Of the chapters we have left to cover in your text - please pick one that is most interesting to you and read that for this assignment.
Briefly discuss why you picked this chapter and how it might build on your interests of cognitive psychology.
Of the various aspects of cognitive psychology presented in the chapter, which did you find the most interesting? Why? Which did you find least interesting? Why? What are three things you read about in the chapter that you think will be the most useful for you in understanding the cognitive psychology? Why?
How does this chapter build on and extend what you have been learning this semester in the cognitive psychology class and other class you have taken?
Please make sure you use the terms, terminology and concepts you have learned so far in the class. It should be apparent from reading your post that you are a college student well underway in a course in cognitive psychology.
Please use spaces between your paragraphs to make your post easier to read - thanks in advance.
Let me know if you have any questions.
I think chapter eleven, problem solving and creativity, seems to be the most interesting of the chapters that we have left to cover. This chapter will help build on my knowledge of cognitive psychology because it'll help me gain a better understanding of the cognitive processes involved when we are solving problems and using our creativeness. This chapter has explains many concepts that play in a role in how our brain functions to solve problems produce creativity.
The Three-process view was interesting to learn about. It was easy to relate to this view in terms of how I study. First, selective-encoding insight describes that we must filter out the important information from irrelevant information. For example, during a lecture students take notes must selectively encode the most important concepts rather that writing down the entire lecture. Next, selective-comparison insight describes how we use old information and compare it with new information to solve problems. For example, if students needed to memorize a list of terms for a test, most students will selectively compare the new terms with synonymous words we have in old information to make the memorization process easier. The third part of the process view is selective-combination insight. This technique describes how we can not only identify the most important information to solve a problem, we must synthesize all the information. For example, students who are writing a paper need to synthesize their notes in order to answer all aspects of the the main question.
The three-process view was the most interesting aspect for me to read about because it was interesting to see how I use this concept in my own daily studies. The examples provided in the text related to how almost all students use problem solving techniques. Overall, I gained a better understanding of how my brain uses different styles of insight to solve problems. I didn't have a least favorite part of this chapter, I thought everything was interesting to read about.
Understanding the different steps of problem solving will helpful in understanding cognitive psychology. The steps, problem identification, problem definition & representation, strategy construction, organization of info, allocation of resources, monitoring, and evaluation help me understand how our brain breaks down problem solving. This will be helpful if I know someone who has troubles with problem solving, I can help them work on the individual steps. Mental sets is another concept that will be helpful for me to apply throughout cognitive psychology. We have different types of mental sets that we use depending on the type of problem. Mental sets help us fixate on a strategy that normally works well in solving many problems and helps us find solutions for routine problems. The last idea from chapter eleven that will be helpful for me to use is the understanding of characteristics in creative individuals. For example, some of the characteristics of creative individuals might be high motivation in a particular interest, nonconformity in violating norms, careful decision making of where to focus creative attention and more. This idea will help me identify people who are highly creative and understand how their creativity processes work.
This chapter builds on my previous psychology courses and cognitive psych class because it presents new information yet I am able to relate it to previous material. For example, in my abnormal psychology class we spent time learning how our brain structures work together and what occurs when some structures are not fully developed or damaged. Problem solving involves several brain structures and people without fully developed brain structures or those who experience brain damage might lose their problem solving skills. Overall, this chapter presented very interesting information that I'm able to apply to our cognitive psych class and relate to my other psychology courses.
The chapter I have chosen for this week assignment is dedicated to the problem solving. I picked up this chapter as I this issue is important for me both as a teacher and a student. Moreover, I was happy to notice that many of the topics and referenced research we have covered in class of Instructional Psychology as well.
Problem solving is a high-level cognitive ability which processing is not easy to detect through psychological research. Nevertheless, we have evidence that problem solving shares some basic features with other cognitive abilities in general.
Dealing with problems and finding a successful solution in many cases depend on the way in which the problem was presented. The core idea here is that a person creates reflection of the problem in mind. Thus Gestalt approach says that we represent the problem in mind and can successfully solve it if we restructure it.
The information-processing approach points out that it is possible to define several stages in the process of solving a process: the initial stage, the goal stage and a series (or sometimes just one) intermediate stage that represents a path, or a way to the goal stage and thus solving a problem.
Solving a problem through analogue is one of the common techniques. Analogues include source problem and target problem. The key point here is to see the connection between them and apply the solution. In general the analogue approach can be described in three stages: noticing the analogues relationship, mapping the correspondence between them and applying the mapping.
Several important moments should be taken into consideration. Successful problem solving depends on many factors. One of them is the type of information we pay attention to in the initial data. If we concentrate on the surface features of the problem, not on the deep structure, we are less likely to solve it successfully. For example, when participants were presented with two types of problems in physics (one initial and the other similar) those who paid attention to the surface features (like what are the objects in the given task) but not on the deep structure (like what physical forces operate there) were less likely to solve the problem or at least it took them longer. These results also correspond with the fact that experts and novices show sufficient difference in problem solving. The experts do it better as they have more knowledge in the area and this knowledge is organized in a better way, with more effective access. At the same time experts show this difference only in a particular area: given tasks from another area they do not present any sufficient superiority.
One of the interesting aspects of problem solving is the insight phenomenon – a sudden realization of a problem’s solution. The whole concept seems to be pretty mysterious as it often seems to a person that the insight comes suddenly and without any excessive thinking. But many researchers argue that insights do not actually differ that much from any other types and strategies of problem solving.
Terms used: insight, problem solving, gestalt approach, information-processing approach, analogies.
After searching through my textbook, Cognitive Psychology (Kellogg 2003), I decided to focus on the intelligence chapter. I specifically found it interesting to read the section that compared and contrasted cognitive abilities of males and females. I chose this section because it seems like ever since grade school, teachers, friends, media, etc. have argued that either men or women are smarter than the opposite sex. I wanted to find out the truth, and that’s what led me to choose the chapter on intelligence.
My textbook made it clear that men and women are more similar than they are different when comparing their different cognitive competencies. The only differences that are noticed relate to verbal abilities, visual-spatial abilities, and mathematical abilities. In order to compare and contrast hundreds of results from previous studies psychologists relied on meta-analysis.
When it came to verbal differences there was an overall agreement that women barely have better verbal abilities. The results depend on the tests that the participants were asked to complete. To test verbal abilities participants may have completed the following: anagram solutions, speech production tests, verbal score on SAT, vocabulary tests, and essay writing. The only agreement reached was that when girls begin to first speak as a child they are more articulate, generate longer sentences, and know more words than boys who are just beginning to speak. Young girls also apply grammar better and spell better than young boys.
The next conclusion reached was that from adolescence onward males perform better than females with visual-spatial abilities. Not only do males have better visual-spatial abilities but they also have a larger variability within their abilities. One specific spatial perception test does show no difference between males and females so the argument still remains. Throughout childhood males and females share around the same mathematical abilities, but while entering adulthood differences emerge. As adults males are representatively more intelligent with quantitative challenges.
Another argument that occurs quite often is what sex is better at navigation. When figuring this out it is important to note than men and women find their way to certain locations differently. Women tend to use specific landmarks while men most likely use distances and headings such as north, south, east, and west. When asked to recall a new route men made fewer errors and learned the route faster than women.
Ever since gym class in elementary I have heard guys argue they have much more talent when it comes to motor skills. My textbook would agree with this argument if it compared a woman and man throwing an object at a target. Women perform better than men when it comes to controlling small muscles in the body such as fingers. Most motor skills tests rely on control such as this so most studies have shown women are more talented with their motor skills. I found this to be the most surprising and therefore the most interesting. With my experience in sports I did not expect to learn that women are better at controlling their smaller muscles. I did not find any particular part of this chapter the least interesting, but wished my textbook explained the differences between males and females’ cognitive processes. I question if there are areas of the brain that women use more than men that may explain similarities and differences between their cognitive abilities. Most of this information was new to me, yet I assumed most of these results were true before I read this chapter. I did become aware of several ways in which males and females are similar. Overall, it depends on the test and how the test is designed. The tests sometimes create the differences and similarities so that is why it is hard to prove one sex is better than another at a certain ability. What I learned from reading about sex differences can help me to better communicate and understand to females one way and males another way. Yet, I am now aware that in most ways males and females’ abilities are similar in scale. This chapter can help build on previous topics we have covered in class like information-processing, sensation and perception, attention, memory, and even possibly object –recognition.
Terms: Verbal, visual-spatial, mathematical, navigation, motor skill abilities
I chose the chapter on language, it specifically deals with words and reading. I chose this chapter because it relates to what I am interested in. I am currently thinking about pursuing a career in school psychology and this chapter deals with processes that are important to understand when teaching reading. The introduction of this chapter listed concepts that would be touched upon, among them, reading comprehension, what is involved in letter identification, reading patterns of a dyslexic person, etc. All of which are important to understand when teaching in a school setting.
I found it interesting that Emile Javal discovered that when reading, the eye does not sweep across the line of print but moves in a series of small jumps, or saccades, and with periods of momentary fixation between them. And about 10 to 15 percent of the time we move our eyes backwards to review what we just read, this is called regressions (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005, pp. 358).
Another section of the chapter that I really found interesting was the excerpt on the reading patterns of a person with dyslexia versus a normal reader. Dyslexics have been found to process words more slowly than nondyslexics. I also found it interesting that rates of dyslexia are most prevalent in the United States and this may be because the English language has multiple spellings for similar sounds, for example, f and ph for the sound fuh (Solso, MacLin & MacLin, 2005, pp. 377). I think that this is useful for me in the understanding of cognitive psychology because of the career path I plan on taking, which I have already mentioned. It is important to understand that children with dyslexia may struggle more with the English language because of these characteristics and by understanding this, extra help in these areas can be given to those students.
I also found the section on reading comprehension to be interesting. When reading for comprehension, which is the goal of why most people read, we are trying to process and understand the meaning of the written material. I found one of the studies in this area to be very informative. It showed that the less familiar an individual was with the word, the longer their fixation on it was. This is because the brain has to do more processing with these words, as compared to those that we are more familiar with. Some of these stages the brain goes through is first reading the word, then processing what form of speech it is which then maybe help the reader to create a picture of what was just read. After doing this, the brain then relates that word to other words in the sentence to create the meaning.
Finally, I found it interesting that it is easier to read and comprehend sentences in which there is a definite article, such as the, rather than indefinite articles, such as a. This is because more mental representation is possible with definite articles, which help to create a definite picture. This reminds me a lot of how we discussed in class that the brain likes consistency. These examples can be related in a way, the brain likes that it can form a clear-cut meaning from the sentence, which is achieved through use of definite articles.
In addition to this, the concepts in this chapter relate to areas of the brain which have been discussed in previous classes, for example, Broca’s and Wernicke’s area. Broca’s area is the portion of the frontal lobe used in language production, whereas, Wernicke’s area is the region of the brain adjacent to the auditory projection area and is used in understanding word meanings. A chapter such as this one just shows how much processing goes on in our brain in the matter of milliseconds and we hardly even notice!
Terms: saccades, regressions, dyslexia, comprehension, Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area
Reading Activity – Week #13
One topic that we haven’t talked a lot about so far in this semester is the basic aspects of spoken language. This is a great topic within the Cognitive Psychology and therefore I chose to discuss this chapter a little more. Communication is used every day and is usually consists the inclusion of other people. The central theme of this chapter is focused on the primary goal when speaking. When we speak, our goal is to communicate with other people, and to facilitate communication. Most aspects of spoken language are designed to facilitate communication. The chapter talked about the key to successful communication is the cooperative principle, where speakers and listeners must be cooperative within the scene of the conversation. As much as we don’t realize it, people are not always cooperative within conversations as they may think they are. One main thing that really I found to be interesting was the idea of speech errors. This is something that is interesting because I know a lot of people who have speech pronunciation problems and therefore I was interested to understand why it is that these people do these things unconsciously.
One of the most interesting things that I read about in this chapter was about one of the speech errors. It was called Semantic Substitution. Semantic Substitution is a kind of lexical selection error where the person has trouble selecting the right word. When talking the person replaced the intended word with a word that had a similar meaning. An example would be, “Where is my tennis bat?” When in fact they wanted to say, “Where is my tennis racquet?” The least interesting thing that I read about in this chapter was the topic of Blending. Blending is a more common speech error and therefore I had already heard about it. Blending is another kind of lexical selection error. A person suffering from Blending would say, “The sky is shining.” Instead of, “The sky is blue.”
One thing that I found interesting in this chapter that gave me some knowledge in the topic of cognitive psychology is the idea that speech errors and spoken language are fundamentally important in everyday life. These theories are not designed to account for the ways in which monitoring one’s listener or listener’s influences speech production. The conditions in which speakers do or do not focus on common ground have not been clearly established. Speakers are probably most likely to try and ground their speech when their listeners provide them with verbal and non-verbal feedback, and when they have some time to work out the listener’s current beliefs and understanding.
This chapter builds on Cognitive Psychology because it provides information in areas within processes that influence our daily lives. To be able to understand why people have speech errors can help us, 1). Understand what exactly we’re hearing, 2). Understand certain things about that person, personally, 3). Possibly find ways to work around the disability where the parent or teacher can work with that student or understand why and how to work around it, 4). Understand certain Cognitive processes about that person.
I had a recent argument with my sister about recycling. She is convinced that there is a conspiracy of sorts going on, and that recycling is a hoax. She is 100% certain that my mounds of cardboard and tin cans I put into my recycling bin every week are quickly shunted off to the landfill across town, and I am a sucker. This conversation played through my mind again when I attended the 20th annual tri-state undergraduate conference in DuBuque last month. One of the Speakers was touting the need for more studies in eco-psychology, and the hippie in me was delighted. It was made very clear that psycologists are in high demand in this feild, we understand people and presumably understand why people make the decisions they do. It's important to create programs people will follow to reduce waste and promote greener living. Psychology has entire fields dedicated to behavior modification, motivations, and the way people percieve things. All of this has bits of cognitive psychology wrapped up in it. That is why I wanted to look at the chapter on reasoning and decision making in the text.
I expected to find alot more information in the text, but I guess my best bet would be to take a class on the topic to better understand it all. There is alot more to our decisions and reasoning than you might think. The text begins this chapter with a philosophical based argument on reasoning. If anyone has taken the time to learn about Socrates and his methods of deducing logic... well it's fun if you're into that. The way the average person reasons isn't always the way we would assume. we often choose the option that does not seem too rational when we give it a closer inspection. The text also goes into depth about what is called a confirmation bias. This is when one tends to pay more attention to those things that support their beliefs than to evidence that undermines them. Back to my sister, who once saw a Wal-Mart dumpster full of used grocery bags... she was certain that they were the ones which people had place in the bins to be recycled, hence the whole recycling hoax thing.
The next part of the chapter focused on decision making. A large portion of the examples given are gambling related, and having taken statistics and worked with probabilities it seemed very redundant. One thing I found interesting was the discussion on what the text refers to as the law of small numbers. This explains why people mistakenly expect even small samples to look random and to mirror the probabilities from larger samples. this is why if we flip a coin and get heads three times we assume that the next flip must have a higher chance of being tails. The mistake here is that each flip is independant of the other tossses and though randomness will balance out in the long run, it may not appear as random in the short run. The other aspect I found intriguing was the hindsight bias. researchers would ask a group the probability of one team winning a game over another, and usually the probability was low, near 25%. Then researchers would ask the same to another group, but also tell them who had won, this created a bias for the respondees whereas they rated the probability of their chances of winning at the beginning of the game as higher, at 50%. Basically, if we know the outcome, we feel as if we'd always known that would be the outcome.
I still have much to learn about reasoning and decision making, and I hope the web divergence assignment can shed some more light on what I'd like to know.
The chapter I chose to read about was the computerized cognition or artificial intelligence chapter in the textbook. I choose this chapter because it is something I have not heard a lot about (other than the video we just watched in class) and I wanted to learn more about it.
Artificial intelligence is the branch of computer science that deals with the development of computers and computer programs that emulate human cognitive functions. This idea deals a lot with the video we just watched in class on the different experiments that are going on with artificial intelligence when related to human cognitive functions. Reading this chapter will help me learn about what is being done technologically to help learn more about the human cognitive functions. There are many things that we currently do not understand in our brain and hopefully someday all of our questions can be answered through advanced technology or artificial intelligence.
The most interesting part of the chapter for me was when Sinha and Poggio did an experiment where they showed the picture of a famous pair which looks like former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. However, when you take a second glance at the picture you notice that the two faces are exactly the same – the eyes, nose, and mouth. The only thing that is different is the hair, ears and body. The researched showed that it is possible to design programs that can recognize objects and faces better than humans (not very surprising after you read research and information about eye witness testimonies) and they were also able to show that they can incorporate a learning program into computers so they can start to recognize faces and objects like humans do. These systems that act like human experts are called expert systems. They act like an artificial specialist that solves problems in the area of its specialty. These systems typically are only designed to do one thing at a time. One program called Puff is designed to diagnose lung disorders and does so accurately about 89% of the time. This is equal to the accurate diagnoses of an experience physician.
The least interesting part in the chapter was learning about the beginning of artificial intelligence. Apart of this is because it is history and does not talk about the new and exciting things that are currently going on with artificial intelligence. From this section I learned that the earliest type of calculator – abacus – was used in China in the sixth century B.C. The section further talks about the first digital calculator being invented (only addition and subtraction by Blaise Pascal) and the first “dfference engine” by Babbage and Lovelace. Computers can be dated back to the 1940s when much of their use was for the military (calculating path of artillery shells). One of the calculating machines weighed 30 tons and drew 174 kilowatts of power. Cognitive psychology itself can be traced back to 956 when ten scientists met at Dartmouth to talk about developing computer programs that would behave intelligently. Most common type of computer in use today is based on a creation by John von Neumann, and this computer is sometimes called Johniacs or serial processors (electrical impulses are processed in series or in sequence). McCulloch and Pitts later observed neurons can have an on and off (will fire or not) quality to them and they sought to bring this to technology. This neuron type is now called McCulloch-Pitts neurons. Computers function by means of on/off circuits. Later a difference is shown between computers and brains. Computers typically process information serially, sequential processing model, while brains generally process information in parallel. Furthermore a sequential processing model is “a computer program that examines each input feature in a predetermined stepwise fashion, with the outcome of each stage determining the next step in the program.” While a parallel processing model is “a computer program that examines all input features at the same time.”
One thing that will help me to understand A.I. and cognitive psychology better is the Imitation game or the Turing Test. The Turing test is a test involving communication between a human who asks questions and an unknown language-using entity, with the human’s task being to distinguish the output as human or nonhuman. An example of this was the Chinese room. This was “a test used to illustrate the untenability of a strong artificial intelligence position. A subject (or computer) that possesses no knowledge of the Chinese language is given a sample of Chinese characters along with a set of rules for relating those character to another set of symbols.” Even though the person may know no Chinese they may become well practiced.
This chapter really played off of a lot of information that was given in the video we watched in class. There are endless possibilities for the future of technology and cognitive psychology. The more advanced technology becomes the more we will learn about our mind, perceptions, how the brain works, and decision making. Many people do have a fear of computers becoming too powerful or too complex, but I believe that since that fear is already there, people are more likely to be on the cautious side already. I am exciting to see what the future has in store for cognitive psychology. Our textbook is even so bold to state that, “A computer brain with computing power of the human brain may emerge by 2020.” That is only ten years away and it is full of endless opportunities.
Another part that will help to understand A.I. and cognitive psychology is the fact that much of the work in A.I. is between two types of methods to solve the problems. The first of these is algorithms (procedures that guarantee a solution to a given kind of problem). The second of these is heuristics (sets of empirical rules or strategies that operate – like a rule of thumb). The example in the textbook talks about a chess game. In algorithms would examine all the alternatives, leading to a numerous amount of possibilities for the game to end; whereas, the heuristic search model would incorporate strategy.
The last thing I found extremely interesting and something that can help me learn more about cognitive psychology is when I read the section about A.I. and the Arts. In poetry the machines may “read” several different entries and then it will created a language model where the style, rhythm patters, and poem structure are all mimicked. This reminds me of Pandora online and how it uses one artist you type in, to find similar music based on lyrics, rhythms, and style. Even in music programs are being created that can fool people on which one is authentic. However, the text noted there is a slight flaw to this. People who are experts on a certain artist can most likely point out the artificial one, whereas, people who may somewhat know the artist can be fooled. Another thing the textbook notes is that even though many of these computers can create poetry, music, and art at the end of the day it is up to “human judgment” to say if these works of art can pass as human or can be seen as a fake. There is something extremely ironic in that.
Terms: Artificial intelligence, expert systems, Johniacs, McCulloch-Pitts neurons, sequential processing model, parallel processing model, Turing test, Chinese room, algorithms, heuristics
I chose to read the chapter on intelligence. Recently I have a few different conversations about the different measures of intelligence. I started when I returned to work over Thanksgiving break. I work with kids with autism. They are some of the smart kids I know. Yet they are clinically diagnosed with learning disabilities; both autism and mental retardation. Then in my abnormal psychology class we discussed intelligence testing. Virtually all intelligence testing depends on language. We show that have intelligence through the words we use. We communicate information verbally. If someone lacks only verbal skills but has all the others they will be misjudged. It will seem they have a lower I.Q. than they actually do. I.Q. is defined as intelligent quotient which is a person’s mental age, as measure on a standardized intelligence test, divided by their chronological age and then multiplied by one hundred.
There are many other aspects of psychology that intelligence bleeds into. Relating this back to kids with autism their mental age may be younger then their chronological age but their scores may be even lower (and inaccurate) due to a lack of verbal skills. But how would we go about testing someone’s intelligence without using language? In what other way can we get solid results? We can’t evaluate drawing skills or musical talent? We do communicate through language. In a few of my classes we have talked about America’s and the general youth’s depleting vocabulary. We think in words. Therefore, if we lose our vocabulary we lose the ability to think in ways that those words describe.
It is interesting to think about how we can translate all of those different types of information, all of that intelligence, is communicated through language. There are different types of intelligence listed in my cognitive book the first listed include fluid and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is the ability to solve novel problems or, problems that are different from anything seen before. When considering autism the children that I have worked and the stories that I have heard tell me that a trait of autism is an inability to think fluidly. They like routine. They like for things to say exactly as they are. My manager once mentioned that OCD or obsessive compulsive disorder is a common characteristic of autism as well. On the other end of the spectrum we have crystallized intelligence. That is the depth of a person’s knowledge (everything that they know- the extent of all of their knowledge). As far as the whole of our intelligence I honestly think that my total amount of intelligence is no greater than a person’s with autism - or anyone for that matter.
In a previous blog I watched a Ted Talks video on learning disabilities. The speaker talked about a young boy who was diagnosed with autism but it turned out that he was having seizures that were ‘locking’ him in his own head. I think this may be a true aspect of autism. The kids a work with are not lacking in intelligence. They seem to have all the capabilities and information needed, it’s just a matter of tapping into that information to use it. We’ve also addressed this in my abnormal psychology class too. Our professor mentioned that psychologist, and others I’m sure, believe that they can ‘cure’ people with autism because they appear to ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ people at first glance. Opposed to people down syndrome or extreme forms of mental retardation their facial features may be distorted and the thought of curing them less likely.
Next my book discusses types of intelligence that are relevant to our education systems. Gardner’s frames of mind theory is a full accounting of human intelligence and its relation to success in everyday tasks would benefit from a broader conception of what counts as intelligence. The frames of mind theory includes spatial, logical-mathematics and linguistic intelligence. These seem to be the same areas of intelligence that our education systems focus on - or at least put greater importance on. However, the frames of mind theory does not include other types of intelligence such as, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal or intrapersonal.
Children with autism have very different interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence than the people without autism. Intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to gain access to one’s emotions and to draw on these emotions in guiding one’s thoughts and behaviors. At work sometimes a child will laugh at inappropriate time or cry for no apparent reason. During training classes they explained to us that they displayed emotions may not always match what is going on with them. A common trait with autism is their lack of social understanding. Interpersonal intelligence refers to the ability to take note of someone’s moods, temperaments, motivations and intentions.
Understanding the different kinds of intelligence helps me to understand the different types of schemas and process that we use to store and recall information. That is also how it helps me to build on to what we have already discussed in class. I find this topic very interesting - especially because I can relate it back to the kids I work with. It is interesting to look at mental process and see how their might differ from my own or other kids. It is very interesting!
Terms: intelligent quotient, fluid intelligence, OCD, crystallized intelligence, Gardner’s frames of mind theory, intrapersonal intelligence, interpersonal intelligence.
I chose to read the chapter on intelligence. Recently I have a few different conversations about the different measures of intelligence. I started when I returned to work over Thanksgiving break. I work with kids with autism. They are some of the smart kids I know. Yet they are clinically diagnosed with learning disabilities; both autism and mental retardation. Then in my abnormal psychology class we discussed intelligence testing. Virtually all intelligence testing depends on language. We show that have intelligence through the words we use. We communicate information verbally. If someone lacks only verbal skills but has all the others they will be misjudged. It will seem they have a lower I.Q. than they actually do. I.Q. is defined as intelligent quotient which is a person’s mental age, as measure on a standardized intelligence test, divided by their chronological age and then multiplied by one hundred.
There are many other aspects of psychology that intelligence bleeds into. Relating this back to kids with autism their mental age may be younger then their chronological age but their scores may be even lower (and inaccurate) due to a lack of verbal skills. But how would we go about testing someone’s intelligence without using language? In what other way can we get solid results? We can’t evaluate drawing skills or musical talent? We do communicate through language. In a few of my classes we have talked about America’s and the general youth’s depleting vocabulary. We think in words. Therefore, if we lose our vocabulary we lose the ability to think in ways that those words describe.
It is interesting to think about how we can translate all of those different types of information, all of that intelligence, is communicated through language. There are different types of intelligence listed in my cognitive book the first listed include fluid and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is the ability to solve novel problems or, problems that are different from anything seen before. When considering autism the children that I have worked and the stories that I have heard tell me that a trait of autism is an inability to think fluidly. They like routine. They like for things to say exactly as they are. My manager once mentioned that OCD or obsessive compulsive disorder is a common characteristic of autism as well. On the other end of the spectrum we have crystallized intelligence. That is the depth of a person’s knowledge (everything that they know- the extent of all of their knowledge). As far as the whole of our intelligence I honestly think that my total amount of intelligence is no greater than a person’s with autism - or anyone for that matter.
In a previous blog I watched a Ted Talks video on learning disabilities. The speaker talked about a young boy who was diagnosed with autism but it turned out that he was having seizures that were ‘locking’ him in his own head. I think this may be a true aspect of autism. The kids a work with are not lacking in intelligence. They seem to have all the capabilities and information needed, it’s just a matter of tapping into that information to use it. We’ve also addressed this in my abnormal psychology class too. Our professor mentioned that psychologist, and others I’m sure, believe that they can ‘cure’ people with autism because they appear to ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ people at first glance. Opposed to people down syndrome or extreme forms of mental retardation their facial features may be distorted and the thought of curing them less likely.
Next my book discusses types of intelligence that are relevant to our education systems. Gardner’s frames of mind theory is a full accounting of human intelligence and its relation to success in everyday tasks would benefit from a broader conception of what counts as intelligence. The frames of mind theory includes spatial, logical-mathematics and linguistic intelligence. These seem to be the same areas of intelligence that our education systems focus on - or at least put greater importance on. However, the frames of mind theory does not include other types of intelligence such as, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal or intrapersonal.
Children with autism have very different interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence than the people without autism. Intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to gain access to one’s emotions and to draw on these emotions in guiding one’s thoughts and behaviors. At work sometimes a child will laugh at inappropriate time or cry for no apparent reason. During training classes they explained to us that they displayed emotions may not always match what is going on with them. A common trait with autism is their lack of social understanding. Interpersonal intelligence refers to the ability to take note of someone’s moods, temperaments, motivations and intentions.
Understanding the different kinds of intelligence helps me to understand the different types of schemas and process that we use to store and recall information. That is also how it helps me to build on to what we have already discussed in class. I find this topic very interesting - especially because I can relate it back to the kids I work with. It is interesting to look at mental process and see how their might differ from my own or other kids. It is very interesting!
Terms: intelligent quotient, fluid intelligence, OCD, crystallized intelligence, Gardner’s frames of mind theory, intrapersonal intelligence, interpersonal intelligence.
I decided to read up a little bit on learning processes. We have already learned about how we perceive things and how memory works, but we have not spent so much time on the actual processes that help us to learn. I was interested in this chapter because it relates so much to memory and memory is something for which I have a great interest in. I think I am going to approach this assignment in a way where I will define a few terms and then reflect on them afterwards.
The first thing I am going to talk about is the feature frequency theory. This holds that the gradual accretion of the frequency of occurrence of features discriminates between defining features and irrelevant features. This emphasizes that the learner develops a strong association between the concept and its defining features. So, in both examples and nonexamples of a given concept, irrelevant features occur equally often and relevant ones. Thus, over multiple presentations of something, relevant features end up standing out as uniquely frequent. This shows us that frequency processing is automatic. This is interesting, because even though we may not be 100% accurate, we still understand there is a difference, just not exactly what the difference may be or exactly how often.. but still that it is there.
The alternative to this theory is the hypothesis testing theory, which assumes that the learner tests hypotheses about the identity of defining features. The defining features of a concept are selectively isolated from among all irrelevant features by a process of elimination based on feedback. A learner will sample one or more of the features and then try to classify examples of the concept based on the current hypothesis. This can be compared to a win-stay, lose-shift assumption; we will stick with something if we are told it is right, but we will switch if we are told it is wrong.
The last concept I wanted to touch on was nonanalytic concept learning. This is the storing of specific old instances of concepts and making analogies between new and old instances. For this, a test item is placed in the same category as the specific instance with which it shares the most features in common...memory for specific instances accounts for the finding that items studied during learning are categorized faster and more accurately than new test instances.
These concepts all show different types of learning and how learning may work. To me, nonanalytic seems to make the most sense. We have learned something or we have looked at something before and therefore we are able to recognize it easier later on...but there are some problems with this idea. Making a categorization judgement about prototypical instances causes a decrease in activation in visual processing regions... so are we using our brain less then? Learning cannot just be explained away by assuming away that all categorization is done by comparisons with specific old instances.
Learning is something that is very important to humans in general. Without the ability to learn, we could not progress anywhere. There is some sort of process in our brain that is helping us remember things and helping us to retain new imformation on top of it. It is facsinating that the brain can distinguish information that is new from old information and that we can keep adding to the library of information that we already have. Looking at how we actually learn can help to create an understanding on how learning is best for you. Many people are said to learn differently, and these three theories or whatever you want to call them pose this. Learning is something that we put a lot of stock in and knowing how we learn is something that is as equally important to the understanding of learning.
terms: feature frequency theory, nonanalytic concept learning, hypothesis testing theory
The chapter I read from my book was on Cognition and emotion. Overall it was rather interesting and had focus on how the school of Cognitive Psychology puts an emphasis on information processing models as an approach to explain functions of the brain. Pointing to how it does not account for the relationship and effect that emotions can have on cognition. It makes a quote that I found to be intriguing, “emotions are a factor which may be important for cognitive functioning but whose inclusion at this point would unnecessarily complicate the cognitive-scientific enterprise.” This sums up my feelings of cognitive psychology. Often times I feel that cognitive psychologist have chosen to ignore how emotions affect cognition.
Nevertheless, I found out that emotions and information processing can occur separate. Studies done by Zajonc claimed that we often make affective judgments about people and objects even though we have processed very little information about the objects. The way the study was done was to present melodies or pictures very briefly at a rate that was below conscious awareness or when the participant was preoccupied with a task. The participants where than asked to choose a stimuli they felt had been presented to them. More often than not they chose the presented stimuli vs. a new one. This cognitive phenomenon is known as the mere exposure effect. The book after presents this theory while making sure to note that it has its limits on its genrability; indicating to the fact that mere exposure does not have much obvious relevance to ordinary emotional states.
The book also points to cognitive appraisal and the trifecta that makes it. Discussing primary appraisal which involves an environmental situations involving certain connotations such as positive or stressful. Secondary appraisal occurs when an inventory is taken to account for the resources that one has available to them in order to cope with the situation. Re-appraisal is the stimulus situation, where one attempts to deal, whilst the coping strategies are being watched and assessed and changed if needed. The test done by Lazarus showed the steps of appraisal. Participants of his study were shown extremely gory movies, one involving deep cuts into adolescence male’s penises. Another involved a board flying through a stomach of a factory worker. Lazarus than asked the participants to think in the following terms, denial which required the participants to view it as only a film and that they were actors. Intellectualization was another form of affect Lazarus asked the participants to partake in. By intellectualizing the incisions of the adolescence male’s penises and framing what was occurring in objective anthropological terms. The study showed that these forms of affect allowed them substantial reductions of stresses.
The book than details the theories on emotional processing such as the bowers network theory and how emotions are units or nodes in a semantic network with several connections related to ideas, to physiological systems, and even muscular patterns. Bower states that thought occurs via the activation of the nodes within these semantic networks. The book than introduces a full list of many hypotheses such as mood-state-dependent recall, mood congruity, thought congruity, and mood intensity. The book continues on looking at Beck’s Schema theory and other approaches. As I don’t want to be typing all night I am not going to summarize anymore of theories regarding cognition and emotion.
Generally I enjoyed reading this chapter. I think the reason was because I felt that I could include much of what I was learning in my life. I love it when I can apply certain ideas from psychology to improve my life. And understand the process on how my emotions can factor into my ability to remember something is very interesting to me. I also think that emotion and cognition is what I am most interested in career wise. I hope one day to be a practicing therapist and feel that I could use much to all of this information. Overall what I took from this chapter is just a reminder of how expansive and far reaching cognitive psychology is.