AP Psychology Unit 2: Perception and Cognition PDF

**AP Psychology Unit 2: Cognition** **2.1a Perception: Influences on Perception-** we perceive things not as they are, but as we are **Selective Attention 2.1-1** Essential question: How does selective attention direct our perceptions? - Selective attention: focusing conscious awareness on a p...

**AP Psychology Unit 2: Cognition** **2.1a Perception: Influences on Perception-** we perceive things not as they are, but as we are **Selective Attention 2.1-1** Essential question: How does selective attention direct our perceptions? - Selective attention: focusing conscious awareness on a particular stimulus - our awareness is only focused on minute aspects - our five senses take in bits of info that we only consciously process very little of it, the rest is on the unconscious track - An example of selective attention: the cocktail party effect - We attend to only one voice in a sea of others as you chat with people - When someone calls your name, it is brought forth in your conscious Selective Attention and Accidents - Digital distractions make our attention shift - Our SA shifts more than we realize, the enemy of sustained focused attention Inattentional Blindness- failing to see visible objects when attention is directed elsewhere - At the level of conscious awareness, we are blind to all but a tiny sliver of visual stimuli - Researchers told viewers to watch a video of basketball places tossing a ball. Viewers were told to count how many times the ball was thrown. They were so focused on the task that they did not notice a young woman carrying an umbrella saunter across the screen. - The point of this prank: our attention is a wonderful gift, given to one thing at a time - Magicians misdirect people's attention in most of their tricks - In other studies, people exhibited a form of inattentional blindness, called **change blindness:** failure to notice changes in the environment - Viewers failed to notice that, after a brief visual interruption, clothing changed color or a big coke bottle disappeared A screenshot of a review Description automatically generated **Expectations, Context, Motivation, and Emotion 2.1-2** Essential question: How do our expectations, contexts, motivation, and emotions influence our perceptions? - To see is to believe, and to believe is to see - Info processing occurs both bottom up (sensory receptors =\> brain's integration) and top down (drawing from experiences and expectations when constructing perceptions) - Our perceived world is the brain's explanation of incoming sensations Perceptual set - Through experience, we expect certain results, giving us a **perceptual set**: a set of mental tendencies and assumptions that affects top-down processing - Can affect what we hear "stuffy nose" or "stuff he knows"? - Can affect taste perceptions - Preschool students thought fries tasted better when served in a McDonald's bag - What determines perceptual set? - Through experience we form concepts (schemas) that organize and interpret unfamiliar info - Lochness monster or tree limb? - Stereotypes can color perception - Culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, income, age, abilities, etc Context, Motivation, and Emotion - Perceptual set influences how we interpret stimuli, immediate context, and the motivation/emotion we bring to a situation, also affects interpretations Context - Lee Ross invites us to recall perceptions in different contexts: "Ever notice that when you're driving you hate pedestrians, but when you're walking you hate the drivers" - Hearing "eel is on the wagon", you'd think the first word is wheel, but "eel is on the orange", you'd think it is peel - The context creates an expectation that (top down) influences our perception of a previously heard phrase Motivation - Motives give us energy as we work toward a goal, they can bias our interpretations of stimuli - desirable objects, like a water bottle viewed by thirsty person, seem closer than they are, closeness increases desire - A hill to climb is steeper when we are carrying a backpack - A volleyball is bigger when you're hitting it well, a tennis ball smaller when you cant swing at it Emotion - Emotions can shove our perceptions in one direction - Sad music predisposes people to perceive sad meaning in words: *mourning* rather than *morning* - When angry, people perceive neutral objects as guns - When hungry, they find larger bodies more attractive *The point to remember*: much of what we perceive comes not from what's "out there", but from what's behind our eyes and between the ears. Our experiences, assumptions, expectations, even our contexts, motivations, and emotions, can shape our views of reality via **top-down processing** **2.1b Perception: Perceptual Organization and Interpretation** **Perceptual Organization 2.1-3** Essential question: How did the Gestalt psychologists understand perceptual organization, and how do figure-ground and grouping principles contribute to our perceptions? - How do we organize and interpret sensory input so it becomes meaningful perceptions (a rose, a familiar face)? - German psychologists notices people organize visual sensations into a **gestalt:** an organized whole - As we look straight ahead, we cannot separate the perceived scene into left and right fields, our conscious perception is a seamless scone, an integrated whole - *In perception, the whole may exceed the sum of its parts* - The Necker Cube os good to understand distinction between sensation and perception - The only visual stimuli (sensation) are the wedges (white lines) - The cube you see is perception, they are in your mind!! - The underlying truth of Gestalt psychologists' principles: *our brain does more than register info about the world, we filter incoming information and construct perceptions* Form Perception - **Figure-ground**: the organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground) - This is the first perceptual task in our eye-brain system - As you read, words are the figure and the white is the ground - This perception applies to our hearing too; as you hear voices at a party, the one you attend to is the figure, the other are the ground - Sometimes the same stimulus triggers more than one perception - In this picture the figure-ground relationship reverses continually - Is it a vase or two faces? - We will always organize stimulus into a figure seen against a ground Grouping - We organize figures into meaningful forms - Our mind brings order and form to other stimuli by following rules for grouping: the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups, identified by Gestalt psychologists - These rules illustrate how perceived wholes differ from sum of its parts - Like in this photo, we don't see 6 separate lines, we see 3 sets of 2 A white text on a white background Description automatically generated **Depth Perception 2.1-4** Essential question: How do we use binocular and monocular cues to see in three dimensions, and how do we perceive motion? - Our eye-brain systems perform many remarkable feats, some include **depth perception**: the ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance - For example, estimating the distance of an oncoming car - Psychologist Eleanor Gison want to know if toddlers can perceive drop-offs as dangerous - To answer such question, she deigned a model of a cliff covered by sturdy glass; the result? Most infants refused to crawl over, indicating they could perceive depth - Karen Adolph showed that crawling, no matter when it begins, seems to increase wariness of heights, they likely evolved because learning to avoid cliffs helped them to survive Depth cues in our brain receive info from one or both eyes, enabling it to convert two-dimensional images into single, three dimensional perception Binocular Cues - People with 2 eyes perceive depth partly bc of **binocular cues:** a depth cue, such as retinal disparity, that depends on the use of two eyes - We use binocular cues to judge distance of nearby objects - One cue is **convergence:** a cue to nearby objects' distance, enabled by the brain combining retinal images - **Retinal disparity** is a binocular cue for perceiving depth, by comparing retinal images from two eyes, the brain computes distance (the greater the disparity between two images, the close the object) - Because there is space between the eyes, each retina receives slightly different images of the world, the greater the difference between two retinal images, the closer the object Monocular Cues - How do we judge whether a person is 10-100 meters away? Retinal disparity wont do that, because there isn't a difference between left and right retinas - **Monocular cues-** a depth cue, such as interposition or linear perspective, available to either eye alone **Motion Perception** - If you could not perceive motion, you could not bike, drive, write, eat, or walk - The brain computes motion based on assumptions that shrinking objects are retreating and enlarging objects are approaching - In young children, this ability is not fully developed - Adolescent and adult brains can also be tricked, large objects appear to move slower - Our brain perceives a rapid series of slightly varying still images as continuous movement in a phenomenon called **stroboscopic movement** - Superfast slide shows of 24 still images will create illusions of movement - We perceive two adjacent stationary lights blinking as one single light jumping back and forth (**phi phenomenon)** - When we stare at a stationary light in a dark room, natural eye movements make the light seem it move in a phenomenon called the **autokinetic effect**  **Perceptual Constancy 2.1-5** Essential question: How do perceptual constancies help us construct meaningful perceptions? - **Perceptual constancy**: perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent color, brightness, shape, and size) even as illumination and retinal images change - Regardless of angle, distance, and illumination, we can identify people and things Color and Brightness Constancies - If you were to experience the color of a tomato through a paper tube throughout the day, its color would change with the lights (the tomatoes reflected wavelengths) - But if you discarded the paper tube and viewed the tomato in a salad bowl, its perceived color would be constant, a consistent perception we call **color constancy:** perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the object - We see color thanks to our brain's computations of light reflect by an object relative to the objects surrounding it - Brightness constancy similarly depends on context - Perception of brightness depends on relative luminance - The principle that we perceive objects not in isolation but in their environmental context is important for designers *The take-home lesson*: Context governs our perceptions Shape and Size Constancies - Shape constancy: we perceive forms of familiar objects as constant, even if our retinas receive changing images, like this door - Visual cortex neurons rapidly learn to associate diff views of object - We assume a bus is large enough to carry people, even if it is small from a distance - This also illustrates connections between perceived distance and size: perceiving an object's distance give us cues about size Perceptual illusions show that perception is not a projection of the world on our brains, rather it is how our brain reassembles bits of information into its own functional model of the external world. *Our brain constructs our perceptions* - Perception organization applies to other senses too - When listening to unfamiliar music, we have trouble hearing when one word stops - "THEDOGATEMEAT" we would assume it says "the dog ate meat" because its more logical - This process involves organization and interpretation (discerning meaning in what we perceive)  **Experience and Visual Perception 2.1-6** Essential question: What does research on restored vision, sensory restriction, and perceptual adaptation reveal about the effects of experience one perception? - People born with cataracts- clouded lenses that allowed them to see only diffused light - After surgery, patients could distinguish figure from ground, colors, and faces, but they could not visually recognize objects that were familiar by touch - Baby monkeys born with goggles on, when their vision was restored, could distinguish color and brightness, but not a circle from a square - Lacking early stimulation, the brain's cortical cells has not developed normal connections - The younger you are, the more you can benefit from removal of cataracts, there is a critical period when exposure to stimuli or experiences are required Perceptual adaptation - When you get new contacts, you may feel slightly disoriented, but it gets better after a day or two - **Perceptual adaptation (**the ability to adjust to changed sensory input, including an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field) to changed visual input makes the world seem normal again - Humans can adapt to distorting lenses quickly - We **learn** to perceive the world - Early nurture sculpts what nature provides, nurture continues to do so throughout our lives - Radiologists outperform novices in detecting unfamiliar visual info - Experiences guides, sustains, and maintains the brain pathways that enable perception **2.2a Thinking, Problem Solving, Judgements, and Decision Making: Concepts and Creativity** - Our ability to think creatively and consider different options and produce novel ideas is a special trait of humans **Concepts 2.2-1** Essential question: What are cognition and metacognition, and what are the functions of concepts? - Psychologists study **cognition (**all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating) - Of cognition, there is **metacognition:** thinking about our thinking, planning and assessing our understanding and performance - Using metacognition will allow your performance to be better! - At a basic level, we form **concepts** (mental groupings of similar objects, events ideas or people) - The concept chair includes dentist chairs, baby's chair, car seat, etc - Concepts simplify our thinking - We form our concepts by developing a **prototype** (a mental image or best example of a category) - For most of us, cardinals more closely resemble a bird prototype than penguins - When we categorize people, we mentally shift them towards category prototypes - When viewing a face 70% white, our memory may shift toward the white prototype and remember an 80% white face - Category boundaries may blur: whales are mammals, but they don't' seem like it - When symptoms don't fit one of our disease prototypes, we are slow to perceive an illness - When behaviors don't fit our discrimination prototype, we fail to notice prejudice (people more likely detect female discrimination than male, male sexual harassment than female) - Our intellectual progression reflects an unceasing struggle to make sense of our experiences, the maturing brain builds **schemas-** concepts or mental molds into which we pour our experiences - To explain how we use and adjust schemas, Piaget proposed two concepts: - **Assimilation:** interpreting them according to our current schemas EX: simple schemas for dog = all 4-legged animals are dogs - As we interact with the world, we **accommodate** (adjust) our schemas to incorporate info provided by new experiences EX: the child learns to have different 4-legged categories  **Thinking Creatively 2.2-2** Essential question: What is creativity, and what fosters it? - **Creativity** is the ability to produce novel ideas - Creative writers and physicists, like Andrew Wiles' creative revelation one day of Fermat's last theorem) experience many significant ideas during mind wandering - Creativity is supported by a level of aptitude (ability to learn), yet there is more to creativity than what our intelligence tests reveal - Aptitude tests require **convergent thinking** (providing a single correct answer) - Creativity tests require **divergent thinking** (considering different options and to thinking novel ways) - *Functional fixedness* occurs when prior experiences inhibit our ability to find creative solutions Robert Sternberg believe creativity has 5 components: 1. **Expertise**: well-developed ideas, furnishes ideas, images, and phrases; the more blocks you have, the more chances to combine them in novel ways 2. **Imaginative thinking skills**: provides ability to see things in novel ways; recognizing patterns and making connections 3. **A venturesome personality**: seeks new experiences, tolerates risk, perseverance 4. **Intrinsic motivation:** driven by interest, satisfaction, and challenge rather than external pressures (deadlines, impression, money) 5. **A creative environment**: sparks support, refines creative ideas, creativity fostering environments build communication and innovation (and minimize anxiety) To boost creative process: - Develop expertise: ask what you care about most, follow your passion, become an expert at something - Allow time for incubation: think hard on a problem, then set it aside to come back, allows for automatic processing to form associations - Set aside time for mind to roam freely: creativity springs from "defused attention", serenity seeds spontaneity - Experience other cultures and ways of thinking: viewing life from a different perspective boosts creativity, embracing intercultural friendships fosters flexible thinking **2.2b Thinking, Problem Solving, Judgements, and Decision Making: Solving Problems and Making Decisions** - In some ways, we are not very wise - We allow day's local weather to color our judgements of climate change, we are overconfident in judgements and cling to discredited beliefs - We need to improve our **executive functions**: cognitive skills that work together allowing us to generate, organize, plan, solve problems, and make decisions **Problem Solving: Strategies and Obstacles 2.2-3** Essential question: Which cognitive strategies assist our problem solving, and which obstacles hinder it? - Some problems we solve through trial and error - We use **algorithms** (step by step procedures that guarantee a solution) to solve some problems - But algorithms are laborious and exasperating, to find a word in SPLOYOGHYG, we may try every letter in each of 10 positions (907,200 permutations) - But, nature resorts to **heuristics** (simpler thinking strategies) - You might reduce the number of options in SPLOYOCHYG by grouping letter that belong w each other (CH and GY) and excluding rare combos (YY) - Sometimes no problem-solving strategy works, and we arrive at a solution through **insight** (a sudden realization of a problem's solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions) - Brain scans show that before the Aha moment, people's frontal lobes (focusing attention) were active - At the instant of discovery, activity is in the right temporal lobe - Humans are not the only creatures to display insight, chimpanzees and birds all change their methods of attaining foods and water based on their situation - Insight strikes suddenly, the joy of a joke lies in our sudden comprehension of an unexpected punchline "You don't need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice." - Insightful as we are, cognitive tendencies may lead us astray - We seek news that informs and affirms us - **Confirmation bias:** leads us to seek evidence *for* our ideas more than we hunt for evidence *against* them - They only searched for confirming evidence, showing confirmation bias - Once we get hung up on an incorrect view of a problem, it's hard to approach it from a different angle - **Fixation:** an inability to come to a fresh perspective, an obstacle to problem solving - A prime example of fixation is **mental set:** our tendency to approach a problem with the mindset of what worked for us before EX: Given the sequence O-T-T-F... what comes after? (then, ask yourself if it is in numerical order) - Just as a perceptual set predisposes what we perceive, a mental set predisposes what we think  **Forming Good (and Bad) Decisions and Judgements 2.2-4** Essential question: What is *intuition*, and how can the representativeness and availability heuristics influence our decisions and judgments? - When making each day's decisions, we seldom take time and effort to reason [systematically] - Instead, we follow our **intuition**: our fast, automatic, unreasoned feelings and thoughts Two Quick but Risky Shortcuts - Heuristics allow us to make quick thinking - Intuitive mental shortcuts (representativeness and availability heuristics) can make dumb decisions The Representativeness Heuristic - Judging the likelihood of something by intuitively comparing it to particular prototypes EX: someone who is short, slim, and a poetry enjoyer is more likely to be an Ivy League university professor than a truck driver - We judge this even if the population of truck drivers exceed Ivy League English professors - Some prototypes have social/economic consequences - Stereotypes: prototypes of members of certain racial groups, may cause someone to use representativeness heuristic when judging individuals The Availability Heuristic - When we evaluate the commonality of an event based on its [mental availability] - Anything that makes info pop into the mind, can make it seem commonplace - Photos of a horrific image changes thinking - Availability heuristics distorts our judgement of risks: one story about vaccines causing mental disabilities causes more fear than any scientific research - "Global warming isn't real because it was cold today! Also great news: world hunger is over because I just ate." -Stephen Colbert - Red Cross donations to Syrian refugees were greater when seeing a child dead on Syrian beach **Overconfidence 2.2-5** Essential question: How are our decisions and judgements affected by overconfidence, belief perseverance, and framing? - Sometimes we are more confident than correct - **Overconfidence:** the tendency to be more confident than correct, to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgements - Overconfidence leads us to succumb to a planning fallacy (overestimating our future leisure time and income) - Students expect to finish assignments ahead of schedule, when in fact, such projects take about twice the predicted time - Overconfidence fuels the *sunk-cost fallacy* where we stick to our original plan bc we've already invested so much of our time - Overconfidence affects life-or-death situations: doctors can incorrectly diagnose someone due to overconfidence - Those whose predictions most often failed tended to be inflexible and closed-minded - Nevertheless, overconfidence can have adaptive values, self-confident people live more happily bc they can make tough decisions and seem competent Belief Perseverance - The tendency to cling on to beliefs in the face of contrary evidence (sometimes aided by confirmation bias) - People have welcome belief supporting logic and evidence while discounting challenging evidence - Prejudice persists, beliefs persevere - To rein in belief perseverance, consider the opposite side, it can reduce bias - Ones beliefs take root, it can take more compelling evidence to change them - We will label belief-contradicting evidence as "weak" - Climate change skeptics tend to view evidence of climate crisis as inaccurate or untrustworthy The Effects of Framing - **Framing:** the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgements - Framing of options can nudge people toward beneficial decisions: - Healthier eating: researchers have nudged healthy choices with tasty-sounding food labels (Herb n' Honey Balsamic Glazed Turnips) - Saving for retirement: US companies once required employees to choose lower take-home pays, few people did. When companies automatically enrolled employees in the plan and gave then the choice to opt out, enrollment soared. - Making moral decisions: imagine you get \$5 and someone asks you how much you will donate to charity, then asks "What do you personally think is the morally right thing to do in this situation?" *The point to remember:* Framing can nudge our attitudes and decisions  **The Perils and Powers of Intuition 2.2-6** Essential question: How do smart thinkers use intuition? - Smart people can make intuitive, but not so smart judgements - Intuition is recognition born of experience: it is implicit knowledge, what we've recorded in our brains but cant explain, evident in the smart and quick judgements of experienced nurses, firefighters, car mechanics, reaction without thinking, we have intuition in anything you have developed knowledge based one experience - Intuition is usually adaptive: our fast heuristics let us intuitively rely on learned associations that surface as gut feelings, seeing a stranger that resembles someone who has harmed or threatened is, we may react with distract; our intuition aids our survival and can steer us toward satisfying relationship partners: gut level attitudes towards new spouses - Intuition is huge: through selective attention, we can focus on our conscious awareness - However, our unconscious mind make good use intuitively of what we are not consciously processing - Unconscious, automatic influences affects our judgements - In making complex decisions, sometimes we benefit by letting our brain unconsciously work on it, like sleeping on it - However, not all studies support this, it is better to suppose deliberate, conscious thought furthers smart thinking *The bottom line*: our two-track mind makes sweet harmony as smart, critical thinking listens to the creative whispers of our vast unseen mind and then evaluates evidence, tests conclusions, and plans for the future  **Module 2.3 Introduction to Memory** - Our memory enables us to recognize family, language, find our way home, enjoy experiences, and build histories with loved one - Without memory, there would be no recollection of past joys or guilt; tasks would be a challenge, and you would become a stranger to yourself **Studying Memory 2.3-1** Essential question: What is memory, and how is it measured? - **Memory:** Learning that persists over time, information that is acquired, stored, and retrieved - **Alzheimer's disease** begins as difficulty remembering new info which progresses to an inability to do everyday tasks - Others have extreme memory, with people reciting up to 70k digits of pi - Super-recognizers display extraordinary face-recognition ability - We also have impressive memory, remembering faces, places, and senses Measuring Retention Evidence that learning persists includes 3 **retention measures:** 1. **Recall:** retrieving info learned earlier, fill-in-the-blank tests your recall 2. **Recognition:** identifying items previously learned, multiple choice 3. **Relearning:** learning something more quickly when you learn it a second time EX: learning Chinese quicker bc you learned it at an early age Our response speed when recalling or recognizing info indicates memory strength - Additional rehearsal of verbal info increases retention, especially distributed over time - *The point to remember*: Tests of recognition and of time spent relearning demonstrate we remember more than we can recall **Memory Models 2.3-2** Essential question: How do memory models help us study memory, and how has later research updated the three-stage multi-store model? - Psychologists create memory models to help us think abt how our brain forms/retrieves memories - *Information-processing model*: likens human memory to computer operations: - Encode: get info into brain - Store: retain info - Retrieve: get info back our of brain - Our brains processes thing simultaneously via **parallel processing** - One info-processing model, connectionism, views memories as products of connected neural networks - Each time you learn something, the brain's neural connections change - Forms and strengthens pathways - **The three-stage multi-store model**: explains memory forming process 1. Sensory memory is recorded as to-be-remembered info 2. We process info into **short-term memory,** where its encoded thru rehearsal 3. Info moves into **longterm memory** for later retrieval  **Working Memory:** a stage where short-term and long-term memories combine, updated TSMS model - Like a scratch pad where our brain processes info by linked new experiences w LT memory - Helps us prolong memory storage thru rehearsal (maintenance rehearsal) that promotes meaning (elaborative rehearsal) As you integrate new info, your attention is focused, coordinated by the **central executive** (coordinated activites of the **phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad)** - Wo focused attention, info fades - **Phonological loop**: auditory info in short-term memory (repeating friend's phone number) - **Visuospatial Sketchpad:** remembering info about object's relation in space (where you parked your car) **Biological Processes of Memory 2.3-3** Essential question: How do changes at the synapse level affect our memory processing? - As you think and learn, the brain is changing: neural interconnections are forming and strengthening, neurogenesis is occurring - In Eric Kandel and James Schwartz' experiment, they made a slug learn to reflexively withdraw its gills - When learning occurs, the slug releases more serotonin into certain neurons - As a result, the cell's synapses become more efficient at transmitting signals - Experience and learning can increase \# of synapses - Rapidly stimulating memory-circuit connections increases sensitivity for hours-weeks - **Long-term potentiation**: increased efficiency of potential neural firing, provides neural basis for learning and remembering associations - Drugs that block LTP interfere w learning/Drugs that mimic LTP increases learning - After LTP occurs, passing an electric current thru the brain will wipe out recent memories - EX: blow to the head = no memory of time prior to the knockout - This is bc the working memory had no time to consolidate the info (shift it into long-term memory) - One approach to improving memory focuses on drugs that boosts glutamate- LTP enhancing neurotransmitter - Another is developing drugs that boost CREB- a protein that enhances LTP process, may trigger increased production of other proteins that reshape synapses - Researchers have learned that our memories are not stored in single spots - Instead, many brain structures interact - Frontal lobes & hippocampus: explicit memories - Cerebellum & basal ganglia: implicit memories  **Module 2.4 Encoding Memories** - We have a two-track mind where out thinking, feeling, acting, and remembering take place outside out conscious (implicit) and we effortfully process some other info (explicit) **Dual-Track Memory: Effortful Versus Automatic Processing 2.4-1** Essential question: How do explicit and implicit memories differ? - **Explicit (*declarative*) memories:** facts ad experiences we consciously know and declare, encoded via **effortful processing** - **Implicit (*nondeclarative)* memories:** behind the scenes, skips conscious track directly into storage, **automatic processing** without our awareness **Automatic Processing and Implicit Memories 2.4-2** Essential Question: What information do we process automatically? Implicit memories - Procedural memory for automatic skills (riding a bike) and classically conditioned associations - You automatically read a word when you see it, which starts as effortful processing but develops into automatic - Reading becomes automatic - Wo conscious effort, you automatically process: - **Space:** encoding place on a page where your notes are - **Time:** unintentionally noting sequence of events - **Frequency**: effortlessly keep track of how many times things happens (I ran into him 3 times!) - Mental feats are split info different components for separate and simultaneous processing Explicit memories - Effortful processing **Sensory Memory 2.4-3** Essential question: How does sensory memory work? - Sensory memory feeds active working memory (recording momentary images, sounds, and strong scents), it is fleeting Sperling's experiment: When shown three rows of three letters for only 1/12 of a second, people could only recall half When he played a high, medium, or low tone (that tells the participants to report top, middle, or bottom row of letters) after flashing the letters, people could recall the letters that were momentarily available - This demonstrates **iconic memory**: fleeting sensory of visual stimuli - **Echoic memory**: fleeting memory for auditory stimuli, you can recover last 3-4 seconds of sounds **Short-Term Memory Capacity 2.4-4** Essential question: What is our short-term memory capacity? - Short-term memory refers to what we briefly retain, so what are the limits? - George Millie proposed we can (if nothing distracts us) store about seven pieces (give or take two) of info in short-term memory - When people were asked to remember 3-consonant groups, after 3 seconds of distraction people recalled letters only half the time, after 12 s, little was recovered Working memory - Varies depending on age and other factors - Young adults tend to have greater working memory capacity - Task switching reduces working memory *The bottom line**:*** its probably a bad idea to simultaneously watch a livestream, text you friends, and write a psychology paper with you attention switching among them **Effortful Processing Strategies 2.4-5** Essential question: What are some effortful processing strategies that can help us remember new information? Chunking - Chunking information into familiar segments enables us to recall it easier - Mandarin Chinese readers can glance at a character and reproduce all the strokes because we a;; remember info best when we organize it into personally meaningful arrangements Mnemonics: memory aids, uses vivid imagery and organizational devices - Uses vivid imagery bc we are good at remembering mental pictures - *Peg word system*: You memorize a jingle (*One is a bun; two is a shoe; three is a tree; four is a door; five is a hive; six is sticks; seven is heaven; eight is a gate; nine is swine; ten is a hen*) so you can associate the visual words with to be remembered items: carrots stuck into the bun, milk in the shoe, paper towels draped over the tree branch Method of loci: adding new vivid details to memories of a familiar place **Hierarchies** - People often process info in hierarchies - Helps us retrieve info efficiently **Distributed Practice 2.4-6** Essential question: How do distributed practice, deep processing, and making new material personally meaning aid memory? - **Spacing effect**: distributed study yield better long-term retention than massed study - massed practice produces short-term learning and inflated confidence - after you've studied long enough to master the material, further study becomes inefficient, better too spend extra review time later - the mind is slow in unlearning what it has been long in learning Self-testing - **testing effect:** repeated self-testing - what we recall becomes more recallable, testing improves memory *The point to remember*: Spaced study and self-assessment beat cramming and rereading. Practice may not make perfect, but smart practice- occasional rehearsal with self-testing -- makes for lasting memories Levels of processing - We process verbal info at different levels, affecting our long-term retentions - **Shallow processing:** encodes on an elementary level, like a word's letters (structural encoding) **EX:** is the word in capital letters? - **Deep processing**: encodes semantically, based on meaning of words, better retention **EX**: Would the word fit in this sentence: The girl put the ( ) on the table Making Material Personally Meaningful - If new info is neither meaningful nor related to our experience, we have trouble processing it - We recall not the literal text but what we encoded; you may remember your class notes rather than the actual material - Avoid significant mismatched by rephrasing things into meaningful terms - "the time you spend thinking about material you are reading and relating it to previously stored material is about the most useful thing you can do int learning any new subject" - Self-reference effect: the tendency to remember self-relevant info - Asked how well certain adjectives describe a stranger, we forget; asked how well the adjective describe you, you remember *The point to remember:* You can profit from taking time to find personal meaning in what you are studying  **Module 2.5 Storing Memories** **Retaining Information in the Brain 2.5-1** What is the capacity of long-term memory? Are our long-term memories processed and stored in specific locations? - Whereas our short-term memory capacity is about 7 bits of information, and our working memory depends on age and other factors, our capacity for storing long-term memories is limitless - Memory is not confined to one part of the brain; the brain distributes the components of a memory across a network of locations - Some brains cells that fire when we experience something fire again when recall *The point to remember*: despite the brain's vast storage capacity, we don't store info in the way libraries store books; the brain instead encodes, stores, and retrieves information that forms our memories **Explicit Memory System: The Frontal Lobes and Hippocampus 2.5-2** Essential question: What roles do the frontal lobes and hippocampus play in memory processing? - Explicit memories are either **semantic** (facts and general knowledge) or **episodic** (experienced events) - Semantic networks connect concepts, helps us group objects based on characteristics - Our schema (the framework we learned to understand the world) also affects memory processing - Explicit memory is more readily stored if it fits within our schemas - The frontal lobe and hippocampus processes and stores new explicit memories - When you summon a past experience, it goes to your prefrontal cortex for working memory - Left lobes process passwords - Right lobes process visual scenes like parties - The hippocampus (located in the limbic system) is like a "save button" for explicit memories, it is a loading dock where the brain holds the elements of a to-be-remembered episode - Brain scans reveal activity in the hippocampus and nearby brain networks as memories of names, images, and events are formed - Left hippocampus damage: trouble remembering visual info - Right hippocampus damage: trouble recalling visual designs and locations - Different parts of the hippocampus serve different functions: rear areas process spatial memory - One memory is held in the hippocampus, the older files in the brain shifts as the new memories migrate to the cortex for storage in a process known as **memory consolidation (**neural storage of a long-term memory) - During deep sleep, the hippocampus processes memories for later retrieval - A more active hippocampus= better memory the next day - When learning is distributed over days, there is more sleep-induced consolidation! - The practical take home lesson: One safe, proven memory enhancer that's available for high schoolers everywhere is effective study followed by adequate sleep! **Implicit Memory System: The Cerebellum and Basal Ganglia 2.5-3** **Essential question:** What roles do the cerebellum and basal ganglia play in memory processing? - you could loose your hippocampus and frontal lobes and still lay down *implicit memories* for skills and newly conditioned associations - Joseph Ledoux recounted a story where a patient with brain damage left her unable to recognize her doctor, when she shook hands with him one day, he pricked her with a tack, the next day, though she couldn't remember her, she refused to shake his hand - This is an example of implicit classical conditioning - **The cerebellum** plays a role in forming and storing classical conditioned implicit memories - **The basal ganglia** - deep brain structures involved in motor movement, facilitate info of procedural memories - It receives input from the cortex, but instead communicates with the cerebellum - Our implicit memory helps explain why reactions and skills we learned during infancy reach into our future - Yet, our conscious memory is blank due to: **infantile amnesia** (since we index our explicit memory with a command of language children don't have and the hippocampus is last to develop, less info is retained in your younger years) **The Amygdala, Emotions, and Memory 2.5-4** Essential question: How do emotions affect our memory processing? - Emotions trigger stress hormones that influence memory formation - Excited/stressed states =\> make more glucose to fuel brain activity, focuses memory - Stress provokes the amygdala (two limbic system emotion-processing clusters) to start a *memory trace* (last physical change of a memory) - "Brain, encode this moment for future reference! " - As a result, emotional arousal sears events into the brain - Stressful events can form unforgettable memories (school shooting, 9/11, etc) - Such experience strengthens recall for relevant, immediately preceding events - This is our memory's way of protecting us from future dangers - But it also focus our attention and recall on high-priority info, not irrelevant details - **Flashbulb memories**: a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event, forms when we create mental snapshots of exciting, shocking events **EX**: recollection of 9/11 events - Often very vivid, but as we relive/rehears/discuss them, they may become more inconsistent, especially when older  **Module 2.6 Retrieving Memories** - Accessing stored memories involves recall (the ability to *produce* previously learned info) or recognition (the ability to *identify* previously learned items) - For us to retrieve and process info, it has to move from long-term memory to working memory, where its contents enters into our consciousness **Retrieval Cues 2.6-1** Essential question: How do external cues, internal emotions, and order of appearance influence memory retrieval? - Imagine a spider suspended in a web held up by many strands that extend outward, to trace a pathway to the spider, you need to locate an anchor point and follow the strands - Retrieving a memories this principle: memories are held in storage by a web of associations, information is interconnected - When you encode a target pice of info, you associate it with other bits of information about you - Such bits are *retrieval cues* that open memories - The more retrieval cues, the better you can find the route to the memory - We need to retrieve memories for both the past (*retrospective memory*) and our intended future actions (*prospective memory)* Priming - Sometimes associations are activated without our awareness - **Priming**: the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response - "memoryless memory" - Implicit, invisible memory - **EX**: after seeing/hearing the word rabbit, we later might spell hair/hare as h-a-r-e Context-Dependent Memory - Remembering, in many ways, depends on our environment - Going back to your childhood home, old memories surface - In contrast, experiencing something outside the usual setting is confusing - Running into a teacher at a store, you may struggle to realize who it is - **Encoding specificity principle**: the idea that cues, and contexts specific to a particular memory, will be most effective in helping us recall it - Our memories are *context-dependent* and are affected by the cues we have associated with that context State-Dependent Memory - What we learn in one state may be more easily recalled when we are again in that state - People who hide money when drunk may forget the location until drunk again Mood Congruent Memory - Emotions that accompany good or bad events become retrieval cues - If you get a bad grade on something, your gloomy mood facilitates recalling other bad times - This explains why moods persist, a happy mood retrieves happy thoughts causing more happy moods - In experiments, people put in a happy mood recall behaviors as competent and effective, people as benevolent, and happy events as more frequent - People's recall of past memories are linked less with the actual perception of that time, but of current moods and current opinions about such topics - Mood magnify Serial Position Effect - Explains why we have large holes in our memory of a list - People can easily in recalling the last items in a list (*a receny effect*) likely because those memories were still in the working memory - But after a delay, recall is best for the first items (*a primacy effect*) **Retrieval Practice Strategies 2.6-2** Essential Question: How do retrieval practice strategies, such as the testing effect, interleaving, and metacognition, support memory retrieval? - Psychology's research has uncovered effective strategies to improve memory retrieval... - **Metacognition-** it pays to think about learning - Those who monitor and evaluate learning perform better academically, it helped to figure out what you don't know - **Testing Effect**- repeated self-testing and rehearsal is better than rereading to cement material - **Interleaving**- a retrieval practice strategy that involved mixing study of different topics - mixing study of psychology with studies of other subjects boosts long-term retention and protects against overconfidence!!! - Allows for more retrieval practice  **Module 2.7 Forgetting and Other Memory Challenges** **Forgetting 2.7-1** Essential question: Why do we forget? - Forgetting unimportant information should be praised - It helps us remember what matters the most - Letting go of bad memories is good for mental health - Russian journalist Solomon Shereshevsky is a memory whiz; he remembers Italian words although not native and he doesn't need to write down notes as a reporter - But he cant think abstractly (generalizing, organizing, evaluating)- after reading a story, he can recite it but not summarize - *Highly superior autobiographical memory*: super memory about your life events (shoes worn on a date, the day of the week you ate your favorite food) - But that's only the case for special individuals; as we process information, we filter, alter, or lose most of it Forgetting and the Two-Track Mind - For some, memory loss is severe and permanent - HM had much of his hippocampus removed to stop seizures - For the rest of his life, he could not form new conscious memories, but could remember his past (**anterograde amnesia)** - (people who can't remember the past- old, long-term memory- suffer from **retrograde amnesia**) - Without the neural tissue for turning new info to long-term memories, he could never name current events - People who are incapable of recalling new facts all have a similar trait: they can learn nonverbal tasks - They can read mirror images or do jigsaw puzzles - They can be classically conditioned - But they don't have awareness of learning these - They lost ability to form new explicit memories, but automatic processing is still there - This shows that we have two distinct memory systems controlled by different brain parts So what are some reasons we, as people with healthy brains, forget? Encoding Failure - What we fail to encode, we will never remember - *Displacement*: a process where information not encoded for long-term storage will be lost as new info enters short-term memory - Age affects encoding efficiency, the brain areas that jump into action become less responsive Storage Decay - Even after encoding something well, we sometimes forget it later - Forgetting curve: the course of forgetting is initially rapid, then levels off with time - People 3 years out of school may have forgotten much of what they learned in Spanish, but will remember the same amount of information now as 25 years later, forgetting has levelled off - One explanation for forgetting curves is gradual fading of *memory trace* - Memories may be inaccessible because: 1. Some were never acquired (not encoded) 2. Some were discarded (stored memories decay) 3. And others are out of reach because we can't retrieve them Retrieval Failure - Often, forgetting is memories unretrieved - Sometimes important events defy our attempts to access them (tip-of-the-tongue phenomena) Interference - Your mental attic never fills, but it gets cluttered - Your brain tries to tidy things (using new password weakens old ones), but sometimes the clutter wins (new and old learning collide) - **Proactive (*forward-acting)* interference:** the forward-acting disruptive effect of older leaning on the recall of *new* information - your old password will interfere with the new one - **Retroactive (*backward-acting)* interference:** the backward-acting disruptive effect of newer learning on the recall of *old* information - New lyrics to an old song will make you forget the original - Information presented in the hour before sleep suffers less retroactive interference - In an experiment, two people learned nonsense syllables and tried to recall after night's sleep - Found that forgetting occurred more rapidly after being awake:  - "forgetting is not a decay of old impressions and associations, it is interference, inhibition, or obliteration of the old by the new - Sometimes, old and new learning complement each other in *positive transfer*: learning Latin helps with French Motivated Forgetting - IN one study, researchers' tole some participants about the benefits of toothbrushing, who then recalled having frequently brushed their teeth in preceding weeks - Sigmund Freud proposed we **repress** (banish anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness) painful or unacceptable memories to protect our self-concept and to minimize anxiety - But repression is thought to rarely occur bc trauma causes survivors to remember in vivid detail A screenshot of a review Description automatically generated **Memory Construction Errors 2.7-2** Essential question: How do misinformation, imagination, and source amnesia influence our memory construction? How do we decide whether a memory is real or false? - We rarely recall events like a camera - We use *constructive memory* to infer out past from stored information - Memories are constructed: we don't retrieve, we reweave them, we can constantly revise them (like Wikipedia) - **Reconsolidation:** a process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again Misinformation and Imagination Effects - In an experiment, two group of people watched a car accident and answered questions - Those asked "how fast did the cars *smash* into each other" responded a higher speed than "when they *hit* each other" - **Misinformation effect:** occurs when a memory has been corrupted by misleading information - After expose to subtly misleading info, we confidently misremember stuff - May wither way when debrief is used - When altering a family photo to show a hot air balloon ride, children reported more false memories of the ride, demonstrating *imagination inflation* - *The bottom line*: don't believe everything you remember **Source Amnesia**- faulty memory of how, when, or where info was learned or imagined - The frailest part of memory is the source - We may cite a statistic but be unable to recall where we read/heard it - Helps explain **déjà vu:** the eerie sense that "ive experienced this before", cues from current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience - A familiarity with a stimulus combined with uncertainty about where we encountered it - We normally experience a feeling of familiarity (temporal lobe processing) before conscious details (hippocampus and frontal lobe), when these are out of sync, we experience a feeling of familiarity without conscious recall - Source misattribution: a memory distortion when someone incorrectly identifies the origin of a memory, idea, or event - Songwriters, authors, and comedians may think an idea came from their own imagination, but they are unintentionally plagiarizing something they earlier read or heard Discerning True and False Memories - Since memory is reconstruction as well as reproduction, we don't know if a memory is real by how real it feels - Unreal memories can *feel* like real memories - Misinformation effect and source amnesia happen outside of our conscious, making it hard to separate false and rea memories - Recalling a childhood experience, you construct your memory to fill in forgotten details with guesses and assumptions that are now integrated into that memory - Reading a loud a list of words- *candy, sugar, honey, and taste*- we may falsely remember a nonpresented word like *sweet* because we remember the gist more than the words themselves - False memories are socially contagious, we hear falsely remembered events and tend to make the same memory mistake - Memory construction errors explain who when we love someone, our memory extinguishes the negative and shines a light on the positive (*it was love at first sight)* - People asked how they felt 10 years ago about a certain issue recall attitudes closer to their current views  **Children's Eyewitness Recall 2.7-3** Essential question: How reliable are young children's eyewitness descriptions? - Children's memories can be easily molded - They regularly identify innocent suspects as guilty - However, with carefully worded interviews (using less suggestive words), children can become accurate eyewitnesses **Improving Memory 2.7-4** Essential question: How can you use memory research findings to do better in this and other classes? A summary of research-based suggestions that help you remember information when you need it - **Rehearse repeatedly**: spacing effect, use distributed practice - engage in separate study sessions - take advantage of the intervals (walking to lunch, riding a bus, waiting for class to start) - new memories, when exercised, will strengthen - but rehearsing complex materials with little rehearsal yields little retention, remember testing effect - **Make the material more meaningful** - Space it, rehearse it, personalize it - Build a network of cues by forming as many associations as possible - Apply concepts to your own life - **Activate retrieval cues** - Remember context-dependent and state-dependent memory - **Use mnemonic devices** - Make up a story that incorporates vivid images of concepts - Chunk information - **Minimize proactive and retroactive interference** - Study before sleep - Don't schedule back-to-back topics that interfere with each other - **Sleep more** - Consolidate information for long-term memory - **Test your own knowledge, rehearse it and find out what you don't yet know** - Don't be lulled into overconfidence because you can *recognize* information - Test your *recall* **Module 2.8a Intelligence and Achievement: Theories of Intelligence** **2.8-1** Essential Question: How do psychologists define intelligence? - Intelligence has sparked many debates: do each of us have a different mental capacity? Is intelligence quantifiable? How much can it vary between and within groups? - In many studies, intelligence has been defined as what intelligence tests measure, which has tended to be school smarts - However, intelligence does not have the same definition for everyone around the world - In a forest, intelligence may be understanding medicinal qualities of local plants, while in a high school, it may be mastering AP Physics - But a ubiquitous quality about **intelligence** is it is characterized by the ability to leaned from experience, solved problems, and use knowledge to adapt **Is Intelligence One General Ability? 2.8-2** Essential question: What are the arguments for *general intelligence (g)*? - Charles Spearman believed we have one **general intelligence** that underlies all mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test - He believed that those who score high in one area, such as verbal intelligence, will score higher than average in other areas - His belief stemmed from his work with **factor analysis:** a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related variables - General intelligence was an idea of a general mental capacity expressed by a single intelligence score - Thurstone, criticizing Spearman's ideas, gave different tests to people and mathematically identified 7 clusters of primary mental abilities - Other investigators detected that those we excelled in one of the seven clusters generally scored well on the others - This shows that there is an evidence of a g factor - Distinct abilities cluster together and correlate enough to define a general intelligence factor - Distinct brain networks enable distinct abilities, with g explained by coordinated activity **The Cattel-Horn-Carroll Intelligence Theory 2.8-3** Essential question: How have the concepts of Gf and Gc, and the CHC theory, affected our understanding of intelligence? - Raymond Cattell and student John Horn formulated a theory of general ability based on two factors: - **Fluid intelligence (Gf):** the ability to reason speedily and abstractly, like when solving logic problems **EX:** developing creative new theories of computer programming - **Crystallized intelligence (Gc):** our accumulated knowledge, reflected in vocab and applied skills **EX:** **expertly discussing work at a conference** - Gf and Gc work together to solve problems, they draw on our accumulated knowledge - **Cattell-Horn-Carrol (CHC) theory**: the theory that our intelligence is based on g as well as specific abilities, bridged by Gf and Gc - Affirmed a general intellectual ability factor, along with the existence of Gf and Gc - Identifies more specific abilities like reading, writing, memory capacity, and processing speed - Recognizes that intelligence comprises many abilities, but also that those abilities exist under a broader umbrella of general intelligence **Theories of Multiple Intelligences 2.8-4** Essential question: How do Gardner's and Sternberg's theories of multiple intelligences differ, and what criticisms have they faced? Gardner's Multiple Intelligences - Howard Gardner identified 9 relatively independent intelligences, including verbal and mathematical aptitudes assessed by standardized tests - Influences beliefs about learning styles (visual and auditory) - Also proposed a 9^th^ possible intelligence: existential intelligence- the ability to ponder large questions about life, death, and existence - Gardner views these intelligence domains as abilities that come in different packages - People with **savant syndrome**, a condition where a person limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill like computation and drawing, may have islands of brilliance bu score low on intelligence tests Sternberg's Three Intelligences - Robert Sternberg agrees that there is more to academic intelligence and that we have multiple intelligences - However, his triarchic theory proposes three reliably measure intelligences: - **Analytical (academic problem-solving) intelligence:** assed by intelligence tests, presents well-defined problems with a single right answer, predicts school grades, but not vocational success - **Creative intelligence:** demonstrated in innovative smarts - **Practical intelligence:** required for everyday tasks poorly defined and have multiple solutions - Both Gardner and Sternberg agree that multiple abilities contribute to success and differing varieties of giftedness bring spice and challenge to education and life General Intelligence, Grit, and Deliberate Practice - Alas, weakness in one area is not compensated by genius in another, g matters - G predicts higher incomes; high cognitive abilities predict achievements like doctoral degrees and publications - Even so, success is not a one-ingredient recipe, it is a combination of talent and grit - Highly successful people tend to be conscientious and persistently energetic - Skill that breeds success do not sprout spontaneously - K, Anders Ericsson proposed a 10-year-rule: to expertly excel in something, whether chess, dance, sports, music, medicine, you have to endure 10 years of intense, daily practice  **Emotional Intelligence 2.8-5** Essential question: What are the four components of emotional intelligence? - Social intelligence is involved in understanding social situations and managing yourself successfully - A critical part of social intelligence is **emotional intelligence**: the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions**,** consists of four abilities - **Perceiving emotions:** recognizing faces, music, stories, and one's emotions - **Understanding emotions:** predicting how they may change and blend - **Managing emotions:** knowing how to express and handle them - **Using Emotions:** facilitate adaptive and creative thinking - Emotionally intelligent people are socially and self aware - They avoid being hijacked by overwhelming depression, anxiety, or anger - They can read emotional cues and know what to say to soothe a grieving friend, encourage someone, or manage conflicts - Emotionally intelligent people succeed in their relationships, careers, and parenting situations - In some ways, they are better than those who are just academically smart  **Module 2.8b Intelligence and Achievement: Assessing Intelligence** **2.8-6** Essential Question: What is an *intelligence test*, and how do *achievement tests* and *aptitude tests* differ? - **Intelligence tests**: assesses people's mental aptitudes and compares them to other numerical scores, usually in 2 categories - **Achievement tests**: intended to *reflect* what one has learned EX: the AP test - **Aptitude tests** *predicts* what one will be able to learn EX: a college entrance exam - Aptitude tests are thinly disguised intelligence tests - Scores on SAT has a.82 positive correlation with general intelligence test scores - Aptitude supports achievement: people who learn quicker are better at retaining info **Early and Modern Tests of Mental Abilities 2.8-7** Essential question: When and why were intelligence tests created, and how do today's tests differ from early intelligence tests? - While some cultures value collectivism (collective welfare of family, community and society), others value individualism (promoting individual opportunity - Plato was a pioneer of the individualist tradition, as heirs to individualism, people in Western societies have pondered how and why people differ in mental ability Francis Galton: Presuming Hereditary Genius - Western attempts to assess difference in intelligence began with him - Fascinated with measuring human traits, wondered if natural selection could measure "natural ability" - Founded eugenics: the discriminatory movement that proposed measuring human traits and encouraging only those deemed "fit" to reproduce - Had participants receive a test of "intellectual strengths" based on reaction time, sensory acuity, muscular power, and body proportions - Turns out, well-regarding adults and students did not have a correlation with better scores - Yet, his beliefs persisted and he literally published a book about the inheritance of intelligence - He contributed ideas like nature and nurture for us, but his story shows that individual scientists are affected by their own assumptions and attitudes Alfred Binet: Predicting School Achievement - Birth of modern intelligence testing - New law required all children to attend school, but newcomers to Paris would need special classes - So, to make fair judgements about children's learning potential without bias, Alfred Binet designed a test - He assumed that all children follow the same course of intellectual development but some develop more rapidly - His tests had the goal of measuring each child's **mental age**: the level of performance typically associated with children of a certain chronological age (a child who does as well as on average 8 year old is said to have a mental age of 8 - Binet's test made no assumptions regarding why a child was slow, average, or smart - His experiment, unlike Galton, leaned toward environmental explanations - His tests only served a purpose of identifying French schoolchildren who needed special attention - Binet hoped his tests would improve education, not used to label and limit children Lewis Terman: Measuring Innate Intelligence - After Binet died, other adapted his tests - Stanford university Lewis Terman altered the Paris test with California kids and extended the upper end of the test's age to 12 to "superior adults" - Called this to **Stanford-Binet** - From this test, German William Stern derived the **intelligence quotient (IQ)** - It was simply a person's mental age divided by chronological age times 100 - So, the average would be 100 - But there was a problem: it worked for children not adults (a 40-year old with an IQ of 50 would mean they have the intelligence of a 20 year old??) - Current intelligence tests now represent the test-taker's performance relative to the average performance - Terman assumed intelligence tests revealed a mental capacity present at birth, supporting Galton's eugenics - He assumed some ethnic groups were more intelligent than others - US gov ended up developing new tests to evaluate immigrants and WWI army recruits - Results indicated inferiority of people not Anglo-Saxon and restricted immigration and encouraged discrimination David Wechsler: Testing Separate Strengths - Wechsler created now the most widely used intelligence test: the **Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)** - Consists of 15 subtests including: - Similarities: reasoning the commonality of two objects/concepts (EX: wool and cotton) - Vocabulary: naming pictured objects/defining words - Block Design: visual abstract processing (EX: using four blocks, make this shape) - Letter-number sequencing: when hearing sequences of numbers/letters, repeat the numbers in ascending order, then letters in alphabetical orders - This test yields both overall intelligence and separate scores for verbal comprehension, working memory, and perceptual reasoning - Helps identify those who could benefit from special improvement opportunities  **Three Tests of a "Good" Test 2.8.8** Essential question: What is a *normal* *curve*, and what does it mean to say that a test has been *standardized* and is *reliable and valid*? - To be widely accepted, a test has to have the **psychometric** properties of being standardized, reliable, and valid - Two tests that meet his requirement are the Stanford-Binet and Wechsler test Was the Test Standardized? - To know how well someone did on the test, you need basis for comparison - Scores from a pretested, representative group become the basis for future comparisons - Your score, when compared with others, will then be meaningful - If you make a graph of scores, they form a bell-shaped pattern called a bell curve or **normal curve** - For attributes like height, weight, and mental aptitude, the curve's highest point is the average - In intelligence, the peak score is 100, moving out from the average, fewer people have those scores - The Stanford-Binet and Wechsler scales are often restandardized to keep the average score near 100 - This is because intelligence test performance has improved over the years in a worldwide phenomenon called the **Flynn Effect** - Rising performance has been observed in 49 countries - Countries with greatest growth have experienced more economic growth (think human geo) - But why does intelligence increase? - Some suggest is it because of gained nutrition, greater educational opportunities, smaller families, or rising living standards (children having access to educational programs like Bluey). - Flynn attributes the IQ score increase to our need to develop new mental skills to cope with modern environments Is the Test Reliable? - Knowing where you stand in comparison to a standardized group wont matter unless the test is **reliable** - A reliable test gives consistent scores - Researchers may test people many times - May split the test in half (split half: agreement of odd-numbered question scores and even-numbered question scores), give alternate forms, or retest with the same test (test-retest) - The higher the correlation between two scores, the higher the test's reliability - In tests stated before, when performed decades later, people's scores are similar to their first Is the Test Valid? - High reliability does not ensure test's **validity:** the extent to which the test measures or predicts what it promises - Its like using a tape with faulty markings; it gives reliable results bc it's the same, but the results are not valid - There are types of validity - **Content validity:** tests that tap into pertinent [behavior]/criterion - **EX:** road tests for driver's license that samples the tasks a driver routinely faces - **Construct validity:** tests that measure a certain [concept] - **EX:** tests for self-esteem where people answer questions about their self-feelings - **Predictive validity**: tests that predict future performance, what we should expect intelligence tests to do, assessed by computing correlation between test scores and criterion behavior - **EX**: SAT aptitude scores correlate about +.8 for Graduate Record Examinations - General aptitude tests are not as predictive as they are reliable - Yes, they predict school grades, but they weaken after the early school years - Academic aptitude test scores are good predictors of school achievement for 6-12 year olds (+.6 correlation btwn intelligence and school performance) - Intelligence scores correlate closely with later achievement tests (+.8 correlation in comparison between age 11 intelligence scores and age 16 exam scores - The SAT has been less successful in predicting first year college grades - So why does predictive power of aptitude scores dimmish are you move up the educational ladder? - The narrower the range of scores, the lower the predictive power - At Harvard, if all high school graduate students have a 4.0, then who will be valedictorian?  **Module 2.8c *Intelligence and Achievement: Stability of, and Influencces on, Intelligence*** - *there are age-old questions about intelligence* - *how stable is a person's intelligence? How and how much is intellgence influenced by our genes/environment?* ***Stability or Change? 2.8-9*** *Essential question: How stable are intellugence test scores over the lifespan?* - *For most children, intelligence scores before 3 modetsly predict aptitudes* - *Some precocioous preschoolars become brilliant adults* - *By age 4, children's performance on intelligence begins to predict adult scores* - *Ian Deary discovered when they retedted the same **cohort** (group of people) over years, by age 11, stability becomes impressive* - *His study showed that people in Scotland had positive, relatively strong correlation between the stability and predictive capacity of early test results* - *Intelligent children and adults tend to live longer & healthier lives poddibly due to:* 1. *Intelligence = more education, better jobs, healthier environment* 2. *Intelligence encourage healthy living: less smoking, good diet, more exercise* 3. *Prenatal events can influence intelligence and health* 4. *"well-wired bodies" woth fast reaction speeds fosters intelligence and longeitivty*  ***Aging and Intelligence 2.8-10*** *Essential question: How does aging affect crystallized intelligence (Gc) and fluid intelligence (Gf)?* - *It matters **how** psychologists ask questions* - ***cross-sectional** experiment method: researchers study diff age groups at one time, found mental ability declines with age* - *findings caused most people to assume elders were not intelligent* - *comes with faults: people riased in diff eras have diff living conditions like wealth* - ***longitudinal** experiment methods: study and restudy the same group at diff times, found intelligence remains stable* - ***experiments with these allowed people to discover that intelligence remains stable*** - *faults: participants who survive are healthy and bright, intelligence ended up decreasing at age 85* *Aging and Intelligence* - *aging leads to both losses and wins* - *we lose recall and processing speed but gain vocabulary and knwoledge* - *our crystallized intelligence increases while fluid intelligence decreases* - *these cognitive difference help explain why mathemeticians and scientists produce much of their creative work during late 20s and early 30s (when Gf is peak)* - *but also why authors, historians, and philosophers product their best work 40s beyond (Gc is strong after so much accumulated knowledge)* ***Genetic and Environmental Influences on Intelligence*** - *intelligence runs in families, but why? Are smarts inherited or molded by the environment?* A white text on a black background Description automatically generated ***Heredity and Intelligence 2.8-11*** *Essential question: What do twin and adoption studies tell us about the nature and nurture of intelligence?* - *Heritability: the portion of variation among individuals in a group we can attribute to genes* - *Estimates of the heritability of intelligence (the extent to which intelligence test score variation can be attributed to genetic variation) is about 50-80 percent* - *This means that geneitc influence explains 50-80 percent of the observed variation among people* - *A very important point: Heritability refers to why people in a group differ from one another, how much their differences are attributable to their differing genes* *Studies Involving Heritability* - *As environments become more similar, heredity becomes the primary source of differences* - *If all schools were uniform quality (same families, healthy community) then heritability would increase* - *If people had similar heredities but drastic living conditions, heriability would be lower* - *Heriability varies with changing environments!* - *Indentical twins, even when adopted by 2 diff families, have similar intelligence scores* - *But although genes metter, there is no "genius gene"* - *Intelligence is polygenetic, involving many genes* *Environment and Intelligence* - *Fraternal twins are not as genetically alike, but when they share an environment, they yield similar intelligence scores, showing that environment does have an effect* - *To untangle genes and environment, reserachers compared intelligence test scores of adopted children with their biological parents (provided genes), adoptive parents (provided environment), and adoptive siblings (shared environment)* - *Turns out, environment exerts a modest influence: adoption from poverty or neglected treatment enhances intelligence scores* - *But adopted schildren's intelligence scores still resemble those of biological parents* - *Genetic influences also become more apparent as we accumulate life experiences* ***Gene-Environment Interactions 2.8-12*** *Essential question: How can envionmental influences affect cognitive development?* - *Genes & experience together weave the fabric of intelligence* - *Epigenetics studies part of the biology of nature-nurture* - *Our genes shape the experiences that shape us* - *If you have a natural aptitude for academics, you will likely stay in school, read books, and ask questions* - *Sometimes environmental conditions can work in reverse* - *In an Iranian orphanage where kids did not receive the right care, they did not develop the way they should* - *Poor environmental conditions that accompany poverty can depress cognitive development and produce stress* - *So if extreme conditions like social isolationa dn poverty can slow brain development, what about the opposite?* - *Little evidence supports it* - *All babies should have normal exposure to sights, sounds and speech* - *"Parents who are concerned about providing special educational lessons for babies are wasting their time"* *Growth Mindset* - *Yes, schooling and intelligence interact to enhance ;ater incomes, but what we accomplish with our intelligence depends on one's beliefs and motivation* - *Study motivation and study skills rivaled apitutude and previous grades as predictors of academic achievement* - *Intelligence test performance is affected by motivation: when promised money for doing well, adolscents score higher* - *Carol Dweck reports that believing intelligence is changeable fosters a **growth mindset*** - *Believing intelligence in innately fixed fosters a **fixed mindset*** - *Receving praise for effort/tackling challenges rather than being smart/accomplished helps one understand the link between hard work and success* - *Growth mindsets don't alter inform intelligence, but can make youth/children more resilient with difficult material* - *Ability + opportunity + motivation is the ultimate recipe for success* - *High scores reflect people's apitutude but also self-discipline, belief in the power of effort, and a "hungry mind"* - ***Believe** in your ability to learn, and **apply** yourself with sustained effort* - *with all that, growth mindset can also have a downside: the social cost of blaming struggling individuals for their circumstances* - *some students feel that their disappointment = moral flaw* - *sometimes things need more than the power of positive thinking* A screenshot of a white text Description automatically generated ***Module 2.8d Intelligence and Achievement: Group Differences and the Question of Bias*** ***Group Differences in Intelligence Test Scores*** - *if there were no group differences in intelligence, there would be less debate pver hereditary and environmental influences...* ***Gender-Related Similaries and Differences 2.8-13*** *Essential question: How and why are males and females similar and different in their mental ability scores?* - *Men's self estminated intelligence \> women's self-estimated intelligence, which fuelds a false perception that men are smarter than women* - *In truth, men and women do not differ much in intelligence* - *Yet, differences are what makes life, and science, interesting* - *Typically girls tend to outpace boys in spelling, verbal fluency, reading, and locating objects; they also detect emtoions better and are more senstive to the sense* - *In math computation and overall math performance, girls and boys odnt differ much* - *But on complex math problems and spatial ability tests, males win* - *Male intelligence also varies more* *Steven Pinker* - *Argues for evolutionary perspective: biology affects gender-related differences* - *Women take interest in people* - *Men take interest in money, and are more likely to take risks* - *Such differences are stable over time, influenced by prenatal hormones, and observed in genetic boys raised as girls* *Social Expectations* - *Social expectations and opportunities construct gender by shaping interests and abilities* - *Gender-equal cultures exhibit little math gap btwn genders as opposed to gender-unequal cultures*  ***Racial and Ethnic Similarities and Differences 2.8-14*** *Essential question: How and why are racial and ethnic groups similar and different in their mental ability scores?* - *There are two disturbing but scientifically agreed upon facts:* - *Racial and ethnic groups overlaps, but also differ in average intelligence scores* - *High scoring groups attain high levels of education and income* - *There are many group differences in average intelligence test scores: Israeli Jews ouscore Israeli Arabs* - *Group differences provide little basis for judging individuals, scores may vary significantly from the group one is in* - *While heredity contributes to individual differences in intelligence, group idfferences may be environmental* - *A child growing up deaf may not have the same intelligence as another child in the same group* *Are racial and ethnic gaps similarly envionmental?* - *Genetic research reveals that under the skin, we are remarkably alike* - *The average genetic difference between two Icelandic villages exceeds the average group difference between Icelanders and Chinese* - *Race is not a neatly defined biological category* - *Race is a social category without well-defined coundaries* - *With increasingly mixed ancestries, more people defy neat racial categorization* - *Within the same population, there are generational differences in test scores* - *Test scores of today's better fed, educated and more prepared people exceed the 1930s population* - *The difference is larger than average black and white american scores* - *Schools and culture matter* - *Large gap in wages, less access to college education, and few jobs offered can result in a wider gap of intelligence* - *Students in Asia have largely outperformed North American students due to ore time studying* - *In difference eras, different ethnic groups have experienced golden ages: periods of remarkable achievement* - *One it was the Greeks and Egyptians, then Romans, then Arabs* A white text with black text Description automatically generated ***The Question of Bias 2.8-15*** *Essential question: Are intelligence tests biased or unfair? What is Stereotype threat, and how does it affect test-takers' performance?* - *The bias of intelligence tests depends on how one defines bias:* - *The scientific meaning of bias means whether a test predicts future behavior of all groups tested* *EX: if the SAT predicted college achievement of women but not men, then it is biased* - *In science terms, US aptitude tests are not biased* - *In everday language, bias may be fairness* *EX: some intelligence tests may make assumptions that test-takers will know the material (knowing that a cup goes with a saucer, for instance); this may bais the test against those who don't know what saucers are* - *This can make tests a vehicle for discrimination, restricting opportunities for people who come from different cultures* - *Researchers try to create culture-neutral questions to enable culture-fair aptitude tests* - *But then, unequal past experiences do predict enqual future achievements* *Test-Taker's Expectations* - *For test-makers, expectations can introduce bias* - *For test-takers, expectations can become self-fulfilling prophecies* - *In a study, women only did better than men when they had been led to expect women and men have the same score* - *This is called a **sterotype threat:** a self-confirming concern that one will be evaulated based ona a negative stereotype* - *Can undermine people's academic potential* - *Worries about one's group's potential floods the mind with selfdoubts and self-monitoring that can hijack memory and performance* - *Being confident that one's group does well on a task creates a sterotype lift* - *To avoid such effects, people have been encouraged to belive in their potential, think positively about diverse life experiences, and increase their sense of beloning* *What can we conclude about aptitude tests and bias?* - *In a scientific sense, yes, the tests are biased* - *They discriminate and distinguish individuals* - *In another sense, no, they reduce discrimination by decreasing reliance on subjective selection* *The point to remember: There are many ways of being successful; our differences are variations of human adaptability. Life's great achievements result not only from "can do" abilities (and fair opportunity) but also from "will do" motivation. Competence + Diligence → Accomplishment.*