PSYCH 1X03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Availability Heuristic, Francis Galton, Scientific Method
7 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
PROBLEM SOLVING AND INTELLIGENCE
Operational Definition of Intelligence
• The researcher Edwin Boring has provided the most straightforward definition of
intelligence:
o Intelligence tests measure
• Psychologists often make two assumptions:
o Intelligence involves the ability to perform cognitive tasks
o Intelligence involves the capacity to learn from experience and adapt
• Intelligence is the cognitive ability of an individual to learn from experience, to reason
well, to remember important information, and to cope with the demands of daily living
Problem Solving
• Two broad strategies used to solve problems are deductive and inductive reasoning
• Deductive reasoning occurs when a person works from ideas and general information to
arrive at specific conclusions
• Inductive reasoning moves away from specific facts and observations to generalizations
and theories
Deductive and Inductive Reasoning
• Deductive and inductive reasoning are at the heart of the scientific method
• At the top of the arch, we have theories about how facts are related in a general way →
we use deductive reasoning to generate a specific, testable hypothesis about the data
we expect to obtain → through experimentation, we collect data at the bottom of the arch
→ inductive reasoning is used to relate it to the general theory in some meaningful way
Insight Problems
• Problems/riddles can be difficult because of functional fixedness - our difficulty seeing
alternative uses for common objects
The Qualities of a Test
• The reliability of a test measures the extent to which repeated testing produces
consistent results
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• The reliability of a test is an important concern for psychologists measuring any effect; it
is especially important for an intelligence test, because psychologists assume that
intelligence is a static, internal quality
• Validity measures the extent to which a test is actually measuring what the researcher
claims to measuring
Francis Galton
• Credited with the modern study of intelligence
• Galton’s goal was to formally quantify intelligence in an unbiased manner
• Galton recorded how quickly subjects could respond to sensory motor tasks by their
reaction time
• Galton equated faster reaction times with higher intelligence
Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test
• Alfred Binet was hired by the French Ministry of Public Instruction to develop a tool that
would help to identify public school children who needed special education
• Binet developed the first intelligence scale which included thirty short tasks related to
everyday life
• Children were asked to name parts of the body, compare lengths and weights, name
objects in a picture, and define words. It was assumed that all of these tasks involved
reasoning
• Years later, Lewis Terman further adapted the scale and it was renamed the Stanford-
Binet Intelligence test
Charles Spearman
• Charles Spearman was a firm believer in the idea of a single type of intelligence
• He observed that most people who performed well on classical intelligence tasks
performed well on all kinds of tasks
• He reasoned that this was the case because there is one generalized intelligence which
he named “g”
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Operational definition of intelligence: the researcher edwin boring has provided the most straightforward definition of. Intelligence tests measure: psychologists often make two assumptions: Intelligence involves the ability to perform cognitive tasks. Intelligence involves the capacity to learn from experience and adapt. Intelligence is the cognitive ability of an individual to learn from experience, to reason well, to remember important information, and to cope with the demands of daily living. Problem solving: two broad strategies used to solve problems are deductive and inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning occurs when a person works from ideas and general information to arrive at specific conclusions. Inductive reasoning moves away from specific facts and observations to generalizations and theories. Inductive reasoning is used to relate it to the general theory in some meaningful way. Insight problems: problems/riddles can be difficult because of functional fixedness - our difficulty seeing alternative uses for common objects.
