Exam 9: Thinking and Intelligence

Research on overcoming our cognitive biases shows that people tend to be equally irrational in all situations.

Benjamin Whorf's proposition that language moulds our cognition and perception:

The traditional approach to intelligence, the ________ approach, focuses on how well people perform on standardized aptitude tests.

Critics have argued that intelligence tests favour some groups over others. For example, one test item requires that children identity the composer of the Emperor Concerto! In response, how have test makers tried to design tests that are "culture free" or "culture fair"? Discuss two reasons for disappointing results in regard to both of these approaches.

How do psychometric and cognitive approaches to intelligence compare?

Dialectical reasoning involves:

In Chapter 2 (How Psychologists Do Research) we learned that in survey research the phrasing of questions needs to be considered. How is this related to the importance of wording as noted in Chapter 9, especially in regard to the tendency to avoid loss and minimize risk?

Match each definition with the appropriate term. -learning that occurs when you acquire knowledge about something without being aware of how you did so and without being able to state exactly what it is you have learned

Match each definition with the appropriate term. -the tendency to overestimate one's ability to have predicted an event once the outcome is known

In inductive reasoning, a conclusion necessarily follows from a set of premises.

Match each definition with the appropriate term. -a process in which opposing facts or ideas are weighed and compared, with a view to determining the best solution or resolving differences

Which of the following people is most likely to experience cognitive dissonance?

Quasi-reflective thinkers would be likely to say that:

In his research on stereotype threat, Claude Steele has revealed how cultural stereotypes influence test performance. Explain stereotype threat and the effects it has on test performance. Who typically experiences stereotype threat?

A cognitive ethologist would agree with all of the following EXCEPT:

Concepts, the building blocks of thinking, would be of limited use to us if we merely stacked them up in our memories.

People who are creative tend to rely on convergent thinking.

Our textbook points out that not all mental processing is conscious. Describe an activity that once took your conscious attention to perform but now can be done "without thinking."

Subconscious processing allows Fern to knit while she explains a complex income tax issue to her granddaughter.

In the context of problem solving, mental sets: