Chapter 5: Thinking, Language, and

Intelligence
Learning Competencies:
•Explain the relationship between
language and thinking
•Define the Meaning of
Intelligence
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 HOW DO PEOPLE THINK?

D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 Thinking
Thinking – Thinking involves manipulating information, as
when we form concepts, solve problems, think critically,
reason, and make decisions.
A. Concept Formation – Regardless of the kind of thinking we
engage in, our thinking is fueled by concepts.
Concepts – are mental categories that are used to group
objects, events, and characteristics. Humans have a special
ability for creating categories to help us make sense of
information in our world.
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 Concepts are important for several
reasons:
1. Concepts allow us to generalize, If we did not have
concepts, each object and even in our world would be
unique to us.
2. Concepts allow to associate experiences and objects.
Basketball, Football and track are sports. The concept of
sport gives us a way to compare these activities.
3. Concepts “Grease the wheels of memories”, making it
more efficient so that we don’t have to “reinvent the
wheel” each time we come across a piece of information.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 Concepts are important for several
reasons:
4. Concepts provide clues about how to react to a
particular object or experience.
• Forming a concepts can be a complicated learning
process, involving observation, hypotheses, and
testing, generalization, and discrimination and
experience. In general, concepts with more features
and more complicated rules are more difficult to
learn.
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 B. PROBLEM SOLVING
An attempt to find an appropriate way of attaining a goal
when the goal is not readily available.
Steps in Problem Solving:
1. Find and Frame the Problem
2. Develop Good Problem-Solving Strategies
3. Evaluate Solutions
4. Rethink and Redefine Problems and Solutions over time
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 Obstacles in Solving Problem
1. Fixation – Using poor problem-solving strategy
and failing to look at a problem from a new
perspective. – new methods in solving the
problem.
2. Functional Fixedness – A type of fixation in which
individuals fail to solve a problem because they
are fixated on a thing’s usual function. – inability
to see new uses of certain objects or techniques.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 Obstacles in Solving Problem

3. Mental Set – A type of fixation in

which an individual tries to solve a
problem in a particular way that has
worked in the past.

D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 C. CRITICAL THINKING

Is thinking reflectively and productively and

evaluating the evidence. People who think
critically grasp the deeper meaning of ideas,
keep an open mind about different
approaches and perspectives, and decide for
themselves what to believe or do.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 D. REASONING

Is the mental activity of transforming

information to reach conclusions. Reasoning
can be either inductive or deductive.
•Inductive Reasoning – from specific to general.
•Deductive Reasoning – from general to specific

D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 E. DECISION MAKING
Think of all the decisions you have made in your life.
Decision making involves revaluating alternatives and
making choices among them. In Inductive reasoning,
people use established rules to draw conclusions. In
contrast, when we make decisions such as rules are not
established, and we don’t know the consequences of the
decisions. Some of the information might be missing,
and we might not trust all of the information we have.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
W h e r e S o u l E m p o w e r s Te c h n o l o g y
 E. DECISION MAKING
Decision making involves a choice and often presents
people with a potential conflict. Psychological Research
has demonstrated that two factors influence the
resolution of decision-making conflict:
1. The utility, or value of each of the choices.
2. The Individuals judgement about the probability
that each choice will actually occur.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
W h e r e S o u l E m p o w e r s Te c h n o l o g y
 LANGUAGE

•Is a form of communication, whether

spoken, written, or signed that is based
on a system of symbols.
•Language is the means we use for
communications.

D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 LANGUAGE
There are two important factors that influence
language development:
a.) age
b.) opportunities of learning and using the language.
Language’s Role in Cognition – For one thing, memory
is stored not only in the form of sounds and images but
also in words.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 LANGUAGE

Cognition’s role in Language: If

language is a reflection of cognition
in general, we would expect to find a
close link between language ability
and general intellectual ability.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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Semantics: The Meaning of What is
Said
The function of language is to say
something to someone. The
“something” is the meaning (the
semantic content) that is
communicated through language.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 Intelligence
The capacity to think and reason clearly
and to act purposefully and effectively in
adapting to the environment and
pursuing one’s goals.

D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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Emotional intelligence

-the ability to recognize and

manage emotions
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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INTELLIGENCE - Elusive and Vague
• Is the ability to solve problems and to adapt and learn from everyday
experiences.
• The main components of intelligence are similar to those of the
cognitive processes of problem solving, thinking, and memory. The
distinction lies in the concepts of individual differences and
assessment.
• Individual Differences – are the stable, consistent ways in which people
are different from one another. Individual differences in intelligence
generally have been measured by tests designed to tell us whether a
person can reason better than others who have taken the test.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 The measurement of Intelligence:
The Binet and Wechsler Scales
1. The Binet Scale – The first form of the test Alfred Binet developed in
1905, was a point scale; the 30 questions were scored either pass or
fail and a total score was derived. This test measured sensorimotor
behavior, sensory discrimination, memory, and simple comprehension.
In 1908, he revised his test and arrange the items according to age level at
which they could generally be passed; there were not the same number of
tasks nor the same number of functions at each age level.
In 1911, he further revised his test and equalized the number of tasks at
each level and rearranged the placement of the tasks according to their
measure of difficulty.

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 Measuring Intelligence
Alfred Binet & Theodore Simon
• mental age: A representation of a person’s
intelligence based on the age of people who are
capable of performing at the same level of
ability.
• subtracted the child’s mental age from his or her
actual age
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 German psychologist, William Stern
• intelligence quotient (IQ): A measure of intelligence based on performance on
tests of mental abilities, expressed as a ratio between one’s mental age and
chronological age or derived from the deviation of one’s scores from the
norms for those of one’s age group
• Stern divided mental age by chronological age, yielding a “mental quotient.”

MENTAL AGE (MA)

CHRONOLOGICAL AGE (CA)
Adopted by Binet & Simon

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 Henry Goddard
• Brought the Binet-Simon intelligence test to
the United States, also held another
important distinction. He briefly served as
coach of the USC football team.
• He remains to this day the only undefeated
head coach in USC history.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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Stanford University psychologist, Lewis
Terman
• Adapted the Binet-Simon test for American use,
adding many items of his own and establishing
criteria, or norms, for comparing an individual’s
scores with those of the general population.
• The revised test, known as the Stanford-Binet
Intelligence Scale (SBIS), was first published in
1916.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 Norms:
• The standards used to compare an individual’s
performance on a test with the performance of
others.
• Standardization: The process of establishing
norms for a test by administering the test to
large numbers of people who constitute a
standardization sample.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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David Wechsler
• Wechsler scales: group test questions into a
number of subtests. Each subtest measures
different intellectual tasks.
• Highlights individual weaknesses and
strengths.

D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 Characteristics of a Good Intelligence test
• reliability: The stability of test scores over time.

• validity: The degree to which a test measures what it

purports to measure.

• predictive validity: the degree to which test scores

accurately predict future behavior or performance
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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Characteristics of a Good Intelligence test
• culture-fair tests: Tests designed to eliminate
cultural biases.

• mainstreaming: The practice of placing children

with special needs in a regular classroom
environment.

D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 Theories of Intelligence
Spearman’s “g"

British psychologist Charles Spearman observed that people

who scored well on one test of mental ability tended to score
well on other tests. He believed that there is an underlying
general factor of intelligence that allows people to do well on
mental tests. He also believed that intelligence includes
specific abilities that, along with “g,” contribute to performance
on individual tests.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 Spearman’s “s"
•Spearman's symbol for specific
factors, or s factors, which he
believed accounted for individual
abilities.

D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 Psychologist Louis L. Thurstone
• Did not believe that any one large, dominating
factor like “g” could account for intelligence.
Rather, his studies pointed to a set of seven
primary mental abilities: verbal comprehension,
numerical ability, memory, inductive reasoning,
perceptual speed, verbal fluency, and spatial
relations.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 Psychologist Howard Gardner
• Rejects the view that there is a single entity called
“intelligence.” Rather, he believes there exist different types
of intelligence, multiple intelligences, that vary from person
to person. Gardner identified eight different intelligences:
linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-
kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist
• According to Gardner’s model of multiple intelligences, we
possess separate intelligences that we rely on to perform
different types of tasks.
D O N B O S C O T E C H N I C A L I N S T I T U T E — V I C T O R I A S
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 Psychologist Robert Sternberg
• Emphasizes how we bring together different
aspects of our intelligence to meet the demands
we face in our daily lives. Sternberg proposes a
triarchic theory of intelligence, which holds that
intelligence has three aspects: analytic
(academic ability), creative ( Cope with
situations and find many solutions to problems),
and practical("street smarts").
Open-Ended Quiz:
• If you we’re to be choose: What do you think will be the
highest form of qoutient in terms of Intelligence of a
human? Explain and support your answer.

IQ=Intelligence Qoutient
EQ=Emotional Qoutient
SQ=Social Qoutient
AQ=Adversity Qoutient
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