The document discusses various aspects of cognition, intelligence, problem solving, creativity and action. It defines cognition as mental activities associated with thinking, knowing and remembering. It also examines different types of intelligence tests, problem solving techniques, the nature of creativity and factors that influence decision making. The document provides an overview of key concepts and issues relating to cognition, intelligence, problem solving and decision making.

1. Cognition and Intelligence

2. Cognition
• Mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, and
remembering
• Ideas, thoughts, concept formation, logic and reasoning,
problem solving, decision making
• “Meta-cognition” – thinking about thinking; thought
control

3. Cognition
• Categorization
o Natural groupings based on common properties
(Jeopardy)
o “Animals” is a category with many concepts
• Concept
o A mental representation of a category (“prototypes”)
o “Chicken” = farm animal, small, feathers

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8. Problem Solving
• Heuristics
o Cognitive shortcuts for selecting among alternatives
without carefully considering each one
o Allows for rapid and efficient (but sometimes)
misleading judgments
o Ex: Representative heuristic, availability heuristic

9. Problem Solving
• Confirmation Bias
o Tendency to recall info that supports preconceived
(biased?) beliefs
o Leads to interpretation of ambiguous evidence to
supporting existing opinions
 The more emotionally involved with a belief, the more
likely of ignoring facts that undermine/challenge it
o Ex: “Remember the hits and forget the misses”,
psychic readings, Hussein/WMD

10. Intelligence
• Achievement tests
o Measure what you’ve already learned
o Reading recognition, spelling, arithmetic, computation
(scholastic exam)
• Aptitude tests
o Goal is to test how you will do in the future (prediction)
o Measures how you apply existing information into a
new scenario (career placement exam, IQ tests)

12. Intelligence
• Autistic-savant
o Scoring extremely low on IQ tests but demonstrate
extraordinary mental abilities in a specific area
o Not all individuals with autism are savants (Rain Man)
• Estimated prevalence of savant abilities in autism
~10%
o Not all individuals with low IQ are savants
• Estimated prevalence ~1%

13. Intelligence
• Multiple Intelligences
a) Musical
b) Kinesthetic
c) Spatial
d) Verbal
e) Logical/Mathematical
f) Intra-personal
g) Interpersonal

14. Creativity
• Defined as “divergent problem solving”
• How do we operationalize creativity?
• Recognizing creativity?
o Independence
o Originality
o Persistence
o Flexibility

15. Creativity
• Moderately correlated with intelligence
• Not all highly-intelligent people are creative!
• Impediments
o Functional fixedness
o Habitual set

16. Intelligence
• What is the operational definition for intelligence?
• What two factors influence IQ?
• History of the IQ test
o 1904: Binet developed first IQ test in France to rate child
intelligence
o 1916: IQ test later modified at Stanford University
IQ = (mental age/chronological age) x 100

18. Intelligence
• Are IQ tests reliable? Valid?
• Issues with IQ tests?
o Lack of theoretical basis
o Cultural bias
o Only measures certain types of intelligence
o What is intelligence?

19. Intelligence
• Fluid knowledge
o Ability to draw analogies, recognize patterns, solve novel
problems
o As age increases, this type of intelligence decreases
• Crystallized knowledge
o This is your knowledge base
o Vocabulary, geography, general world knowledge

20. Action
• Options in the decision-making process
o Routine behavior
o External referral
o Intentional randomization
o Affect (emotional) referral

21. Action
• Decision making can produce conflict
o Approach-approach decisions
o Avoidant-avoidant decisions
o Approach-avoidant decisions