You learned that animals’ communication is not considered language because animals don’t use a sequence of symbols to generate novel sentences. Are there examples of communication in humans that, similarly, conveys information, but that would not be considered language? [Analyze]
We all know that first impressions are lasting impressions. How might confirmation bias explain this phenomenon? Have you ever been the “victim” of confirmation bias—
In 2007 a cat named Oscar experienced mild fame. It seemed Oscar had an uncanny ability to predict the deaths of at least 50 patients at the nursing and rehabilitation home where he lived. As patients neared the end of their lives, Oscar would curl up in bed with them, seemingly to see them off. His “hit rate” was so good that nurses used his visits as a signal that they should call in the family members of the soon-
You learned about three judgmental heuristics: availability, representativeness, and anchoring and adjustment. In what way do they benefit our judgment making? Conversely, generate examples of instances when these heuristics may result in poor judgments (this may be accomplished most easily with representativeness and anchoring and adjustment). What seems to be the tradeoff in applying heuristics? [Analyze, Comprehend]
You read about research by Shepard and Metzler (1971) in which the amount of time it took participants to answer a question about a rotated shape depended on how much they would have to mentally “unrotate” that shape. How is this an example of embodied cognition? [Analyze]
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What do you think explains the Flynn effect; that is, why has the average IQ increased so rapidly across time? Are you and your peers smarter than your parents or other childhood caregivers, or is something else at work? [Analyze]
How do you suppose Gardner determined that there were eight different types of intelligence? If you were to start from scratch to determine how many different kinds of intelligence existed, where would you begin? [Synthesize]
Come up with a definition for “street smarts.” Which of Gardner’s multiple intelligences is involved in street smarts? Are there skills inherent in street smarts that are not reflected in his list? Do the same for “book smarts.” [Analyze]
This chapter’s Cultural Opportunities feature presents information about research on the role of culture on language. In it, you learned that people in Western cultures are adjective users, whereas people from Eastern cultures use state verbs (e.g., “likes,” “hates,” “prefers”). This difference originates in differences in how people think; Westerners tend to think about the inner qualities of objects, whereas Easterners consider objects as being embedded in environments. What do you think are the implications of this for the kinds of attributions people make about others’ behavior? For instance, what kinds of inferences would Westerners and Easterners make for someone who showed up late for class? For someone who brought cupcakes to class? [Analyze]