PSY101

Introduction to Psychology
THE DOMINANCE OF BEHAVIOURISM WAS COMING TO AN END,
THE 1950s’ ADVENT OF COMPUTERS BROUGHT ABOUT THE…
 Cognitive psychology
 Sub-discipline of psychology
 Studies mental processes and how they relate to
behaviour
 Cognition
 The way in which information is processed and
manipulated in remembering, thinking, and
knowing.
 Early 20th century
 Dominated by behaviourism
 Human mind is ill defined and irrelevant to
science
 1950s
 Renewed focus on mental processes and
functions due in large part to the advent of the
computer – If we could “see” what computers
were doing internally, perhaps we use those same
observations to study how the human mind works
 Computer analogies
 New way to think about human mind.
Brain = Hardware
Mind/Cognition = Software
 Use computers to model the human mental
processes
 Brain:
Input (data/commands)  output
 Human Mind:
Input (info from the senses)  output
 What is happening in between?
 Computer analogies cont.
 Not as complex as real human brain
 Finite responses
 Albeit with fewer errors
 Cannot simulate all possible outcomes
 Can they learn?
 Artificial Intelligence
 A scientific field that focuses on creating machines
capable of performing activities that require
intelligence when they are done by humans
 Can be very useful – used in diagnosing medical
conditions and prescribing treatment, examining
system failures and evaluating job and loan
applications, etc.
 How has the computer provided cognitive
psychologists with a new way of studying the
human brain?

 How is the human brain more complex than

the computer?

 What was the “cognitive revolution”?

Process of manipulating information mentally
by:
1) forming concepts,
2) solving problems,
3) making decisions, and
4) reflecting in a critical or creative manner
 Concepts
 Mental category that is used to group objects,
events, and characteristics
 Organises information
 Important functions
 Allow generalisations – Fruits are good for you.
 Associate experiences and objects – Do you like
soccer? Will you like basketball?
 Aid memory – You know what to do with a chair.
 Provide clues about how to react – Wear clothing.
 Concepts
 Prototype model
When people evaluate which concept something new
belongs to, they compare it to the most common
item(s) in that category. They look for “family
resemblance”.
Are tomatoes fruits?

 Explanation of concept structure – What makes a fruit a

fruit?
 All instances of a concept are compared to a prototype of
that concept – Does a tomato have those?
 Most typical item (ideal example) – Best example of fruit?
 Recognise exceptions to properties – Can tomato be a
fruit regardless of the exceptions?
 Problem Solving
***Concepts tell us what we think but not why***
 Mental process of finding an appropriate way to
attain a goal when the goal is not readily
available.
 4 steps
 Find and frame problem
 Develop good problem-solving strategies
 Evaluate solutions
 Rethink and redefine problems and solutions over time
 Problem solving
 Find and frame problems
 Recognise the problem
 Difficult to learn because many problems are unclear
and ill defined
 This involves being mindful and open to experiences
 And also listening to that inner voice that says that,
“there must be a better way”
 Problem solving
 Develop good problem solving strategies
 Subgoals
 Setting intermediate goals – If you have to study for
the psychology final exam, how will you do it? How
will you set sub(mini)goals to build up to the major
goal?
 Defining intermediate problems – How will you solve
each of them to solve the major goal?
 Working backward – Establish the major goal and
break it up into subgoals, and begin with the first in
the line.
 Problem solving
 Develop good problem solving strategies
 Algorithms
 Strategies that guarantee a solution to a problem –
Recipe (algorithm) for roast chicken, directions
(algorithm) to get you to the party, etc
 Many forms
 Can take a long time
 Problem solving
 Develop a good problem solving strategy
 Heuristics
 Shortcut strategies or guidelines – Life hacks and
substitutes?
 Suggest a solution to a problem
 No guaranteed answer
 Used more than algorithms in real-world
 Narrow down possible solutions
 Problem solving
 Evaluate solutions
 Does your solution work?
We won’t know until we see if it resolved the problem.
 Have clear criterion for effectiveness of solution

What will indicate to you that the problem has been

solved?

 Rethink and redefine problems and solutions over

time
 Problem solving is not stagnant
Constantly evolving.
 Improve on past performances and solutions
 Problem solving
 Fixation
 Obstacle to problem solving
In order to be good at solving problems, acknowledge that
you do not know everything and be open to learning and
evolving.
 Definition: Using a prior strategy to solve a new problem
 Failing to look from a fresh perspective
 Functional fixatedness
 Failing to solve a problem as a result of fixation on a
thing’s usual functions

 Effective problem solving

 Thinking out the box
 Try something new
 Reflect on past strategies
 Reasoning
 Mental activity of transforming information to
reach conclusions
 Involved in problem solving and decision making
 2 types
 Inductive reasoning
 Deductive reasoning
 Reasoning
 Inductive reasoning
 Reasoning from specific observations to make
generalisations
 Driven by data

 Bottom – up

 Form beliefs about the world

 Scientific knowledge – result of inductive reason

Example:
We study a sample in psychological research, but can
generalize to the population.
 Reasoning
 Deductive reasoning
 Reasoning from a general case that is known to be true
to a specific instance
 Draw conclusions based on facts

 Psychology – predictions based on theory

Example:
Theories are created from general observations, and in
psychological research we use theories to predict the
outcomes specific to our research
 Top - down
 Decision making
 The mental activity of evaluating alternatives
and choosing among them
 No guarantee of consequences/desired outcome
 Try to maximise outcome
 Might not have all information
 Might not trust all information
 Systems of reasoning and decision making
2 systems:
 Automatic
 Gut feeling
 Processing is rapid, heuristic, and intuitive
 Feels right but not always know why

 Controlled
 Slow, effortful, and analytical
 Conscious reflection of issue
 Biases and heuristics
 Affect quality of decisions
 Problem-solving strategies usually effective
 Heuristics and gut feelings can lead to mistakes
 Confirmation bias
 Base rate fallacy
 Hindsight bias
 Representative heuristic
 Availability heuristic
 Biases and heuristics
 Confirmation bias
 Tendency to search for and use information that supports one’s ideas
rather than refutes them
 Easy to detect – because we tend to seek out people that agree with
us and avoid those that do not. Even if those that disagree have valid
evidence.

 Base rate fallacy

 Tendency to ignore information about general principles, or statistics,
in favour of very specific and vivid information.

Example:
Steve works at a Stroke Association medical centre. As a result, he comes
in contact with a lot of stroke patients. So he now believes that there is
a high incidence of stroke in Gaborone, even though the statistics
indicate that it is not higher than in any other city in the region.
 Biases and heuristics
 Hindsight bias
 Tendency to report falsely, after the fact, that one has
accurately predicted the outcome
 AKA, “I knew it along”

 Representative heuristic
 Tendency to make judgements about group
membership based on physical appearances or the
match between a person and one’s stereotype of a
group rather than on available base rate information
 Stereotypes – generalisations about a group of people
 Biases and heuristics
 Availability heuristic
 A prediction about the probability of an event based
on the ease of recalling or imagining similar events
 Can reinforce generalisations about others

Especially if famous people provide examples of such an

event – drug use, failed relationships, money problems
etc
 Critical thinking
 Thinking reflectively and productively
 Evaluating the evidence
 Grasp deeper meaning of ideas
 Question assumptions
 Decide for yourself
 Critical thinking
 Important for effective problem solving
 Keep open mind
 2 essential habits: Mindfulness and open-mindedness
 Mindfulness
 The state of being alert and mentally present for one’s
everyday activities
 Responds in a thoughtful way to various experiences
 Mindless – engages in automatic behaviour without
careful thinking

 Open-mindedness
 The state of being receptive to other ways of looking at
things
 Prevents jumping to conclusions
 Creative thinking
 Creativity
 The ability to think about something in novel and
unusual ways
 Devise unconventional solutions to problems
 Divergent thinking
 Thinking that produces many solutions to the same
problem – characteristic of creativity (Brainstorming
session on how the Orange network can attract more
young people?)
 Convergent thinking
 Thinking that produces the single best solution to a
problem – like in academic tests and exams
 Creative thinking
 Characteristics
 Flexibility and playful thinking
 brainstorming
 Inner motivation
 Willingness to face risk
 Objective evaluation of work
 Emotions and cognition
 Moods influence the way we think
 Bad moods
 Use careful logic to solve problems
 Good moods
 Efficiency, originality, creativity, ignore irrelevant
information
 Define what concepts are, what their four functions
are, and give theories that explain them.

 List the steps in problem solving and give potential

biases that can occur in the process.

 Define reasoning and contrast the two types of

reasoning.

 Define decision making and problems that are

associated with decision making.

 Describe critical and creative thinking and explain

how they can enhance cognitive effectiveness.
 Applies to behaviour or person
 Difficult to define in people
 Varies with culture
 All-purpose ability to do well on cognitive
tasks to solve problems, and to learn from
experience
 Spearman’s g
 Intelligence captures a common general ability
 Ability is reflected in performance on various
cognitive tasks
 General intelligence underlies performance
 Intelligent person – jack of all cognitive trades
 Measuring intelligence
 Validity
 The extent to which a test measures what it is
intended to measure
 Criterion validity
 One measure predicts the values of another measure
For example, the intelligence test would predict
intelligence in school.

 Test performance operational definition is against

some criteria
The operational definition of intelligence in that test
matches the criteria of intelligence in that context
 Measuring intelligence
 Reliability
 Extent to which a test yields a consistent,
reproducible measure of performance
 Produces same score over time and repeated testing
 Valid tests must be reliable
 NOT VICE-VERSA!!!!
If a test is valid, then it must be reliable. Meaning, if
the test actually measures intelligence, then it should
produce the same score each time.
However, a test can be reliable and not be valid.
Meaning, a test can produce the same score each time
but not be an actual measure of intelligence as it
claims to be.
 Measuring intelligence
 Standardisation
 The development of uniform procedures for
administering and scoring a test
Differences in how the test is administered and scored
can result in difference in scores that has nothing to do
with intelligence.
 The creation of norms (performance standards) for the
test
This is done by administering the test to a large group of
people representative of that population. Then you have
an understanding of what is low, average, and high
intelligence in that specific population
 Allows comparable interpretations

 Norms are specific for different groups

 IQ Tests
 Alfred Binet (1904)
 Determine which children would benefit from regular classroom
instruction
He was hired by the French Ministry of Education to devise a
method of uncovering which students required special classroom
instruction, and which ones could continue with regular instruction

 Binet-Simon Intelligence test

 30 items
Ranged from questions on touching nose/ear, drawing pictures
from memory, etc
 Compare actual abilities to expected age abilities
Binet developed the concept of mental age (MA) and he compared
it to chronological age (CA)

Average intelligence: MA = CA
Above average: MA > CA
Below average: MA < CA
 IQ Tests
 William Stern
 Intelligence quotient (1912)
This, shortened as IQ, was devised by William Stern

 Individual’s mental age divided by chronological age

multiplied by 100

 IQ = (MA/CA) x100
 IQ test
 Stanford-Binet Test
 Revisions of original test done at Stanford University
Hence the current name of the test, Standford-Binet
 Most widely used today

 60 items

 Ages 2 upwards

Example item for kids’ test: Explain orange and envelope

Example item for adults’ test: Compare idleness to laziness

 Normal distribution
 A symmetrical, bell-shaped curve, with a majority of the
scores falling in the middle of the possible range and few
scores appearing toward the extremes of the range
 Cultural bias
 Early tests were biased
Favoured urban rather than rural, middle class rather than low class,
White rather than Black

 US Army A and B tests example

In WWI, military psychologists developed Army Alpha for
literate recruits and Army Beta for illiterate recruits/recruits
who were not fluent in English.

 Culture-fair tests
 Intelligence tests that are intended to be culturally unbiased
 Difficult to create

Intelligence varies across cultures, the dominant culture is

favoured
 Raven Progressive Matrices Test
 Genetic and environmental influences
 Genes influence intelligence
 More than 1,000 genes
Genetic locations for intelligence have been found on
chromosome 4, 6, and 22
 No specific genes linked to specific components

 Heritability
 Proportion of observable differences in a group that can
be explained by differences in the genes of the group
members
 Intelligence – approx. 50%
 Not information about individual
 Changes over time and across groups
 Increases from childhood to adulthood (from 35% in
childhood to about 75% in adulthood)
 Genetic and environmental influences
 Environment matters
 Changes in environment can change IQ scores
 Enriched environment – higher IQ scores
 Flynn effect
 Education has positive effect on intelligence around
the world
 Shift in the distribution of IQ scores

 Environmental influence is complex

 Enriched environment does not guarantee success
 Poverty does not guarantee no success
 Extremes of intelligence
 Giftedness
 Possessing high intelligence
 IQ - 130 or higher
 Superior talent in a particular area
 Terman (1925) – sample of 1500 gifted children
 Socially well adjusted and successful as adults
 Importance of innate ability
 Showed superior talent at a very young age
 Deliberate practice adds on to ability
 Extremes of intelligence
 Intellectual disability
 Limited mental ability
 Low IQ - below 70
 Difficulty adapting to everyday life
 First exhibited characteristics before age 18
 Mild, moderate, severe/profound
 Conceptual skills
 Social skills
 Practical skills
 Extremes of intelligence
 Intellectual disability
 Organic intellectual disability
 Caused by genetic disorder or brain damage
 IQ between 0 and 50
 Example: Down syndrome
 Cultural/familial intellectual disability
 No evidence of organic brain damage
 Grow up in below-average intellectual environments
 Can be outgrown as they mature into adulthood
 Theories of Multiple Intelligences
 Which is the appropriate understanding of
intelligence: General ability or number of
specific abilities?
 Sternberg’s Triarchic theory
 Intelligence comes in 3 forms
 Analytical intelligence – ability to analyze, judge,
evaluate, compare and contrast
 Creative intelligence – ability to create, design,
invent, originate, and imagine
 Practical intelligence – ability to use, apply,
implement, and put ideas into practice
 Theories of multiple intelligences
 Gardner’s Multiple intelligences
 9 intelligence types
Have degrees of all intelligences
 Verbal – ability to think in words and use language to
express meaning
 Mathematical – ability to carry out mathematical
operations
 Spatial – ability to think 3-dimensionally

 Bodily-kinaesthetic – ability to manipulate objects and

to be physically adept
 Musical – ability to be sensitive to pitch, melody,
rhythm, and tone
 Interpersonal – ability to understand and interact
effectively with others
 Theories of multiple intelligences
 Gardner’s multiple intelligences cont.
 Intrapersonal – ability to understand oneself
 Naturalist – ability to observe patterns in nature and
understand natural and human-made systems
 Existentialist – ability to grapple with the big questions of
human existence

 Teachers stimulated to think broadly about how to

teach
 Multiple domains
 Taken idea too far – some forms of intelligence are
technically the same
 Research base not yet there
 If a person is good in one area, they also tend to be
good in others
 What is intelligence?

 How is it measured and what are the challenges

with that?

 Discuss the role of genetics and the environment

in determining level of intelligence.

 What are the characteristics of intellectually

gifted and intellectually disabled people?

 Discuss the two theories of multiple

intelligences.
 Form of communication that is based on a
system of symbols
 Spoken, written, or signed
 Infinite generativity
 Ability to produce an endless number of
meaningful sentences
5 basic rule systems
 Phonology
 Morphology
 Syntax
 Semantics
 Pragmatics
 Phonology
 A language’s sound system
 Phonemes – basic sounds of language
 Rules about what sound sequences are allowed
Consider /tl/ in Setswana vs /x/ in Xhosa
 Phonemes can sound slightly different depending
on the word
English phenome /k/
ski vs cat
 Morphology
 A language’s rules for word formation
 Morpheme – smallest unit that carries meaning
 Every word is made up of at least one morpheme
help = one morpheme
helper = two morphemes, help + er
 Some morphemes are not words - -ing, tion etc
 Certain strings of sounds occur in particular
sequences
 Syntax
 Language’s rules for combining words to form
acceptable phrases and sentences
John hit Mark.
Mark was hit by John.
 Sentence structure
 Semantics
 Meaning of words and sentences in a particular
language
girl vs woman
 Every word has unique meaning
 Words have semantic restrictions on how they
can be used
 Can be grammatically correct but not
semantically correct
That piece of cake was calling my name.
 Pragmatics
 The useful character of language
 Ability of language to communicate even more
meaning than is verbalised.
“Excuse me?”
 Language and Cognition
 Language is vehicle which we communicate most
of our thoughts
 Whorf’s linguistic relativity hypothesis
 Language determines the way we think
 Critics – words reflect the way we think
 Language is a key feature of culture
 Cognition and Language
 Cognition is important foundation of language
 Separate systems
 Language ability not very highly linked with general
cognitive ability
 Related
 Biological influences
 Evolution
 Vocal apparatus evolved to allow more sophisticated language
expressions
 Increased chances of survival

 Language universals
 Noam Chomsky
 Biologically prewired to learn language at a certain time and in a
certain way
 Language milestones are global

 Language and the brain

 Particular regions predisposed to language
 Hemispheric specialisation – language processing mainly occurs in the
left hemisphere
 Broca’s area (speech production)
 Wernicke’s area (language comprehension)
 Environmental influences
 Language acquisition influenced by:
 Child’s experiences
 Specific language
 Context of learning
 No social vacuum
 Learning a new language
 Special cognitive exercise
 Overriding habits of first language
 Discriminate new sounds
 Might enhance general cognitive ability
 Define language, its structure, and the main
rule systems therein.

 What are the connections between language

and thought?

 Discussbiological and environmental

influences on language.

 Discuss
the major milestones in language
development.
 Individual'sinterpretation of events in their
lives as harmful, threatening, or challenging
 Determination of whether you have resources
to cope effectively
 Coping – kind of problem solving
 Primary appraisal
 Interpret whether an event involves:
 Harm or loss that has already occurred
 Threat of some future danger
 Challenge to overcome

A student who thinks of a low grade as a challenge to be

overcome will cope better than a student who thinks of
a low grade as harm that is already done or a threat of
failure in the future.
 Secondary appraisal
 Evaluate resources and determine how
effectively they can be used to cope with the
event
 Depends on extent event is deemed harmful,
threatening, or challenging

The student who considered the low grade as a

challenge to be overcome is more likely to
accurately evaluate and leverage resources
available to him/her.
 Cognitive reappraisal
 Reinterpret an experience
 Think about it in a different way
 Can change way you feel about situation
 Benefit finding
 Focusing on the good consequences of stressful event
if your life
 Explainthe role of cognitive appraisal in
coping with stress, including the different
types of appraisal.

 What is coping?

 Outline effective strategies for coping.