Week 9 · Chapter

Chapter 9 — Cognition, Language & Intelligence

Introduction to Psychology Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~40–50 minutes · Objective 6 (analyze higher mental processes (cognition, judgment and its biases, language, and intelligence) and the forces of motivation and emotion), Objective 5 (compare the major models of learning and memory and apply them to everyday behavior, including why memory is reconstructive) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slides, the tutorial, the quiz, and the Analysis Workshop all build on it.

In plain language

Your mind makes hundreds of quick calls every day, like which line to stand in or whether a headline is worth worrying about. Cognition is the word psychologists use for this mental work of knowing: sorting things into groups, judging, solving problems, and using language. This week you will see how your mind takes shortcuts, called heuristics, the fast rules of thumb that usually work and sometimes lead you astray in predictable ways. You will also see how language is built from small sounds and meaning units. Finally, you will learn what an IQ, which is a score from a standardized intelligence test, can and cannot tell you about a person.

Why you already care about this

You are in a grocery aisle with a few minutes to spare. One yogurt says "90% fat-free." The one beside it says "10% fat." Most shoppers reach for the first one, and it feels healthier. Yet 100 − 90 = 10, so the two labels describe exactly the same amount of fat.

Nothing about the yogurt changed. Only the wording did. That small moment is a doorway into a large research program. In 1974, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman described how people make fast judgments with mental shortcuts, and how those shortcuts produce errors you can predict in advance. Their work, and the research it inspired, is the backbone of the first half of this chapter.

This chapter follows your thinking from the ground up. It starts with how you sort the world into categories, moves through problem solving and judgment, turns to language, and ends with intelligence and the tests that try to measure it.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

explain what a concept is and what a prototype is, with an everyday example;
tell an algorithm from a heuristic and say what each one trades away;
recognize the availability heuristic and the representativeness heuristic in a judgment, and tell the two apart;
spot confirmation bias, framing, and overconfidence, and do the arithmetic that shows when two framed choices are the same;
name the obstacle when a problem solver is stuck: fixation, mental set, or functional fixedness;
break a word into phonemes and morphemes and put the stages of early language in order;
compare three theories of intelligence and read the IQ scale, including why a score is not a person's worth.

Carry this sentence with you: fast is not the same as right.

Where we are

Already covered: Weeks 1 and 2 built the habit of asking "how do we know?"; Weeks 3 to 7 covered the brain, sensing, awareness, learning, and memory; Week 8 reviewed it all.
This week: how you think, judge, solve problems, use language, and how intelligence is defined and measured.
How they connect: the availability heuristic is a memory effect, so Week 7's retrieval returns here; and IQ tests are judged with Week 2's reliability and validity.
Where we're going next: Week 10, Motivation & Emotion, turns from how you think to what moves you to act and how you feel.

Two earlier tools matter most this week. In Week 7 you followed memory through encoding, storage, and retrieval, and you saw that retrieval is easier for some memories than others. That ease of retrieval is the engine behind one of this week's shortcuts. In Week 2 you learned that reliability is the consistency of a measure and validity is its accuracy, whether it captures what it claims to measure. Those two words are exactly the questions you ask of any intelligence test.

1. Organize what you know: concepts and prototypes

A friend texts you a photo from a market stall and asks, "What is this fruit?" You have never seen that exact fruit before. Yet within a second you know it is a fruit, that you could probably eat it, and that it grew on a plant. You did not need to have met it before. You put it in a category, and the category told you the rest.

Cognition is the set of mental activities involved in knowing: thinking, forming categories, judging, solving problems, remembering, and using language. Categories are the first tool cognition uses.

A concept is a mental category that groups objects, events, or ideas that share features, such as "bird" or "furniture," so a new example can be recognized and reasoned about.
A prototype is the most typical, best example of a mental category, such as a robin for "bird"; new examples are judged by how closely they resemble it.

You rarely check a list of rules to decide whether something belongs in a concept. Instead, you compare it with the prototype. The closer the match, the faster you decide.

Worked example — three birds, one category. Decide how fast "Is it a bird?" gets a yes for a robin, a chicken, and a penguin.

Find the prototype. For many people, a small songbird such as a robin is the typical bird: it is small, it flies, it sings, and it perches in trees.
Compare each case. A robin matches every feature, so the yes comes at once. A chicken has feathers and wings but rarely flies, so the yes comes a little slower. A penguin swims, cannot fly, and stands upright, so many people pause before saying yes.
Read the result. All three are birds by any biology rule. What changes is how far each one sits from the prototype.

In words: membership in a concept is all-or-none on paper, but in your head some members are "more typical" than others, and that typicality sets your speed.

Prototypes can differ from place to place. A person who grew up near the coast might picture a gull first, and a person raised on a farm might picture a hen. The concept is shared; the best example comes from experience.

Misconception check. Students often think a prototype is the definition of a concept, so anything unlike the prototype is "not really" in the category. It is tempting because the prototype is the first thing that comes to mind. The cure is to separate the two jobs. The concept sets who belongs, and a penguin belongs to "bird" fully. The prototype only sets how quickly and easily you recognize a member.

2. Solve problems two ways: algorithms versus heuristics

Your bike lock has three dials, each with the digits 0 to 9, and you have forgotten the code. You could start at 000 and try every combination in order. That is 10 × 10 × 10 = 1,000 tries in the worst case, and you would be certain to open the lock eventually. Or you could try your own birthday first, then your old locker code, then the year you started school. Those guesses might open the lock in three tries, or they might never work.

Those two plans are the two basic ways to solve a problem.

An algorithm is a step-by-step procedure that guarantees a correct solution if it is followed completely, though it can be slow.
A heuristic is a fast mental rule of thumb that usually leads to a good answer with little effort but can produce predictable errors.

Worked example — the forgotten lock. Compare the two plans on the three-dial lock.

Count the algorithm's work. Each dial has 10 digits, so there are 10 × 10 × 10 = 1,000 combinations. Trying them in order is guaranteed to work, but it might take all 1,000 tries.
Describe the heuristic. Trying codes that mean something to you first is a rule of thumb. People often choose codes they can remember, so this is a smart bet.
Name the trade. The algorithm trades speed for certainty. The heuristic trades certainty for speed.

In words: when being right matters more than being quick, use the algorithm; when a good guess is enough and time is short, the heuristic usually wins.

Most of daily life runs on heuristics, and for good reason. You do not compare every route home before you leave work. You take the one that usually works. Heuristics free your attention for the parts of a problem that need it.

Misconception check. Students often hear "heuristic" and think "bad thinking." It is tempting because this chapter spends a lot of time on heuristic errors. The cure is to remember why they exist. Heuristics are usually right and almost always fast, which is why your mind relies on them. The errors matter because they are predictable, so you can learn to catch them when the stakes are high.

3. Judge by memory and by resemblance: availability and representativeness

Imagine the week before a beach trip. You read a headline about a shark attack on a coast far away. Suddenly the swim feels risky, while the long drive to the beach does not cross your mind at all. Shark attacks are rare, which is exactly why one makes the news. The headline made the danger easy to picture, and easy to picture felt like likely.

In 1974, Tversky and Kahneman described this shortcut and a second one that works by resemblance.

The availability heuristic is judging how common or likely something is by how easily examples of it come to mind, so vivid, recent, or repeated events seem more frequent than they are.
The representativeness heuristic is judging how likely something is by how much it resembles a typical case, often while ignoring how common each possibility actually is.
The base rate is how common a category or outcome is in the whole group being considered, such as how many people in a town work in each job, before any description of one person is known.

The availability heuristic is a memory effect, which is the link back to Week 7. Retrieval is easier for memories that are vivid, recent, or repeated. A dramatic news story is all three. When an example is easy to retrieve, your mind treats that ease as a sign that the event is common.

The representativeness heuristic works differently. It asks, "How much does this look like the typical case?" Here is the classic trap. You meet Lena, who is quiet, wears glasses, and talks about books all evening. "She must be a librarian," you think. Her description fits the prototype of a librarian. But suppose her town has far more salespeople than librarians. Even if a quiet book lover is more typical of librarians, there are so many more salespeople that Lena is still more likely to work in sales. Your judgment ignored the base rate.

Worked example — sort the shortcut. Decide which heuristic drives each judgment.

After a week of news coverage about a burglary on his street, Kofi believes break-ins are rising everywhere in the city. The judgment rests on how easily examples come to mind. That is the availability heuristic.
Rosa sees a man in a suit with a briefcase on a train and decides he must be a banker, not a teacher. The judgment rests on resemblance to a typical case, and it ignores how many teachers there are compared with bankers. That is the representativeness heuristic.
Name the question each one asks. Availability asks, "How easily can I think of examples?" Representativeness asks, "How much does this look like the typical case?"

In words: if the judgment is about how often something happens, check for availability; if it is about which category one person or case belongs to, check for representativeness and its ignored base rate.

Misconception check. Students often swap these two heuristics, calling the librarian judgment "availability" because the image of a librarian comes to mind. It is tempting because both involve something "coming to mind." The cure is the question each one answers. Availability estimates how frequent an event is from how easily examples are retrieved. Representativeness assigns one case to a category by resemblance, and its signature mistake is ignoring the base rate.

Pause and think. Choose one of these two prompts; they carry equal weight.

(a) Describe a fear or worry you have had that grew after news coverage or a story from a friend, and explain it with the availability heuristic.
(b) Describe a quick judgment you once made about a stranger from how the person looked, and say what base rate your judgment may have ignored.

4. Catch three more biases: confirmation bias, framing, and overconfidence

Darnell starts a new diet and feels hopeful about it. Over the next month he reads every article that praises it and skips past the ones that raise doubts. When a friend mentions a study that found no benefit, he cannot remember the details later. He is not lying to himself on purpose. His attention and memory are quietly picking sides.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, notice, and remember evidence that fits what one already believes while overlooking evidence that contradicts it.

The yogurt aisle from the start of this chapter shows a second bias. Tversky and Kahneman (1981) showed that people judge the same choice differently depending on how it is worded.

Framing is the way a choice or fact is worded, such as "90% fat-free" versus "10% fat"; a framing effect occurs when the same information leads to different judgments because of the wording.

Worked example — the two yogurt labels. Check whether the two labels state the same fact.

Write what the first label says. "90% fat-free" means that 90 parts out of every 100 are not fat.
Find the rest. The remaining share is fat: 100 − 90 = 10.
Compare with the second label. The second label says "10% fat," and the arithmetic gives 10% fat. The two labels describe the same yogurt.

In words: the amount of fat is identical, so any difference in how the labels feel to you comes from the wording, not the yogurt. That difference is the framing effect.

The third bias is about how sure you feel.

Overconfidence is the tendency to be more certain that one's judgments and answers are correct than their actual accuracy supports.

Think about a group project where everyone agrees the slides will take "an hour, tops," and they take an evening. Or a test answer you would have bet money on that turned out wrong. Overconfidence is not arrogance. It is the gap between how sure a person feels and how often the person is right.

A caveat about these biases: knowing their names does not switch them off. People who study biases still show them. What helps is a habit, such as looking on purpose for evidence against your belief, rewriting a framed choice in its opposite wording, or asking "how often have I been right about this before?"

Misconception check. Students often relabel confirmation bias as "availability," because the evidence a person favors is the evidence that comes to mind. It is tempting because both involve what you notice and remember. The cure is to ask what drives the error. In confirmation bias, a belief you already hold steers which evidence you seek and keep. In the availability heuristic, no prior belief is needed; ease of retrieval alone inflates how common something seems.

5. Get unstuck: fixation, mental set, and functional fixedness

On a camping trip, the screw holding Mei's bike seat works loose, and nobody packed a screwdriver. Everyone digs through their bags for a tool. Twenty minutes later, someone notices that a coin fits the screw's slot perfectly. The coin was in a pocket the whole time. It was never "a tool" until someone saw it differently.

Being stuck is not the same as lacking ability. Three common obstacles keep a capable person stuck.

Fixation is an inability to see a problem from a new angle, which keeps a person stuck on one approach that is not working.
Mental set is the tendency to keep using a method that worked on earlier problems, even when a different or simpler method would work better on the current one.
Functional fixedness is the tendency to see an object only in its usual job, such as a coin only as money, which hides other ways it could be used to solve a problem.

Fixation is the broad idea, and the other two are specific kinds of it. Mental set is being stuck on a method. Functional fixedness is being stuck on an object's usual use.

Worked example — name the obstacle. Decide which obstacle explains each moment.

The coin and the bike seat. The campers saw the coin only as money, so its use as a screwdriver stayed hidden. The obstacle is about an object's job, so it is functional fixedness.
A new office worker, Tomasz, totals a column of numbers by hand the way he always has, though the spreadsheet in front of him can add the column in one step. He is reusing a method that worked before when a better one is available. That is mental set.
A student keeps rereading the same confusing paragraph, in the same way, for twenty minutes, instead of trying a diagram or asking a classmate. The student is stuck on one way of approaching the problem. That is fixation.

In words: ask what the person is stuck on. A habit of method points to mental set, an object's usual use points to functional fixedness, and one stuck way of seeing the problem in general points to fixation.

Misconception check. Students often treat mental set and functional fixedness as the same thing. It is tempting because both describe being stuck in a rut. The cure is one question: is the person stuck on how to do it, or on what an object is for? A method points to mental set, and an object points to functional fixedness.

6. Build language from small parts: phonemes, morphemes, and grammar

Say "cat" and then "bat" out loud. Your lips do one small thing differently at the start, and the meaning jumps from a pet to a piece of sports gear. Now say "unbreakable." You can hear three pieces inside it, and each one adds meaning. Language works like this all the way up: small units combine, by rules, into an endless number of sentences.

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language that can change a word's meaning, such as the sounds that make "cat" differ from "bat."
A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries meaning, which may be a whole word such as "break" or a part of one such as the prefix "un" or the plural "s."
Grammar is the system of rules in a language that lets speakers combine sounds and meaning units into words and sentences that others can understand.
Syntax is the part of grammar that sets the rules for ordering words into sentences, so that "the dog chased the cat" and "the cat chased the dog" mean different things.

Worked example — taking "unbreakable" apart. Count the morphemes.

Find the root. "Break" carries the core meaning, so it is one morpheme.
Find the prefix. "Un" means "not," so it is a second morpheme.
Find the suffix. "Able" means "can be," so it is a third morpheme.
Total. Un + break + able gives three morphemes. The word means "cannot be broken," and each piece contributed part of that.

In words: "unbreakable" has three morphemes, while a simpler word such as "cats" has two, cat and the plural s.

Children typically build language in the same order. Picture a family at dinner with a toddler in a high chair. Over the early years, the child's speech moves through four steps:

Babbling is the first stage of language development, in which an infant spontaneously produces strings of speech sounds, such as "ba-ba-ba," that are not yet words.
One-word speech follows, in which single words such as "ball" or "up" stand for whole ideas.
Two-word speech comes next, with pairs such as "more juice" or "big dog."
Telegraphic speech is an early stage of language development in which a child speaks in short, mostly noun-and-verb sentences that leave out small words, such as "go car" or "want more milk."

The order is steady even though the timing varies from child to child. Notice that telegraphic speech already follows syntax: a child says "want milk," not "milk want."

Misconception check. Students often think a morpheme is the same as a syllable. It is tempting because many short words are one syllable and one morpheme, like "cat." The cure is to test for meaning. "Table" has two syllables but one morpheme, because neither "ta" nor "ble" means anything alone. "Cats" has one syllable but two morphemes, because the "s" adds the meaning "more than one."

7. Compare three views of intelligence: g, multiple intelligences, and the triarchic theory

Think about three people you know. One aces every exam. One can fix any engine by ear. One can walk into a tense room and calm everyone down. Are they all intelligent? In the same way? Psychologists have argued about questions like these for more than a century.

Intelligence is the mental ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

Three theories give three different answers about how many kinds there are.

General intelligence (g) is Charles Spearman's proposed single, broad mental ability that underlies performance on many different kinds of mental tests, so people who do well on one tend to do well on others.
Multiple intelligences is Howard Gardner's proposal that people have several relatively independent kinds of intelligence, such as musical, spatial, and interpersonal ability, rather than one general ability.
The triarchic theory is Robert Sternberg's theory that intelligence has three parts: analytical intelligence for solving academic problems, creative intelligence for handling new situations, and practical intelligence for everyday tasks.

Spearman noticed that a person's scores on very different tests, such as vocabulary and puzzle solving, tend to rise and fall together. He proposed g as the shared ability behind that pattern. Gardner looked instead at people with uneven gifts, such as a gifted musician who struggles with math, and argued for several separate intelligences. Sternberg kept a smaller list but stretched intelligence past the classroom to include creativity and everyday know-how.

Worked example — one person, three lenses. Priya is a nurse who scores well on written exams, invents a clever new way to organize her unit's supply room, and is the person coworkers ask how to handle a difficult family. Describe her with each theory.

Spearman's view. Her strong performance across very different tasks fits a high general ability, g, showing up in many places.
Gardner's view. Her skill with people fits interpersonal intelligence, and her supply-room plan draws on spatial ability, two of several separate intelligences.
Sternberg's view. Exam success is analytical intelligence, the supply-room idea is creative intelligence, and handling families well is practical intelligence.

In words: the same person can be described by all three theories; what differs is whether the theory sees one ability, several separate ones, or three parts.

An honesty note: Gardner's ideas are popular in schools, but researchers still debate how independent his intelligences really are, and many tests of different abilities do correlate, which is the pattern Spearman saw.

Misconception check. Students often think Gardner's theory proved that g does not exist. It is tempting because "multiple intelligences" sounds like a newer, better replacement. The cure is to see what each theory explains. Spearman's g explains why scores on different tests tend to move together. Gardner's and Sternberg's theories explain why one score misses real abilities. The debate is still open, and each theory captures something.

8. Read the IQ scale: what a score says and what it does not

Imagine two cousins comparing report cards from different schools. Like the two yogurt labels in the grocery aisle, the numbers mean little until you know what they are measured against. One got an 88 and the other a B+. Which is better? You cannot tell until you know how each school grades. An IQ score has the same problem, and testers solve it by comparing every test taker with the same large reference group.

The intelligence quotient (IQ) is a score on a standardized intelligence test, scaled so that the average score is 100 and about 68 percent of people score between 85 and 115.
Standardization is giving a test in the same way to a large, representative sample and using that group's scores as the yardstick against which every later test taker's score is compared.

Two more questions decide whether a test is any good, and you met both in Week 2. Is it reliable? A reliable intelligence test gives a person about the same score if they take it again a few weeks later. Is it valid? A valid test measures intelligence, and not something else, such as how familiar the test taker is with the test's language or culture. A test can be reliable and still not be valid.

Worked example — reading the band. Use the scale's pinned values to read the average band.

The scale. IQ tests are scaled so the mean score is 100, and 15 points mark one step of spread above or below it.
The band's lower edge. 100 − 15 = 85.
The band's upper edge. 100 + 15 = 115, so the band runs from 85 to 115 and is 115 − 85 = 30 points wide.
Inside the band. About 68% of people score between 85 and 115, which is roughly two in three people.
Outside the band. 100 − 68 = 32, so about 32% of people score outside the band, some above it and some below it.
What a score says. A score of 100 means a person did as well as the average person in the standardization sample, on that test, on that day.

In words: most people, about two in three, land within 15 points of the average, and a score tells you where a person stood compared with the reference group on one test.

Scores have also shifted over time. The Flynn effect is the rise in average performance on intelligence tests from one generation to the next, which requires tests to be re-standardized from time to time. Researchers still debate its causes. What it does show is that an average score is not a fixed fact of nature.

A limitation worth saying plainly: an IQ score is one measured slice of a mind. It says nothing direct about kindness, effort, creativity, courage, or the practical skill Sternberg described. It is a position on one scale, not a measure of a person's worth.

Misconception check. Students often think an IQ score measures everything that matters about a mind. It is tempting because the score is a single, official-looking number. The cure is to read the operational definition. An IQ score is performance on one standardized test, compared with one reference group, on one day. Creativity, practical skill, and character sit outside it, and so does a person's worth.

Pause and think. Choose one of these two prompts; they carry equal weight.

(a) Describe someone you know who is highly capable in a way no written test would capture, and name the theory of intelligence that best describes that ability.
(b) Describe a number that was once used to sum you up, such as a grade, a ranking, or a step count, and explain what that number left out about you.

Key terms

Cognition — The mental activities involved in knowing: thinking, forming categories, judging, solving problems, remembering, and using language. (first used: 1. Organize what you know: concepts and prototypes)
Concept — A mental category that groups objects, events, or ideas that share features, such as "bird" or "furniture," so a new example can be recognized and reasoned about. (first used: 1. Organize what you know: concepts and prototypes)
Prototype — The most typical, best example of a mental category, such as a robin for "bird"; new examples are judged by how closely they resemble it. (first used: 1. Organize what you know: concepts and prototypes)
Algorithm — A step-by-step procedure that guarantees a correct solution if it is followed completely, though it can be slow. (first used: 2. Solve problems two ways: algorithms versus heuristics)
Heuristic — A fast mental rule of thumb that usually leads to a good answer with little effort but can produce predictable errors. (first used: 2. Solve problems two ways: algorithms versus heuristics)
Availability heuristic — Judging how common or likely something is by how easily examples of it come to mind, so vivid, recent, or repeated events seem more frequent than they are. (first used: 3. Judge by memory and by resemblance: availability and representativeness)
Representativeness heuristic — Judging how likely something is by how much it resembles a typical case, often while ignoring how common each possibility actually is. (first used: 3. Judge by memory and by resemblance: availability and representativeness)
Base rate — How common a category or outcome is in the whole group being considered, such as how many people in a town work in each job, before any description of one person is known. (first used: 3. Judge by memory and by resemblance: availability and representativeness)
Confirmation bias — The tendency to search for, notice, and remember evidence that fits what one already believes while overlooking evidence that contradicts it. (first used: 4. Catch three more biases: confirmation bias, framing, and overconfidence)
Framing — The way a choice or fact is worded, such as "90% fat-free" versus "10% fat"; a framing effect occurs when the same information leads to different judgments because of the wording. (first used: 4. Catch three more biases: confirmation bias, framing, and overconfidence)
Overconfidence — The tendency to be more certain that one's judgments and answers are correct than their actual accuracy supports. (first used: 4. Catch three more biases: confirmation bias, framing, and overconfidence)
Fixation — An inability to see a problem from a new angle, which keeps a person stuck on one approach that is not working. (first used: 5. Get unstuck: fixation, mental set, and functional fixedness)
Mental set — The tendency to keep using a method that worked on earlier problems, even when a different or simpler method would work better on the current one. (first used: 5. Get unstuck: fixation, mental set, and functional fixedness)
Functional fixedness — The tendency to see an object only in its usual job, such as a coin only as money, which hides other ways it could be used to solve a problem. (first used: 5. Get unstuck: fixation, mental set, and functional fixedness)
Phoneme — The smallest unit of sound in a language that can change a word's meaning, such as the sounds that make "cat" differ from "bat." (first used: 6. Build language from small parts: phonemes, morphemes, and grammar)
Morpheme — The smallest unit of language that carries meaning, which may be a whole word such as "break" or a part of one such as the prefix "un" or the plural "s." (first used: 6. Build language from small parts: phonemes, morphemes, and grammar)
Grammar — The system of rules in a language that lets speakers combine sounds and meaning units into words and sentences that others can understand. (first used: 6. Build language from small parts: phonemes, morphemes, and grammar)
Syntax — The part of grammar that sets the rules for ordering words into sentences, so that "the dog chased the cat" and "the cat chased the dog" mean different things. (first used: 6. Build language from small parts: phonemes, morphemes, and grammar)
Babbling — The first stage of language development, in which an infant spontaneously produces strings of speech sounds, such as "ba-ba-ba," that are not yet words. (first used: 6. Build language from small parts: phonemes, morphemes, and grammar)
Telegraphic speech — An early stage of language development in which a child speaks in short, mostly noun-and-verb sentences that leave out small words, such as "go car" or "want more milk." (first used: 6. Build language from small parts: phonemes, morphemes, and grammar)
Intelligence — The mental ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations. (first used: 7. Compare three views of intelligence: g, multiple intelligences, and the triarchic theory)
General intelligence (g) — Charles Spearman's proposed single, broad mental ability that underlies performance on many different kinds of mental tests, so people who do well on one tend to do well on others. (first used: 7. Compare three views of intelligence: g, multiple intelligences, and the triarchic theory)
Multiple intelligences — Howard Gardner's proposal that people have several relatively independent kinds of intelligence, such as musical, spatial, and interpersonal ability, rather than one general ability. (first used: 7. Compare three views of intelligence: g, multiple intelligences, and the triarchic theory)
Triarchic theory — Robert Sternberg's theory that intelligence has three parts: analytical intelligence for solving academic problems, creative intelligence for handling new situations, and practical intelligence for everyday tasks. (first used: 7. Compare three views of intelligence: g, multiple intelligences, and the triarchic theory)
Intelligence quotient (IQ) — A score on a standardized intelligence test, scaled so that the average score is 100 and about 68 percent of people score between 85 and 115. (first used: 8. Read the IQ scale: what a score says and what it does not)
Standardization — Giving a test in the same way to a large, representative sample and using that group's scores as the yardstick against which every later test taker's score is compared. (first used: 8. Read the IQ scale: what a score says and what it does not)
Flynn effect — The rise in average performance on intelligence tests from one generation to the next, which requires tests to be re-standardized from time to time. (first used: 8. Read the IQ scale: what a score says and what it does not)

Summary

A concept is a mental category; its prototype is the best, most typical example.
An algorithm guarantees a solution but can be slow; a heuristic is fast but can mislead.
Availability judges frequency by how easily examples come to mind.
Representativeness judges by resemblance and tends to ignore the base rate.
Confirmation bias favors evidence that fits a belief you already hold.
Framing changes a judgment through wording alone; overconfidence outruns accuracy.
Fixation, mental set, and functional fixedness are three ways a solver gets stuck.
Phonemes are sounds, morphemes are meaning units, and grammar and syntax combine them.
Early language runs babbling, one-word, two-word, then telegraphic speech.
Spearman proposed g, Gardner several intelligences, and Sternberg three parts.
IQ tests are standardized: the mean is 100, and about 68% score between 85 and 115.
An IQ score is one measured slice of a mind, not a measure of a person's worth.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

A pharmacy flyer says a vaccine "protects 95 out of 100 people," and a second flyer for the same vaccine says it "fails to protect 5 out of 100 people." Do the two flyers state the same fact? Show the arithmetic, and name the bias the difference in how they feel illustrates.
After three friends post photos from a music festival where someone lost a phone, Nadia decides phones are stolen at most festivals. Which heuristic explains her judgment, and what question would help her check it?
Count the morphemes in "rewriting" and in "dogs," and explain why "banana" has only one morpheme even though it has three syllables.
A luggage lock has four dials, each with the digits 0 to 9. How many combinations would an algorithm that tries every code have to cover in the worst case? Why might a traveler try a heuristic first?

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

Yes. Out of 100 people, 100 − 95 = 5 are not protected, so "95 out of 100 protected" and "5 out of 100 not protected" describe the same result. If one flyer feels more reassuring, the wording is doing that work. That is framing.
The availability heuristic. Nadia is judging how often something happens from how easily examples come to mind, and three recent, vivid posts make theft easy to recall. A helpful check is "How often does this happen across all festivals, not only the ones my friends posted about?" That question points her toward the base rate instead of the memorable examples.
"Rewriting" has three morphemes: re (again), write (the root), and ing (an ongoing action). "Dogs" has two: dog and the plural s. "Banana" has three syllables but one morpheme, because none of its parts, such as "ba" or "na," carries meaning on its own.
Each dial has 10 digits, so there are 10 × 10 × 10 × 10 = 10,000 combinations. An algorithm that tries them in order is guaranteed to open the lock, but it might take all 10,000 tries. A traveler might first try codes that mean something, such as a birthday, because that heuristic is fast and often works, even though it is not guaranteed.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz — and next week the drive-reduction model asks what moves you to act in the first place.

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