a window for learning a language based on age

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Question 15

convergent thinking

Answer 15

• the type of thinking that demands a single correct answer
• intelligence tests measure convergent thinking
• convergent and divergent thinking engage different areas of the brain

“what is 27 x 84”

Question 16

divergent thinking

Answer 16

creative thinking

injury to certain areas of the frontal lobes can leave reading, writing, and arithmetic skills intact, but destroy imagination

“How many uses can you htink of for a brick?”

Question 17

language acquisition device

Answer 17

• a “switch box”
• helps us learn language
• part of Chomsky’s Inbon universal Grammar Theory
• Given adequate nurture, language will naturally occur. It just “happens to the child”.
• it as if the switches need to be turned either “on” or “off “ for us to understand and produce language. As we hear languages, the switches get set for the language we are to learn

Question 18

Broca’s area

Answer 18

• controls language expression - an earea of the frontal lobe usually in the left hemisphere, that directs muscle movements invovled in speech
• controls speech muscles via the motor cortex
• after damage to the Broca’s area, person would struggle to speak words while still being able to sing familiar songs and comprehends speech

someone who broke their Broca’s area would have trouble saying that.

Was that example in my damage to the Wenicke’s area card actually wernickes area???

Question 19

Belief Perserverance

Answer 19

clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited
-once beliefs form and get justified it takes more compelling evidence to chang them thatn it did to create them

-once people have explained to htemselves why company Z is a stock worht owning, htey tend to ignore the evidence that undermines the belief

Question 20

Availability Heuristic

Answer 20

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

Because words beginning with k come to mind more easily than words having k as their third letter, most people falsely guess that k appears more frequently as the first letter

Question 21

overconfidence

Answer 21

the tendency to be more confident than correct - to evrestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs and judgements

• people who err on the side of overconfidence live more happily, find it easier to make tough decisions, and seem more credible
• if given prompt and clear feedback on the accuracy of their judgements people soon learn to asses their accuracy more realisitically

-presuming how much we’re going to get done, we overestimate our future free time

Question 22

Noam Chomsky

Answer 22

• linguist
• Inborn Universal Grammar + thought Skinner’s ideas were naive and over simplified

Language will naturally occur, given adaquete nurture, it just happens to hte child

we are born with the OS/hardware for languge, and our linguistic experiences write the software.

Deaf children community where they created a language w/ complex grammar

Question 23

Receptive language

Answer 23

• the ability for babise to comprehend speech
• segmenting spoken sounds into individual words
• adeptness at this task, as judged by their listening pattern, predicts their language abilities at ages 2 and 5

-the development of this begins when babies prefer to look at a face that matches a osund, so that we can recognize that “ah” comes from wide open lips and “ce” from a mouth with corners pulled back

Question 24

grammar -

Answer 24

a system of rules that enable us to communicate with and understand others; grammar = semantic + synatx

Question 25

semantics

Answer 25

the set of rules by which we derive maening from morphemes, words, and sentecnes in given language; also, the study of meaning

ex: a semantic rule - adding “ed” to laugh means it happened in the past

Question 26

syntax

Answer 26

the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language

ex: adjectives usually come before nouns

Question 27

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale

Answer 27

• most widely used intelligence test
• contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtest
• overall intelligence score, verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, working memory, and processing speed
• WISC - for children, and one for preschool

“Wais your IQ, man?”

Question 28

Standardization

Answer 28

defining meaningful scores by comparison with the perfomance of a pretested group

-to be widely accepted, psychological tests must be sandardized, reliable, and valid.

Question 29

Normal curve

Answer 29

the symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes

Question 30

Flynn effect

Answer 30

• intelligence test scores have been rising since 1920s
• in 20 countries
• from test sophistication? better nutrition? better education? more parental investment?
• recently the trend may be leveling off

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Question 31

reliability

Answer 31

• the extent to which a test yelds consistent results, as assessed by consistency of scores on two halves of the test, or on retesting
• to test reliability, researchers retest people

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Question 32

the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest

Answer 32

the test taps the pertinent behavior, or criterion

the road test for a dirver’s license has content validity bc it samples the tasks a drive routinely faces

Question 33

predictive validity

Answer 33

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

aka criterion-related validity.

the SAT is modestly successful at predicting first-year college grades. Correlation is +.5

I wonder if it is a better predictor at what college tries to do though. Like maybe SAT scores are +.75 correlation with income

Question 34

Intellectual Disability

Answer 34

• aka “mental retardation”
• child must have a low test score and difficulty adapting to the normal demands of independent living
• bc of Flynn effect, tests have been periodically restandardized pushing some people into retardation zone (IQ < 70)

Level    IQ
mild      50-70
moderate 35-50
severe   20-35
profound <20

MMSP

Question 35

Stereotype Threat

Answer 35

a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype

• blacks score higher when test by Blacks, rather than by Whites
• Women’s chess play drops sharply when they think they are playing a male rather than a female opponent.

Question 36

Creativity

Answer 36

the ability to produce new and valuable ideas

• creative people !necessarily = intelligent
• -involve different parts of brain

How many uses can you think of for a brick?

Question 37

Reification

Answer 37

viewing an abstract, immaterial concept as if it were a concrrete thing

people reify IQ by saying “she has an IQ of 120” rather than “she scored 120 on the intelligence test”

Question 38

Intelligence Test

Answer 38

a method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and compiring them with those of others, using numerical scores

the tradition IQ test

Question 39

g factor

Answer 39

• Charles Spearman
• general 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

-Jack Bargemann

Question 40

Multiple Intelligences (Howard Gardner)

Answer 40

our abilities are best classified into eight independet intelligences, which include a broad range of skills beyond traditional school smarts
-linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spacial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal (self), interpersonal (other people), naturailst.

-computer programmer, poet, street smart adolescent who becomes a crafty executive exhibit different kinds of intelligence

Question 41

factor analysis

Answer 41

-a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items ( called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of peroformance that underlie a persons’ total score

SAT Verbal: 80%, 30 questions, 24 right
==» Factor Analysis ==» vocab 100%, reading comp 60%, completing sentence 80%

Question 42

Savant syndrome

Answer 42

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

Stephen Willshire Tokyo skyline detail drawing after helicopter

Question 43

Triarchic Theory

Answer 43

-Robert Sternberg
-Our intelligence is best clasified into three areas that predict real-world success:
–analytical, creative, practical
–Strengths: these three facets may be reliably measured.
Other considerations
1. These 3 facets may be less independent than Sternberg thought and may actually share an underlying g factor
2. Additionall testing is needed to determine whethere these facets can reliably predict success

Question 44

Social intelligence

Answer 44

• emotionally intelligence
• the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions
• emotionally smrt people succeed in many areas of life

Question 45

mental age

Answer 45

• a measure of intelligence test devised by Binet;
• the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance
• A child who does as well as the average 8-year old is said to have a mental age of 8.

Question 46

Stanford-Binet

Answer 46

the widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of binet’s original intelligence test

Question 47

IQ

Answer 47

Intelligent Quotient
-derived by William Stern from Stanford-Binet tests

Old: IQ = mental age/chronological age x 100
New: measures performance relative to the average performance of others of the same age (where 100 is the average)

Question 48

Achievement test

Answer 48

a test designed to assess what a person has learned

AP Exams

Question 49

Aptitude test

Answer 49

a test designed to predict a person’s future performance

• aptitude is the capacity to learn
• “a thinly disguised intelligence test”
• SAT correlates +.82 with general intelligence scores

-SAT

Question 50

Free association

Answer 50

in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconcscious in which the person relaxes ant says whatever comes to mind, not matter how trivial or embarrasing-interference”Relax and just talk”“I like food . . I like sleeping . . . I used to eat legos when I was 7 . . .I like eating legos”

Question 51

superego

Answer 51

internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement (the conscience) and for future aspirationsimg

Question 52

Id

Answer 52

-contains a reservoir of uncoinscious psychic energy that according to Freud strives to stisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives-operates on hte pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification

Question 53

ego

Answer 53

executive mediator

Question 54

ego, id, superego

Answer 54

ego - executive mediatorsuperego - internalized idealsid - unconscious psych energy

Question 55

unconscious

Answer 55

Freud: reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memoriescontemporary: information processing of which we are unaware.preconsciosu- some unconcsciosu thoughts temporarily sotred in preconscious, from which we can retrieve them into conscious awareness”Good morning beheaded - uh, I mean beloved” &laquo_space;Freudian slip

Question 56

Identification

Answer 56

Freud: process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos.”If you cant beat ‘em [parent of same sex], join ‘em”

Question 57

Rationalization

Answer 57

defense mechanism that offer self0justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions”Well i iddn’t not help the car crash victim because I’m mean; it was because I’m busy”

Question 58

Repressions

Answer 58

in psychoanalytics theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness-Freud believed repression is often incomplete, with repressed urges seeping out in dream symbols and slips of the tongue–repression underlies all the other defense mechanisms-believed its why we don’t remember our childhood lust for our parent of the other sex

Question 59

Reaction formation

Answer 59

psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into hteir opposites. THus people may express efelings that are hte opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings-laughing during a funeral

Question 60

self-concept

Answer 60

-all our thoughts and feelings aobut our selvs answer to the question “Who am I?”-if our self-concept is positive, we tend to act and perceive the world positivelyimg

Question 61

Unconditional positive regard

Answer 61

according to Rogers, an attitude of total accepance to another person-graceNOT “just remember son, it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose the baseball game - unless you want Daddy’s love.”

Question 62

Emperically derived test

Answer 62

• a test developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups-e.g. Minnesota Multiphastic Personality Inventory (MMPI) - identifies emotional disorders; screening; pretty objective, but not necessarily valid, yet still can catch liars-examine difference in answer between patient and normal group via answering True or False to a list of statements:”ONo one seems to understand me”“nothing in hte newspaper interests me except the comics”

Question 63

Neuroticism

Answer 63

-one of Big Five Personality Factors-emotional stability vs. instabilitycalm anxioussecure insecureself-satisfied self-pitying

Question 64

-e.g. Minnesota Multiphastic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Answer 64

-an emperically derived test- identifies emotional disorders; screening; pretty objective, but not necessarily valid, yet still can catch liars-examine difference in answer between patient and normal group via answering True or False to a list of statements:”ONo one seems to understand me”“nothing in hte newspaper interests me except the comics”

Question 65

Big Five Personality Factors

Answer 65

CANOEConscientiousnessAgreeablenessNeuroticismOpennessExtraversion

Question 66

Person situation controversy

Answer 66

do people exhibit their traits across different times and places?eg. friendly at work, but not at home w/ parents

Question 67

reciprocal determinism

Answer 67

-the interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment-we are products and architects of our environments”Success breeds happiness, and happiness breeds success”

Question 68

Learned Helplessness

Answer 68

-the hopelessness + passive resignation an animal/human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events-measures that increase control - allowing prisonrs to move chairs and control room lights and the TV, having workers participate in decision-making - boosts moreale , work engagement, and health, + alertness, activeneess, happiness

Question 69

spotlight effect

Answer 69

overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our apperance, performance and blunders ( as if we presume a spotlight shines on us)e.g. fretting if someone will notice stain on shirt or not

Question 70

self-serving bias

Answer 70

a readiness to perceive oneself favorably”I did well on hte exam because I studied hard!”“I did bad on the exam because the teacher was bad and the exam was worded poorly”

Question 71

collectivism

Answer 71

giving priority to goals of one’s group (often one’s extended family or work group) and defining ones identity accordingly)eg. staying loyal to goals of a group, rather than leaving to pursue your own personal goals

Question 72

Alfred Adler

Answer 72

Neo-freudian/psychodynami theorist-agreed w/ Freud that childhoot is important-but said inferiority complex > childhood sexual experiencesAlFred AdlerinFeriority complex

Question 73

Albert Bandura

Answer 73

-observational learning experiment-shows that childenr observe adult’s violent behaviors and adopt them

Question 74

Karen Horney

Answer 74

Neo-Freudian/psychodynamic-agree w/ freud that hcildhoot is influential but said that -childhood anxiety, caused by the dependent child’s sense of helplessness, triggers our desire for love and security-womb envy

Question 75

Carl Jung

Answer 75

NeoFreudian/psychodynamic-believed in collective unconscious, a common reservoir of images derived from our species’ universal experiencesmany cultures share that mothers are symbols of nurturance

Question 76

Carl Rogers

Answer 76

-humanistic-people are basically good and are endowed with self-actualizing tendencies-unless thwarted by an environment that inhibits growth each of us is like an acorn, primed for growth and fulfillment-we need genuiness, acceptance, and empathy-unconditional positive regard-self concept”You’re good son, keep up the hard work”

Question 77

Projective test

Answer 77

a personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli desined to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics-TAT-Rorschach inkblot-show pictures and make up stories about htem

Question 78

Terror Management Theory

Answer 78

-a theory of death-related anxiety-explores people’s emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death-writing an essay on dying and its associated emtionis increases prejudice - contempt for others and esteem for oneself