Overcoming Mindsets Jill approaches the edge of a field with an unopened package. As she nears the field, she realizes that she is about to die. She is.

Overcoming Mindsets

• Jill approaches the edge of a field with an unopened package. As she nears the field, she realizes that she is about to die. She is in perfect health and no one is chasing her, but sure enough her dead body is found in the field later that day.

• Why?

Overcoming Mindsets

• Jamie died in the mountains and Craig died at sea. Everyone was happy with Craig’s death but no one was pleased about Jamie’s.

• Why?

Overcoming Mindsets

• What is unique about this sequence?

8 5 4 9 1 7 6 10 3 2 0

Overcoming Mindsets

• A man heading home encounters two masked men. He turns around to run away, but it is too late!

• What happened?

Overcoming Mindsets

• What starts with the letter E, ends with the letter E, contains only one letter but it is not the letter E?

Overcoming Mindsets

• A woman had two daughters born on the same hour of the same day of the same year but they were not twins.

• How could this be so?

Overcoming Mindsets

• Jane hits a homerun over her backyard fence and it falls into the middle of a neighbor’s lake. It’s her only ball so she runs to the lake to retrieve the ball. She does this and not only does she not get wet, the ball is not wet. The lake is very deep throughout.

• How does she avoid getting herself or the ball wet?

Overcoming Mindsets

• A man walks into a bar and asks for a glass of water. The bartender pulls out a shotgun and points it at him. The man says, thank you and leaves.

• Why?

Problems

• Definition: mismatch between the present state and a goal

• Problems include:– An initial state– A goal state– Strategies or actions to reach goal (problem space)

Small Problem Space

Fss (return to initial) ss (F) |ss (F) |

Fs | s F (s) | sF (ss) |

Fss (return to initial) Fs (s) |Fs (s) | far bank

near far

Initial: Fss |

Goal: | Fss

Mindsets are the biggest obstacles to Problem Solving

• Mental sets are forms of entrenchment– Often served by Confirmation Bias – ignore data that

discredits one’s ideas, highlight confirming evidence– Mindsets are forms of Fixation - inability to see a

problem from a fresh perspective = “field dependence”• Overgeneralization: one believes rules apply when actually they

don’t (e.g., name implies person; Waikato)– Functional Fixedness - tendency to think about familiar objects in

familiar ways that may prevent using them in other, more creative ways (e.g., use shoe or book as doorstop)

• Undergeneralization: one believes that rules don’t apply when actually they do (e.g., falling rates of a pound of feathers vs a pound of bricks)

• 4 straight lines, without lifting up pencil

Overgeneralization: Presume a rule, falsely constrained by edge of rows and columns

Undergeneralization – one presumes that points have no space, but obviously they do

Problem Types

• Well structured – clear problem space and path to solution (e.g., area of triangle)

• Ill structured – vague problem space and path to solution (e.g., SETI)

Problem Solving Techniques

• Algorithm – slow and plodding, 100% accurate– needs well-structured problem generally – total information needed

• Heuristic – quick, often correct but not 100% – total information is often not needed– (e.g., taller candidate wins presidency, longer name)

– Insight vs Plodding Solutions• Anagrams: EWT vs AABCEILNP

– (too large, mostly insightful solution)

HAL-9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey” was a Heuristic-ALgorithmic device

Structural Obstacles to Problem Solving

• Novelty

• Number of rules

• Complexity of rules

• Counterintuitive rules– Tower of Hanoi

employs

counterintuitive

strategies

Anagram answer: wet incapable

Psychological obstacles to Problem Solving

• Premature Cognitive commitment or inability to keep other hypotheses available- may focus on incorrect hypotheses when multiple hypotheses available

• Overconfidence- unrealistically confident in our predictions, esp. about our ability to accomplish

• Use of potentially Faulty Heuristics

Problems with heuristics

• Availability heuristic: occurs when people estimate probability of an outcome based on how easy that outcome imagined.

– Which is more likely: Dying from a shark attack or dying from injuries sustained from falling airplane parts (x30)

Problems with heuristics

• Representativeness heuristic: we judge things as being similar based on how closely they resemble each other using prima facie (at first sight), often superficial qualities, rather than essential characteristics. – Lucy wears her hair in bun, lives alone, dresses

very conservatively, and loves to read. Is she a librarian or a business woman? (x30)

Problems with heuristics

• Anchoring heuristic: Probability of an event is estimated by adjusting an earlier estimate rather than starting from scratch

Creativity = new + relevant (+ economic)

• Preparation – experience with problem

• Incubation – take time away from problem

• Illumination – solution appears suddenly (eureka moment)

• Verification – does solution work? Test it.

Kepler’s “Insight”

Criticism of this model of creativity

• Often continuous process, not single leap of insight• Often new problem identified instead of old problem

solved (representational change)

• Incubation may serve to:– new stimuli activate new perspectives or analogies– release from unimportant details

• or allow integration of remote seemingly unimportant cues

– release from memory interference– minimize negative transfer (past solutions do not apply)

Positive Transfer

• A medieval lord attacks city with army of 500 knights. Only 100 knights can cross bridge into city without bridge collapsing. Men must cross all at once to surprise enemy else they will be defeated.

• There are 6 bridges that lead into the city.

• What is the solution?

Positive Transfer

• Tumor in brain can be eliminated with radiation but it requires 400 rads (roentgen) and surrounding brain tissue will be damaged if exposed to more than 30 rads.

• What is the solution?

Positive Transfer

Negative Transfer

Negative Transfer

Representations

• Analogic – iconic; resembles some aspect

• Symbolic – arbitrary– Our representation can fixate our ways of

thinking about an object or event

DEMO: NAME INK COLORS

GLP

XTPD

RSLGT

ZMQ

WXFG

HLBG

NAME INK COLORS

MAPLE

BAR

HORSE

CHILD

CLOUD

FORK

NAME INK COLORS

GLPXTPDRSLGTZMQSPRHLBGOSLGTZQXRTREYYPWXFG

ROSLGGWLSLPDRSLGTOMQFGYTJBBRSLGTXLLLLFGTLG

WXFGGLPRMSMQLXTPDRSLGTTTGHBGUJULGTZQP

NAME INK COLORS

REDGREENBLUEBLUEREDBROWNGREENREDGREENBLUEBROWN

REDGREENBLUEGREENBROWNREDBLUEGREENREDGREENBROWN

BLUEREDREDBLUEBROWNGREENREDBLUEGREENREDBROWN

Stroop with numbers

Stroop Task

• Reading overlearned, difficulty to stop– It’s hard to inhibit an automatic processes

• Reading of color word competes with ink naming when incongruent.

Artificial Intelligence• Scientists in the field of A.I. are developing

computer systems that imitate the products of human perception and thought (any day now, 1970s on)

HAL from “2001”

An A.I. success: Chess

• Gary Kasparov split two close decisions

• After losing the second, he suspected that a human may have intervened

Artificial IntelligenceAlan M. Turing

– “Can machines think?”• Born June 23 1912,

London• Mathematician• Worked on breaking the

German codes (Enigma encryption machine) during WWII using COLOSSUS, a forerunner to the digital computer, built to decipher the Enigma

Germany’s Enigma MachineAutomated Encryption

Colossus, 1943 Bombe, 1940 (Bletchley Park )

Turing Test (1950)– a test of imitation

“Can machines think?” “Can machines behave intelligently?” Operational definition of intelligence is whether

someone intelligent believes they are interacting with another intelligence

Computer needs to possess: Natural language

processing, Knowledge representation, Automated reasoning, and machine learning

The Loebner Prize

• A contest to see if a computer program can pass a Turing Test

• Group of experts questions the several computer entrants yearly

Towards Autonomous Vehicles

Future EEG Applications

• Firefox and other brain-computer interfaces (BCI)

IntelligenceIntelligence Tests

-how best to assess

Nature of Intelligence

-unitary or multiplicity

Great Debate

-nature or nurture

Assessment of Intelligence

• Alfred Binet (1904) developed first intelligence test to screen French school children for potential academic problems.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

– Originally a ratio of mental age to chronological age

Mental Age

Chronological Age( ) x 100IQ=

IQ tests supposed to be aptitude or tests of potential

But they often test achievement, cultural knowledge

Use of IQ Tests• Individual testing originally:

Stanford-Binet, Wechsler, and others tested people one at a time.

• Group testing developed during World War I as U.S. Army administered tests for officer training selection.

• Group IQ tests screened immigrants in early 1900s. – Many Eastern and Central Europeans

judged mentally defective (due to low English proficiency)

Monty Python example• IN SKIT: Non-

English speaking humans scored the same as penguins on English IQ tests

• Therefore penguins are as smart as humans and start to take over the world

Wechsler Scales• Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale

(WAIS) and WISC (C=children)– Developed for adults originally– Widely used today – Separate Verbal and Performance scores – Standardized, based on % no longer mental age

Estimated IQs above 200.

Sample Items from the WISC-IIISample Items from the WISC-III

PICTURE COMPLETION

What part is missing from this picture?

Sample Items from the WISC-IIISample Items from the WISC-III

Block Design

Put the blocks together to make this picture.

IQ tests revised and standardized

• Administered to 1000s of people similar to those test is intended. • Calculate average & its distribution (IQ set to 100, std dev of 15)

Verification of independence for these components: differential aging

Are Intelligence Tests Accurate?

• Standardization – empirical norms (mean & standard deviation)

• Reliability - measures a variable consistently. (Reliability doesn’t ensure validity).

• Validity - measures what it intends to measure (e.g., free of cultural bias, language proficiency)

Are Intelligence Tests Biased?

Raven's

“Culture-Fair”

Test

Nature of Intelligence

General Intelligence (g)

g = broad intellectual-ability factor used to explain why performances on different intelligence-test items are often correlated

Neurophysiological evidence of g = Neural Speed correlates with IQ

Nature of IntelligenceHoward Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (8)

• Linguistic – Verbal ability, skills in speaking,

listening, reading, and writing

• Logical-mathematical– Abstract reasoning ability

• Musical– Ability to appreciate tonal

qualities of sound, skills to compose and play instruments

• Spatial– Visual ability, orienting oneself in

space and navigation

• Bodily-kinesthetic – Ability to control gross and fine

body movements

• Intrapersonal – Ability to understand oneself,

self-insight

• Interpersonal – Ability to understand others,

social skills

• Naturalistic– Ability to classify world

Nature of Intelligence

Sternberg's Triarchic Theory

Nature’s Influence on IQ• Genetic similarity

reflected in IQ scores

• MZ = monozygotic = identical twins = 100% genes,

• similar environment

• DZ = dizygotic = fraternal twins = ~50% genes similar environment

Nuture’s Influence on IQ• Environment similarity

reflected in IQ scores?

• Reared together = shared environment

• Reared apart = similar but unshared environment

Environments can magnify genetic influences

Self-fulfilling cycles, prophecies• Teacher with low expectations of a student may

settle for lower performance from student.

Environments can magnify genetic influences Enrichment experiments

Enriched Not Enriched

Effects of Schoolingwith 180-day yearwith 210-day year

• Project Head Start– Preschool intellectual-

enrichment program for children born of poor families

• 100,000s families served yearly

– Alumni score higher on IQ, more confident, less likely to repeat grades, and more likely to graduate from HS.

–

Environment’s influence on intellectual potential

Gender DifferencesMental-Rotation Test of Spatial Ability

• Which view shows a different view of the same object as each standard?

Gender DifferencesVerbal, Mathematical, and Spatial Abilities

• Girls > boys on verbal abilities and reading.• Boys > girls on spatial tasks• Girls > boys on arithmetic in grade school,

– but < boys surpass by Jr H.S.

Extremes of Intelligence• Giftedness

– Intelligence significantly above average– May be specific to a given domain

• Mental Retardation– A diagnostic category used for people with IQ

scores below 70 who have difficulty adapting to the routine demands of life

– Mild (IQ 50-70)– Moderate (IQ 35-49)– Severe (IQ 20-34)– Profound (IQ below 20)