Understanding Thinking and Intelligence Concepts

Hello everyone and welcome to chapter 7 of the OpenStack Psychology textbook. My name is Matthew Poole and I'm an instructor of psychology at Northeast State. Today we're going over thinking and intelligence. So whenever I refer to cognition in this class, I'm simply just referring to thinking. So it encompasses the processes associated with perception, knowledge, problem solving, judgment. language, as well as memory. So overall, this category could be considered cognitive psychology. So whenever I refer to cognition, simply think of thinking. Moving forward, let's talk about concepts and prototypes, because this is a way in which our brain organizes information. So when it comes to concepts, these are categories of linguistic information, images, ideas, or memories. So they're mainly used to see relationships among different elements of experience. So they can be as complex and abstract as like the idea of justice or concrete, such as just the different types of birds. Now, we all have heard of the word prototype before. And whenever we think of a prototype, we typically think of a model of a particular product that's in its beginning stages. OK, but. Another way in which we can think of prototype when it comes to psychology is the best example or representation of a concept. When it comes to natural concepts versus artificial concepts, natural concepts are what's naturally experienced or created through direct or indirect experience, such as our concept of snow. But we don't have to experience snow directly. to be able to understand what snow is. Obviously, we've talked about how we learn vicariously through seeing images or watching other people, which is why for individuals who live in parts of the world that don't get snow, and they watch a movie or TV show, and they see snow in that particular film or show, they can still understand what snow is. It's not just that they have to experience it directly. They can experience it through indirect experience. Now we've also got what's known as artificial concepts. Artificial concepts are defined by a specific set of characteristics. This is found in mathematics. This is like your properties of geometric shapes such as squares, triangles, etc. So artificial is man-made, created by a specific set of characteristics, which is commonly found in mathematics. Okay, let's talk about schemata. So to give a definition to schema, A schema is a mental construct consisting of a collection of related concepts. So when a schema is activated, we automatically make assumptions about the person, object, slash situation. We all have different schemas about the world. We have schemas about cats versus dogs, being able to distinguish between the two. They're a collection of related concepts which allows us to help navigate our world. Whenever it comes to role schema, All right We all have different role schemes. We make assumptions about how individuals in certain roles will behave. So usually whenever we think of a librarian, we kind of consider them and assume, have biases, that they are naturally quiet individuals. They enjoy peace. They enjoy being with themselves, within themselves, and reading a nice book. They enjoy literature tremendously. Okay? That's not always the case. But we do tend to make assumptions based on people's roles in which they hold. We make assumptions about how they will behave. Now, whenever it comes to event schema, this is a cognitive script, a set of routine or automatic behaviors. This is the exact reason why whenever we go into an elevator, we don't face the wall. We typically face the door. And naturally, we all have a collective most. people at least have a collective agreement that we don't really talk whenever we're in an elevator. Maybe some brief pleasantries, but we typically do not get into conversation, obviously because of its brief trip. But some people just will not talk at all, and that's okay. Now, this is also our event schema or cognitive scripts help us distinguish, of course, whenever we go to different types of restaurants, because we're not going to act the same at a fancy restaurant as if we were to order or act at a fast food chain. Such as if you went to a nicer restaurant and you just went up to the podium and you started rattling off an order, they'd look at you like you were the... Like you just had lost your mind, right? But at a fast food restaurant, that's common practice. We go up to the very front where a podium or a desk is, and we order our food and then wait to be served. Now, at a nicer restaurant, of course, we go up, and the very beginning or that podium is just to be sat down. So, thankfully, our cognitive scripts will kick in. I know this is very elementary and simple, but it's quite important when it comes down to it. We need our brain to be able to distinguish. between different cognitive scripts and different events and how we should behave. On top of this, another event schema that's hard to break, because these schemas are in our brain and it's not easily swayed whenever we have them established. For a lot of us, whenever we get a notification on our phone, we either feel it buzz or we hear the ding, we have an automatic reaction or impulse to want to check that. phone immediately no matter where we're at and so that's why whenever we're driving it's a lot harder to resist whenever we get a text because of that curiosity you know and so but the thing is you're not supposed to text when you're driving it is dangerous as well as you will probably potentially will get ticketed for texting and driving if you're seen by a police officer But the thing is, because we regularly have that impulse where we just naturally pick up our phone whenever we get a notification, it can be hard to break even when we're driving and we know we shouldn't. Okay, now let's briefly talk about language. So language is a communication system that involves using words and systematic rules to organize those words to transmit information from one individual to another. And there are multiple different languages as we all know this. But all languages can be broken down into smaller components. Now the lexicon of language is the words of a given language. So what words do you typically use? And what words do you use in general? What words are applicable within this language? Grammar. Grammar is a set of rules that are used to convey meaning through the use of lexicon. So what are the rules in which we can... organize these lexicon or these words of a given information to convey meaning. Now, more simply, a phoneme is a basic sound unit such as ah and a. Morphemes are the smallest unit of language that can convey some type of meaning. And lastly, language is constructed through semantics and syntax. Semantics, as you all know, probably are the meaning that we derive from morphemes and words. Syntax, quite simply, the way the words are organized into sentences. Now, Noam Chomsky, he was somebody who was hugely influential whenever it comes to language development throughout developmental psychology. Noam Chomsky proposed that the mechanisms underlying language acquisition are biologically determined. He thinks that language develops in the absence of formal instruction. So, Even if we aren't in a place where we are presented with formal instruction, Noam thinks that we have the tendency to naturally want to be able to communicate. Although we may not form particular words or articulate words, we still have the desire to want to utilize our voice in a manner that conveys some sort of meaning, direction, or attention. And Noam Chomsky thinks that there's what's known as a critical period. This is the proficiency at acquiring language is most maximal earlier in life. So I don't know why we teach Spanish or other foreign languages in high school while we begin doing that, because to maximize our ability to learn and pick up on language, we should be doing it in our earlier years. I know it may be a little bit harder for us as far as on the initial end, but we'll pick up on it a lot quicker if we were taught. or introduced to a foreign language at an earlier age. That's just my opinion, but I'm not in education as far as the making decisions end. So if they ever ask my opinion, maybe that'll be a suggestion that I make. All right, moving forward, problem-solving strategies in general. So we have what's known as trial and error, algorithms, heuristics. And so we're going to go through and define each one of these. As we know, whenever we're trying to solve a problem, sometimes the best way to engage in that problem is to just go through trial and error. Try something until it sticks. And at least whenever you go through the process, when you try it and you fail, you're at least learning what not to do until you do. We also have algorithms. Now, we hear about algorithms in our day-to-day life that are, you know, online that give us or recommend particular videos to us. and things like that, particular ads, but... What an algorithm is at its baseline, it's just a step-by-step problem-solving formula. So whenever these software engineers, computer scientists go in and they are wanting to serve you best and try and get you the videos that you want, the algorithm isn't just a video-serving hub. What it is, they are creating a step-by-step problem-solving formula so it can navigate what you would... prefer to see versus not see. And so that has an algorithm has been written in a lot of entertainment outlets to be able to serve you best. Heuristics. Heuristics are general problem solving frameworks. So we all have heard of quite simply shortcuts, ways to navigate things a little bit easier, get the same result and not have to go through all the same steps that we would in the long form framework. We also have rules of thumb. We have working backwards. So some of us like to solve problems by seeing the problem first and then maybe working backwards from there can help a lot of people out. As well, something that helps with memory in general is breaking large tasks into a series of smaller steps. So maybe not trying to digest a big piece of writing all at once. Maybe we should break this down sentence by sentence or maybe a few sentences or a paragraph at a time. Moving forward, so let's talk about some pitfalls to problem solving or one in particular. Now if you're like me, you probably suffer from what's known as functional fixedness. This is some people's inability to see things for being utilized for more or for anything other than what they were intentionally supposed to be used for. So as you can see to the right in figure A, you'll see some matches. You'll see a... a box, a thumbtack, as well as a candle. Now, if I were to ask you, hey, what I want you to do with those three items is mount that candle on a wall and light it. Now, if you struggle with difficulty in doing so, you'd probably think like, well, I don't have an adequate candle holder. How am I supposed to do that? I mean, I have matches and I can light the candle, and I've got some thumbtacks, but I don't have a holder. Well, somebody who can think outside of the box, who is more creative. What they would do is they use the box that the thumbtacks came in and then place the candle in it so it would stand up. Now, I don't know about you, but in figure B, that holder doesn't look too stable, but maybe you can navigate away. Maybe that's just, again, my functional fixedness kicking in. Maybe you'd be able to navigate it in a way to where you can hold that candle a little bit better with that box. Configure that box in a way that makes it stand up and not have the potential to fall over and, I guess, catch your house on fire. But if you're like me and you didn't exactly see that problem-solving outlet initially, you may be like me and suffering from functional fixedness. And as the famous Albert Einstein once said, a very big, important quote to remember for the rest of your life, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Amen to that. We've got biases. Now biases are items in our lives that can influence our decision making as well as our argumentation without us really even knowing. They're kind of an unconscious process where we don't really realize that we're engaging in them until we're made known of the fact. So let's go through a few of these biases so you can navigate these in the future and like take a pause for yourself and say, hey, am I engaging in a bias here that can distort my... my ability to reason in this moment. Anchoring bias. Anchoring bias is our tendency to focus on one piece of information whenever we make a decision or solve a problem. You see people constantly do this where they'll see something that they initially discovered when researching into a topic or they sift through a lot of information and they find that one piece of evidence that supports their claims and so they stick to it like an anchor in a water. It keeps them in place. They do not sway from it. But as we all know... Most things in life cannot be simplified into support of only one piece of information whenever you make a decision or solve a problem. A lot of things have a lot of gray area and there can be argumentation or debate for a lot of topics in our world. So usually most things cannot be as simplistic as using one piece of information. You have to branch out and gather more to support your claims. at least adequately. When it comes to confirmation bias, we all have at least heard of this once. Confirmation bias is our tendency to focus on information that only confirms your existing beliefs and sway away from information that tends to go against your beliefs. Because our beliefs are important to us, we usually get to our belief points from adequate thought effort and a lot of time considering the topic. you shouldn't be very easily swayed from your beliefs, at least initially. But something that can influence our tendency to stay in one place is because of confirmation bias. Whenever we come to that belief system, we like to keep it that way. We get personal about it, and so whenever something goes against, or we see information that goes against what we believe in, it causes agitation. It may just redirect us to go seek out information that continues to confirm it. Hindsight bias. Hindsight bias is whenever you thought something was predictable, even though it wasn't. So for example, I experienced this in the stock market. Now, at the time of recording, this is 2023 and the stock market took a huge hit. Absolutely huge. And whenever I first got into the stock market, it was 2021. And if you ever look back on how the market was in 21, I mean, you could have literally been throwing money at anything in the market and you would have made money. It was an insane time for the stock market. Now, me being a novice trader and somebody who was just beginning, I thought that I was just a genius when it comes to the market. But again, it was just a flourishing market at the time. And so I would look into things and into different stocks and I would see different pieces of evidence, probably not adequate in a normal market to be looking at. And I was like, I'll put my money here. It would go up. I'd sell. And I'm like, I'm a genius. I've got, you know, an ability to navigate this market. How could, you know, whatever the case is. I was way overconfident than I should have been. And I thought all of this stuff was. way easily predictable, even though it wasn't. Because it doesn't matter who you are, as far as a stockbroker, you don't know whether the market's going to go up or down, things like that. So I got a rude awakening whenever our market took a huge hit at the beginning of 2022. And toward, it may have been, no, it was 2022. And toward about June, the market had officially... gone down about 20%. I'd lost a ton of money and gas was like close to, at least in East Tennessee, it was close to $5, I think at one point. I mean, it was just insanity. And so nothing is predictable when it comes to the stock market and whenever it comes to the market and the economy, but we can fall victim to that hindsight bias pretty frequently. Whenever we think things are predictable, even though they're not. When it comes to the representative bias, this is our tendency to unintentionally stereotype someone or something. The availability heuristic, the tendency to make a decision based on an example, information, or recent experience that is readily available to you, even though it may not be the best example to inform your decision. Now, sports analysts fall victim to this a lot. what have you done lately for me type of occupation. And analysts tend to, and I've noticed this, they tend to base a lot of their opinions on athletes as to what they've done recently rather than their career as an overall, especially for people who are still currently playing. And so they're making their decisions just based on what's most available or what's most recently happened to this person. And this is just a bias that a lot of us fall victim to in a variety of ways, but I just see it so commonly happening in sports. Okay, so let's classify intelligence. What is intelligence? So there are a lot of different ways that psychologists have come up with being able to define intelligence. There are multiple different intelligences in general, but two overall categories that I want to explain to you. So crystallized intelligence, this is like your... book smarts. This is just knowing facts, your acquired knowledge and the ability to retrieve it. So who is the president of the United States? Who was the first president of the United States? That's just our ability to know facts. Fluid intelligence, this is kind of like your street smarts, being able to see complex relationships and solve problems. This is just knowing how to do something. So crystallized versus fluid. Now, Robert Sternberg, though, he thinks that there's three types of intelligences, practical, creative, and analytical. So analytical intelligence is like your academic problem-solving aim. computation. So that most relates to like your book smarts, your ability to retrieve facts, understand complex relationships within an academic setting such as mathematics. Now your practical intelligence, again, like your street smarts and common sense. How are you with people, seeing relationships, understanding human behavior, things like that. And then he adds into it creative intelligence. We... have people who, again, they don't fall victim as much to functional fixedness. They are innovative, they're imaginative, and they problem solve from such a creative standpoint that nobody has introduced before. We need creative people. Now, Howard Gardner proposed that we each have at least eight intelligences in the sense that we have a varying level of them. Some are higher than... the other. Now he thinks the first one is what's known as linguistic intelligence, so your ability to use language, your articulation when it comes to writing, speech, things of that nature. Secondly, logical slash mathematical. Some people are mathematically inclined and they see complex relationships within an academic setting and are able to be able to navigate them with relative ease or whatever. They persist with being able to understand mathematical equations and items within math. They can navigate it eventually. They are able to solve problems. Now, some people are musically inclined. They are able to sing, able to play music. They have a natural rhythm within them that they can keep on a beat. And so create it with other people to be able to create a band or music in general. So... beautiful whenever individuals are talented whenever it comes to with music bodily kinesthetic and just going back to the musical I think it's if there's one like intelligence or ability that I could have and let me know if you agree with this is just like with music because when you play music and especially if you can sing you can just capture a room and like everybody stops what they're doing and they will listen to you And I just think that's such a powerful ability. And I just, I wish that I, if there's one talent I can have is sing. And yeah, it would just be really cool to be able to see like what an audience looks like whenever you're, you have such an incredible ability like that. And they just zone into exactly what you're doing in that moment. You just command a room and you get to share your talents. You know, it's, it's cool. It's funny because. I think I experience the exact opposite in a classroom whenever I talk about and I'm getting into psychology. Although it's interesting to me, basically all of this stuff, I know it's not going to be for everyone and that's okay. And I'll look out into the crowd, or not the crowd, but the classroom, and I'll have people just totally not interested in looking off into the distance or looking out the window on their phone, on their laptop. And it's just like... So it's a different world, but then you also have those who are locked in. And so I guess I get a little bit of a taste of what that's like, but not exactly to that level. Now, some athletes are bodily and kinesthetic intelligent. So they have the ability to basically do physics as they are performing their sport, which is so cool. They have very good depth perception and the ability to perform. with their body and engage in athletics very adequately. So it's really impressive. Athletes are very impressive when they're good at their sport. Spatial intelligence. So again, that relates to bodily kinesthetic in the sense of depth, understanding spaces and things like that. Your body in relation to other items and where they're at. Okay? Related to bodily kinesthetic. Interpersonal and intrapersonal. Now, individuals who are good with interpersonal skills or interpersonal intelligence, they understand the relationship between people. So how to navigate and understand what other people want and how to be good with other people, emotionally and otherwise. All right, intrapersonal is being intelligent regarding yourself, okay? So this is having more so an awareness as objective as you can be and honest with yourself as you can be, being reflective within yourself and trying to understand who you are and what you like and what you don't like. A lot of people are not as introspective as you may think. Whenever we combine these interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, these intelligences, we call this overall emotional intelligence. Again, the ability to understand the emotion of yourself as well as others, show empathy, understand social relationships and cues, and regulate your own emotions and respond in culturally appropriate ways. We also have those who are naturalistically intelligent. Those naturalists, they enjoy nature. They enjoy the individuals and organisms. within nature and it's a beautiful sight to see and engage in whenever you see those who are in tune with their naturalist intelligence. These are super caring, super kind, and very supportive individuals when it comes to nature. Okay, next is creativity. I've talked about this a little bit briefly throughout this lecture, but it's the ability to generate create or discover new ideas, solutions, and possibilities. And some attributes that are related to creative people include having intense knowledge about something, they work on it for years, they look at novel solutions, and they seek out the advice and help of other experts. On top of this, something that you may not know about creative people is that they, at least a good portion of them, tend to take risks. All right. And so what's often associated with creative people is that they are divergent thinkers. They like to think outside of the box, and you use when more than one possibility exists on a situation. So like, for example, with this, whenever they are given a problem, they like to think of either new ideas or new solutions that haven't been tried out before, or they have the ability to see new and better ways to navigate particular situations. Now, convergent thinking, this is the ability to provide a correct or well-established answer or solution to a problem. So we've got our divergent thinkers and our convergent thinkers. All right, so we've all heard of IQ tests before or measures of intelligence. So IQ stands for an individual's intelligent quotient. And this is like one of the first forms of standardization when it comes to tests. And... Alfred Beignet was the individual who developed an intelligence test to use on children to determine which ones might have difficulty in school. And then Louis Terman, a Stanford psychologist, modified Beignet's work by standardizing the administration of the test and testing thousands of children to establish a norm. And so what we've seen, the average IQ for individuals is 100. hundred, but the average falls within a bell curve. And so between 85 to 115 is going to be the average IQ score. The overall average is what I say. But moving forward with some other measures of intelligence, we have the David Weschler's definition of intelligence, which means the global capacity of a person to act purposefully, to think rationally. and to deal effectively with his environment. And so he developed a new IQ test by combining several subsets from other intelligence tests. And the main thing that I want you to take away from this slide is what's known as the Flynn effect. And so after years of use within schools and communities, periodic recalibration of WAIS, Wechsler's test, led to an observation known as the Flynn effect. This is... the idea that each generation has a significantly higher IQ score than the last. So don't tell your parents that you're smarter than them, but whenever you look at the data, it suggests that we're continuing to get smarter with each generation that passes, okay? Known as the Flynn effect. As I've mentioned recently, whenever it comes to the bell curve, so we have to have when we're doing these testings in general, a representative sample. So a representative sample is a subset of the population that accurately represents the general population. So when you're gathering individuals, you have to make sure that, of course, it's random, but you have to have a significantly large number of people to be able to prove statistical significance. And so whenever it comes to this, for the bare minimum to prove statistical significance, most experiments will require 30 participants. But if you want it to be very accurate, you're going to need a significant amount, a large amount of people. Now when it comes to the bell curve, which I already described, 82% of... the population have an IQ score between 85 and 115. Okay. And so whenever you have, you're navigating the bell curve is what I should say. You'll have what are known as standard deviations. And so whenever you have one standard deviation below or above, that's going to include about 82% of the population. And so as mentioned, between 85 and 115 is considered average. Now, the most commonly scored is going to be 100. That's, again, the average overall IQ, but if you want to be within the average of one standard deviation below and above, that's going to be between 85 and 115. Now, if you are two standard deviations above or below, that's going to be below average and above average. So, for individuals who have an IQ score between 115 and 130, they are considered above average. Now, between... 70 approximately and then 85 or 84 I should say is you're going to have that's going to be your individuals who are below average. Now here at 70 and below that's going to be well below average and then at between 130 and above that's going to be well above average. So that's a brief introduction into the bell curve especially whenever it comes to your IQ. We're going to end on talking about learning disabilities as well as sources of intelligence. So whenever it comes to learning disabilities, these are not intelligence disabilities in the sense that if individuals have dysgraphia or dyslexia, it doesn't mean that they are not as smart as people. They just have learning difficulties that they have to navigate. And so whenever it comes to dysgraphia, this is whenever individuals struggle to write legibly and so as a result have difficulty putting their thoughts down on paper. Okay, so they have difficulty with writing legibly and what you're seeing in figure 717 to the right is an example of dyslexia. So what an individual with dyslexia would view the word teapot. So up to the top left, that's how it's properly spelled. But if you have dyslexia, it can look like any of the rest of these where the letters are backwards, upside down, you name it. And so it's very hard to navigate these words. as a result of having dyslexia. And so you'll see people who have dyslexia writing these words out, and it'll also be backwards and upside down and things like that. So it's the most common learning disability in children, and again characterized by mixing up letters within words and sentences. But again, it's not that individuals are not intelligent, because it often happens to individuals who are a... above average intelligence which is you know very as far as the data goes interesting and how that works because I'm telling one of the smartest people children that I know she has dyslexia but she is very very intelligent and that just goes to show it's not an intellectual disability it is a learning disability okay may slow them down a little bit in regards to that but overall the they are very smart okay The source of intelligence. Now, what do you think and how do you think impacted your intelligence the most? Was it your parents or was it the school environment that you grew up in? This can be characterized and understood by potentially nature or nurture. Or do you think it was a combination of both? You know, you're given a particular amount of intelligence from your parents and then that can be facilitated for the better. For the average or maybe even for the worst, depending on the environment that you go to school in, you know, the teachers that you have, things like that. So what do you think? Do you think mostly your intelligence is due to your environment or your nature? Or is it, you know, maybe equal with both? Both of them kind of led you to where you are today. Okay. Moving forward. That is going to end our... Lecture for Chapter 7, Thinking and Intelligence. I will see you in the next video for Chapter 8. I hope you have a good rest of your day. Bye-bye.

So whenever I refer to cognition in this class, I'm simply just referring to thinking. So it encompasses the processes associated with perception, knowledge, problem solving, judgment. language, as well as memory. So overall, this category could be considered cognitive psychology. So whenever I refer to cognition, simply think of thinking.

Moving forward, let's talk about concepts and prototypes, because this is a way in which our brain organizes information. So when it comes to concepts, these are categories of linguistic information, images, ideas, or memories. So they're mainly used to see relationships among different elements of experience. So they can be as complex and abstract as like the idea of justice or concrete, such as just the different types of birds.

Now, we all have heard of the word prototype before. And whenever we think of a prototype, we typically think of a model of a particular product that's in its beginning stages. OK, but. Another way in which we can think of prototype when it comes to psychology is the best example or representation of a concept.

When it comes to natural concepts versus artificial concepts, natural concepts are what's naturally experienced or created through direct or indirect experience, such as our concept of snow. But we don't have to experience snow directly. to be able to understand what snow is. Obviously, we've talked about how we learn vicariously through seeing images or watching other people, which is why for individuals who live in parts of the world that don't get snow, and they watch a movie or TV show, and they see snow in that particular film or show, they can still understand what snow is. It's not just that they have to experience it directly.

They can experience it through indirect experience. Now we've also got what's known as artificial concepts. Artificial concepts are defined by a specific set of characteristics.

This is found in mathematics. This is like your properties of geometric shapes such as squares, triangles, etc. So artificial is man-made, created by a specific set of characteristics, which is commonly found in mathematics. Okay, let's talk about schemata.

So to give a definition to schema, A schema is a mental construct consisting of a collection of related concepts. So when a schema is activated, we automatically make assumptions about the person, object, slash situation. We all have different schemas about the world. We have schemas about cats versus dogs, being able to distinguish between the two.

They're a collection of related concepts which allows us to help navigate our world. Whenever it comes to role schema, All right We all have different role schemes. We make assumptions about how individuals in certain roles will behave.

So usually whenever we think of a librarian, we kind of consider them and assume, have biases, that they are naturally quiet individuals. They enjoy peace. They enjoy being with themselves, within themselves, and reading a nice book.

They enjoy literature tremendously. Okay? That's not always the case.

But we do tend to make assumptions based on people's roles in which they hold. We make assumptions about how they will behave. Now, whenever it comes to event schema, this is a cognitive script, a set of routine or automatic behaviors.

This is the exact reason why whenever we go into an elevator, we don't face the wall. We typically face the door. And naturally, we all have a collective most.

people at least have a collective agreement that we don't really talk whenever we're in an elevator. Maybe some brief pleasantries, but we typically do not get into conversation, obviously because of its brief trip. But some people just will not talk at all, and that's okay. Now, this is also our event schema or cognitive scripts help us distinguish, of course, whenever we go to different types of restaurants, because we're not going to act the same at a fancy restaurant as if we were to order or act at a fast food chain.

Such as if you went to a nicer restaurant and you just went up to the podium and you started rattling off an order, they'd look at you like you were the... Like you just had lost your mind, right? But at a fast food restaurant, that's common practice. We go up to the very front where a podium or a desk is, and we order our food and then wait to be served.

Now, at a nicer restaurant, of course, we go up, and the very beginning or that podium is just to be sat down. So, thankfully, our cognitive scripts will kick in. I know this is very elementary and simple, but it's quite important when it comes down to it. We need our brain to be able to distinguish. between different cognitive scripts and different events and how we should behave.

On top of this, another event schema that's hard to break, because these schemas are in our brain and it's not easily swayed whenever we have them established. For a lot of us, whenever we get a notification on our phone, we either feel it buzz or we hear the ding, we have an automatic reaction or impulse to want to check that. phone immediately no matter where we're at and so that's why whenever we're driving it's a lot harder to resist whenever we get a text because of that curiosity you know and so but the thing is you're not supposed to text when you're driving it is dangerous as well as you will probably potentially will get ticketed for texting and driving if you're seen by a police officer But the thing is, because we regularly have that impulse where we just naturally pick up our phone whenever we get a notification, it can be hard to break even when we're driving and we know we shouldn't.

Okay, now let's briefly talk about language. So language is a communication system that involves using words and systematic rules to organize those words to transmit information from one individual to another. And there are multiple different languages as we all know this. But all languages can be broken down into smaller components.

Now the lexicon of language is the words of a given language. So what words do you typically use? And what words do you use in general?

What words are applicable within this language? Grammar. Grammar is a set of rules that are used to convey meaning through the use of lexicon. So what are the rules in which we can...

organize these lexicon or these words of a given information to convey meaning. Now, more simply, a phoneme is a basic sound unit such as ah and a. Morphemes are the smallest unit of language that can convey some type of meaning.

And lastly, language is constructed through semantics and syntax. Semantics, as you all know, probably are the meaning that we derive from morphemes and words. Syntax, quite simply, the way the words are organized into sentences. Now, Noam Chomsky, he was somebody who was hugely influential whenever it comes to language development throughout developmental psychology. Noam Chomsky proposed that the mechanisms underlying language acquisition are biologically determined.

He thinks that language develops in the absence of formal instruction. So, Even if we aren't in a place where we are presented with formal instruction, Noam thinks that we have the tendency to naturally want to be able to communicate. Although we may not form particular words or articulate words, we still have the desire to want to utilize our voice in a manner that conveys some sort of meaning, direction, or attention. And Noam Chomsky thinks that there's what's known as a critical period. This is the proficiency at acquiring language is most maximal earlier in life.

So I don't know why we teach Spanish or other foreign languages in high school while we begin doing that, because to maximize our ability to learn and pick up on language, we should be doing it in our earlier years. I know it may be a little bit harder for us as far as on the initial end, but we'll pick up on it a lot quicker if we were taught. or introduced to a foreign language at an earlier age.

That's just my opinion, but I'm not in education as far as the making decisions end. So if they ever ask my opinion, maybe that'll be a suggestion that I make. All right, moving forward, problem-solving strategies in general.

So we have what's known as trial and error, algorithms, heuristics. And so we're going to go through and define each one of these. As we know, whenever we're trying to solve a problem, sometimes the best way to engage in that problem is to just go through trial and error. Try something until it sticks. And at least whenever you go through the process, when you try it and you fail, you're at least learning what not to do until you do.

We also have algorithms. Now, we hear about algorithms in our day-to-day life that are, you know, online that give us or recommend particular videos to us. and things like that, particular ads, but... What an algorithm is at its baseline, it's just a step-by-step problem-solving formula.

So whenever these software engineers, computer scientists go in and they are wanting to serve you best and try and get you the videos that you want, the algorithm isn't just a video-serving hub. What it is, they are creating a step-by-step problem-solving formula so it can navigate what you would... prefer to see versus not see.

And so that has an algorithm has been written in a lot of entertainment outlets to be able to serve you best. Heuristics. Heuristics are general problem solving frameworks. So we all have heard of quite simply shortcuts, ways to navigate things a little bit easier, get the same result and not have to go through all the same steps that we would in the long form framework. We also have rules of thumb.

We have working backwards. So some of us like to solve problems by seeing the problem first and then maybe working backwards from there can help a lot of people out. As well, something that helps with memory in general is breaking large tasks into a series of smaller steps. So maybe not trying to digest a big piece of writing all at once. Maybe we should break this down sentence by sentence or maybe a few sentences or a paragraph at a time.

Moving forward, so let's talk about some pitfalls to problem solving or one in particular. Now if you're like me, you probably suffer from what's known as functional fixedness. This is some people's inability to see things for being utilized for more or for anything other than what they were intentionally supposed to be used for.

So as you can see to the right in figure A, you'll see some matches. You'll see a... a box, a thumbtack, as well as a candle. Now, if I were to ask you, hey, what I want you to do with those three items is mount that candle on a wall and light it.

Now, if you struggle with difficulty in doing so, you'd probably think like, well, I don't have an adequate candle holder. How am I supposed to do that? I mean, I have matches and I can light the candle, and I've got some thumbtacks, but I don't have a holder. Well, somebody who can think outside of the box, who is more creative. What they would do is they use the box that the thumbtacks came in and then place the candle in it so it would stand up.

Now, I don't know about you, but in figure B, that holder doesn't look too stable, but maybe you can navigate away. Maybe that's just, again, my functional fixedness kicking in. Maybe you'd be able to navigate it in a way to where you can hold that candle a little bit better with that box.

Configure that box in a way that makes it stand up and not have the potential to fall over and, I guess, catch your house on fire. But if you're like me and you didn't exactly see that problem-solving outlet initially, you may be like me and suffering from functional fixedness. And as the famous Albert Einstein once said, a very big, important quote to remember for the rest of your life, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Amen to that. We've got biases. Now biases are items in our lives that can influence our decision making as well as our argumentation without us really even knowing. They're kind of an unconscious process where we don't really realize that we're engaging in them until we're made known of the fact.

So let's go through a few of these biases so you can navigate these in the future and like take a pause for yourself and say, hey, am I engaging in a bias here that can distort my... my ability to reason in this moment. Anchoring bias. Anchoring bias is our tendency to focus on one piece of information whenever we make a decision or solve a problem. You see people constantly do this where they'll see something that they initially discovered when researching into a topic or they sift through a lot of information and they find that one piece of evidence that supports their claims and so they stick to it like an anchor in a water.

It keeps them in place. They do not sway from it. But as we all know... Most things in life cannot be simplified into support of only one piece of information whenever you make a decision or solve a problem.

A lot of things have a lot of gray area and there can be argumentation or debate for a lot of topics in our world. So usually most things cannot be as simplistic as using one piece of information. You have to branch out and gather more to support your claims.

at least adequately. When it comes to confirmation bias, we all have at least heard of this once. Confirmation bias is our tendency to focus on information that only confirms your existing beliefs and sway away from information that tends to go against your beliefs.

Because our beliefs are important to us, we usually get to our belief points from adequate thought effort and a lot of time considering the topic. you shouldn't be very easily swayed from your beliefs, at least initially. But something that can influence our tendency to stay in one place is because of confirmation bias. Whenever we come to that belief system, we like to keep it that way. We get personal about it, and so whenever something goes against, or we see information that goes against what we believe in, it causes agitation.

It may just redirect us to go seek out information that continues to confirm it. Hindsight bias. Hindsight bias is whenever you thought something was predictable, even though it wasn't. So for example, I experienced this in the stock market. Now, at the time of recording, this is 2023 and the stock market took a huge hit.

Absolutely huge. And whenever I first got into the stock market, it was 2021. And if you ever look back on how the market was in 21, I mean, you could have literally been throwing money at anything in the market and you would have made money. It was an insane time for the stock market.

Now, me being a novice trader and somebody who was just beginning, I thought that I was just a genius when it comes to the market. But again, it was just a flourishing market at the time. And so I would look into things and into different stocks and I would see different pieces of evidence, probably not adequate in a normal market to be looking at.

And I was like, I'll put my money here. It would go up. I'd sell.

And I'm like, I'm a genius. I've got, you know, an ability to navigate this market. How could, you know, whatever the case is. I was way overconfident than I should have been.

And I thought all of this stuff was. way easily predictable, even though it wasn't. Because it doesn't matter who you are, as far as a stockbroker, you don't know whether the market's going to go up or down, things like that. So I got a rude awakening whenever our market took a huge hit at the beginning of 2022. And toward, it may have been, no, it was 2022. And toward about June, the market had officially...

gone down about 20%. I'd lost a ton of money and gas was like close to, at least in East Tennessee, it was close to $5, I think at one point. I mean, it was just insanity.

And so nothing is predictable when it comes to the stock market and whenever it comes to the market and the economy, but we can fall victim to that hindsight bias pretty frequently. Whenever we think things are predictable, even though they're not. When it comes to the representative bias, this is our tendency to unintentionally stereotype someone or something.

The availability heuristic, the tendency to make a decision based on an example, information, or recent experience that is readily available to you, even though it may not be the best example to inform your decision. Now, sports analysts fall victim to this a lot. what have you done lately for me type of occupation. And analysts tend to, and I've noticed this, they tend to base a lot of their opinions on athletes as to what they've done recently rather than their career as an overall, especially for people who are still currently playing.

And so they're making their decisions just based on what's most available or what's most recently happened to this person. And this is just a bias that a lot of us fall victim to in a variety of ways, but I just see it so commonly happening in sports. Okay, so let's classify intelligence. What is intelligence?

So there are a lot of different ways that psychologists have come up with being able to define intelligence. There are multiple different intelligences in general, but two overall categories that I want to explain to you. So crystallized intelligence, this is like your... book smarts. This is just knowing facts, your acquired knowledge and the ability to retrieve it.

So who is the president of the United States? Who was the first president of the United States? That's just our ability to know facts. Fluid intelligence, this is kind of like your street smarts, being able to see complex relationships and solve problems.

This is just knowing how to do something. So crystallized versus fluid. Now, Robert Sternberg, though, he thinks that there's three types of intelligences, practical, creative, and analytical. So analytical intelligence is like your academic problem-solving aim. computation.

So that most relates to like your book smarts, your ability to retrieve facts, understand complex relationships within an academic setting such as mathematics. Now your practical intelligence, again, like your street smarts and common sense. How are you with people, seeing relationships, understanding human behavior, things like that. And then he adds into it creative intelligence.

We... have people who, again, they don't fall victim as much to functional fixedness. They are innovative, they're imaginative, and they problem solve from such a creative standpoint that nobody has introduced before.

We need creative people. Now, Howard Gardner proposed that we each have at least eight intelligences in the sense that we have a varying level of them. Some are higher than...

the other. Now he thinks the first one is what's known as linguistic intelligence, so your ability to use language, your articulation when it comes to writing, speech, things of that nature. Secondly, logical slash mathematical. Some people are mathematically inclined and they see complex relationships within an academic setting and are able to be able to navigate them with relative ease or whatever. They persist with being able to understand mathematical equations and items within math.

They can navigate it eventually. They are able to solve problems. Now, some people are musically inclined.

They are able to sing, able to play music. They have a natural rhythm within them that they can keep on a beat. And so create it with other people to be able to create a band or music in general.

So... beautiful whenever individuals are talented whenever it comes to with music bodily kinesthetic and just going back to the musical I think it's if there's one like intelligence or ability that I could have and let me know if you agree with this is just like with music because when you play music and especially if you can sing you can just capture a room and like everybody stops what they're doing and they will listen to you And I just think that's such a powerful ability. And I just, I wish that I, if there's one talent I can have is sing.

And yeah, it would just be really cool to be able to see like what an audience looks like whenever you're, you have such an incredible ability like that. And they just zone into exactly what you're doing in that moment. You just command a room and you get to share your talents. You know, it's, it's cool. It's funny because.

I think I experience the exact opposite in a classroom whenever I talk about and I'm getting into psychology. Although it's interesting to me, basically all of this stuff, I know it's not going to be for everyone and that's okay. And I'll look out into the crowd, or not the crowd, but the classroom, and I'll have people just totally not interested in looking off into the distance or looking out the window on their phone, on their laptop.

And it's just like... So it's a different world, but then you also have those who are locked in. And so I guess I get a little bit of a taste of what that's like, but not exactly to that level.

Now, some athletes are bodily and kinesthetic intelligent. So they have the ability to basically do physics as they are performing their sport, which is so cool. They have very good depth perception and the ability to perform.

with their body and engage in athletics very adequately. So it's really impressive. Athletes are very impressive when they're good at their sport.

Spatial intelligence. So again, that relates to bodily kinesthetic in the sense of depth, understanding spaces and things like that. Your body in relation to other items and where they're at. Okay?

Related to bodily kinesthetic. Interpersonal and intrapersonal. Now, individuals who are good with interpersonal skills or interpersonal intelligence, they understand the relationship between people. So how to navigate and understand what other people want and how to be good with other people, emotionally and otherwise.

All right, intrapersonal is being intelligent regarding yourself, okay? So this is having more so an awareness as objective as you can be and honest with yourself as you can be, being reflective within yourself and trying to understand who you are and what you like and what you don't like. A lot of people are not as introspective as you may think. Whenever we combine these interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, these intelligences, we call this overall emotional intelligence. Again, the ability to understand the emotion of yourself as well as others, show empathy, understand social relationships and cues, and regulate your own emotions and respond in culturally appropriate ways.

We also have those who are naturalistically intelligent. Those naturalists, they enjoy nature. They enjoy the individuals and organisms.

within nature and it's a beautiful sight to see and engage in whenever you see those who are in tune with their naturalist intelligence. These are super caring, super kind, and very supportive individuals when it comes to nature. Okay, next is creativity.

I've talked about this a little bit briefly throughout this lecture, but it's the ability to generate create or discover new ideas, solutions, and possibilities. And some attributes that are related to creative people include having intense knowledge about something, they work on it for years, they look at novel solutions, and they seek out the advice and help of other experts. On top of this, something that you may not know about creative people is that they, at least a good portion of them, tend to take risks.

All right. And so what's often associated with creative people is that they are divergent thinkers. They like to think outside of the box, and you use when more than one possibility exists on a situation.

So like, for example, with this, whenever they are given a problem, they like to think of either new ideas or new solutions that haven't been tried out before, or they have the ability to see new and better ways to navigate particular situations. Now, convergent thinking, this is the ability to provide a correct or well-established answer or solution to a problem. So we've got our divergent thinkers and our convergent thinkers. All right, so we've all heard of IQ tests before or measures of intelligence. So IQ stands for an individual's intelligent quotient.

And this is like one of the first forms of standardization when it comes to tests. And... Alfred Beignet was the individual who developed an intelligence test to use on children to determine which ones might have difficulty in school. And then Louis Terman, a Stanford psychologist, modified Beignet's work by standardizing the administration of the test and testing thousands of children to establish a norm. And so what we've seen, the average IQ for individuals is 100. hundred, but the average falls within a bell curve.

And so between 85 to 115 is going to be the average IQ score. The overall average is what I say. But moving forward with some other measures of intelligence, we have the David Weschler's definition of intelligence, which means the global capacity of a person to act purposefully, to think rationally.

and to deal effectively with his environment. And so he developed a new IQ test by combining several subsets from other intelligence tests. And the main thing that I want you to take away from this slide is what's known as the Flynn effect. And so after years of use within schools and communities, periodic recalibration of WAIS, Wechsler's test, led to an observation known as the Flynn effect.

This is... the idea that each generation has a significantly higher IQ score than the last. So don't tell your parents that you're smarter than them, but whenever you look at the data, it suggests that we're continuing to get smarter with each generation that passes, okay?

Known as the Flynn effect. As I've mentioned recently, whenever it comes to the bell curve, so we have to have when we're doing these testings in general, a representative sample. So a representative sample is a subset of the population that accurately represents the general population. So when you're gathering individuals, you have to make sure that, of course, it's random, but you have to have a significantly large number of people to be able to prove statistical significance. And so whenever it comes to this, for the bare minimum to prove statistical significance, most experiments will require 30 participants.

But if you want it to be very accurate, you're going to need a significant amount, a large amount of people. Now when it comes to the bell curve, which I already described, 82% of... the population have an IQ score between 85 and 115. Okay.

And so whenever you have, you're navigating the bell curve is what I should say. You'll have what are known as standard deviations. And so whenever you have one standard deviation below or above, that's going to include about 82% of the population. And so as mentioned, between 85 and 115 is considered average.

Now, the most commonly scored is going to be 100. That's, again, the average overall IQ, but if you want to be within the average of one standard deviation below and above, that's going to be between 85 and 115. Now, if you are two standard deviations above or below, that's going to be below average and above average. So, for individuals who have an IQ score between 115 and 130, they are considered above average. Now, between... 70 approximately and then 85 or 84 I should say is you're going to have that's going to be your individuals who are below average.

Now here at 70 and below that's going to be well below average and then at between 130 and above that's going to be well above average. So that's a brief introduction into the bell curve especially whenever it comes to your IQ. We're going to end on talking about learning disabilities as well as sources of intelligence. So whenever it comes to learning disabilities, these are not intelligence disabilities in the sense that if individuals have dysgraphia or dyslexia, it doesn't mean that they are not as smart as people. They just have learning difficulties that they have to navigate.

And so whenever it comes to dysgraphia, this is whenever individuals struggle to write legibly and so as a result have difficulty putting their thoughts down on paper. Okay, so they have difficulty with writing legibly and what you're seeing in figure 717 to the right is an example of dyslexia. So what an individual with dyslexia would view the word teapot. So up to the top left, that's how it's properly spelled.

But if you have dyslexia, it can look like any of the rest of these where the letters are backwards, upside down, you name it. And so it's very hard to navigate these words. as a result of having dyslexia. And so you'll see people who have dyslexia writing these words out, and it'll also be backwards and upside down and things like that.

So it's the most common learning disability in children, and again characterized by mixing up letters within words and sentences. But again, it's not that individuals are not intelligent, because it often happens to individuals who are a... above average intelligence which is you know very as far as the data goes interesting and how that works because I'm telling one of the smartest people children that I know she has dyslexia but she is very very intelligent and that just goes to show it's not an intellectual disability it is a learning disability okay may slow them down a little bit in regards to that but overall the they are very smart okay The source of intelligence.

Now, what do you think and how do you think impacted your intelligence the most? Was it your parents or was it the school environment that you grew up in? This can be characterized and understood by potentially nature or nurture. Or do you think it was a combination of both?

You know, you're given a particular amount of intelligence from your parents and then that can be facilitated for the better. For the average or maybe even for the worst, depending on the environment that you go to school in, you know, the teachers that you have, things like that. So what do you think? Do you think mostly your intelligence is due to your environment or your nature?

Or is it, you know, maybe equal with both? Both of them kind of led you to where you are today. Okay.

Moving forward. That is going to end our... Lecture for Chapter 7, Thinking and Intelligence. I will see you in the next video for Chapter 8. I hope you have a good rest of your day.

Bye-bye.

Transcript for:Understanding Thinking and Intelligence Concepts

Transcript for:
Understanding Thinking and Intelligence Concepts