©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Pause and Reflect: Why Study Psychology? Psychology offers fun, do-it-yourself tests. Would you like to test your creativity? Arrange 10 coins in this same configuration. By only moving two coins, can you create two rows of 6 coins? ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Thinking—Creativity How did you do? Did you think of this creative solution to the 10 coin problem? ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Language Language: form of communication using sounds and symbols combined according to specified rules ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Language: Three Building Blocks 1. Phoneme: smallest unit of speech or sound 2. Morpheme: smallest meaningful unit of language 3. Grammar: rules specifying how phonemes, morphemes, words, and phrases should be combined to express thoughts Syntax: rules for word order Semantics: system of using words to create meaning ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Language: Three Building Blocks (Continued) ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Language Development Prelinguistic Stage: crying, cooing, and babbling Baby Sign: infants as young as 9 months can learn symbolic gestures Linguistic Stage: single-utterances, telegraphic speech, and learning the rules of grammar ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Theories of Language Development Nature Perspective: language is an inborn capacity that develops primarily by maturation Chomsky’s language acquisition device (LAD) Nurture Perspective: language develops from a complex system of rewards, punishments, and imitation ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Animals and Language Some of the most successful nonhuman animal language studies have used American Sign Language (ASL). ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Intelligence Intelligence: global capacity to think rationally, act purposefully, and deal effectively with the environment Intelligence is a hypothetical, abstract construct. ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

What Is Intelligence? Historical views of intelligence: 1. Single ability or general factor called “g” (Spearman) 2. Multiple abilities (Thurstone and Guilford) 3. Single ability with two types of g, fluid and crystallized intelligence (Cattell) 4. Multiple abilities (Gardner and Sternberg) ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Measuring Intelligence Stanford-Binet and Wechsler most widely used individual intelligence tests. Both tests compute an intelligence quotient (IQ), which compares the deviation of a person’s test score to norms for that person’s age group. Original version of Stanford-Binet (IQ = MA/CA x 100) ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Measuring Intelligence— The Normal Distribution of IQ Scores ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Measuring Intelligence— Sample Wechsler Tests ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Measuring Intelligence Three scientific standards for psychological tests: Standardization—establishes norms and uniform procedures for giving and scoring tests Reliability—measure of the consistency and stability of test scores over time Validity—ability of a test to measure what it was designed to measure ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Pause and Reflect: Check & Review Why is it important to recognize that intelligence is a hypothetical, abstract concept? Briefly explain how reliability differs from validity. ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

The Intelligence Controversy—Extremes in Intelligence Mental Retardation: IQs of 70 and below Mental Giftedness: IQs of 135 and above ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

The Intelligence Controversy: Explaining Differences Is it the brain? All mental activity (including intelligence) results from neural activity in the brain. Is it genetic or environmental influences? Heredity and environment are important, inseparable factors in intellectual development. ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

An Example of Genetic Vs. Environmental Influences on Intelligence ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

The Intelligence Controversy: Are IQ Tests Culturally Biased? Some ethnic groups score differently on IQ tests, but there are numerous contributing factors, including stereotype threat. ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Pause and Reflect: Critical Thinking Given that some ethnic groups do score differently on standard IQ tests, do you believe they should be abolished in public schools? Why or why not? ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology

Visualizing Psychology by Siri Carpenter & Karen Huffman PowerPoint  Lecture Notes Presentation End of Chapter 8: Thinking, Language, and Intelligence Siri Carpenter, Yale University Karen Huffman, Palomar College ©John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008 Carpenter/Huffman: Visualizing Psychology