10. Solving Problems: Reasoning and Intelligence

Question 1

Analogy

Answer 1

In ethology and comparative psychology, any similarity among species that is not due to common ancestry but has evolved independently because of some similarity in their habitats or lifestyles. For contrast, see homology. (p. 84) In problem solving, a similarity in behavior, function, or relationship between entities or situations that are in other respects, such as in their physical makeup, quite different from each other.

Question 2

Inductive reasoning

Answer 2

Logical reasoning from the specific to the general; the reasoner begins with a set of specific observations or facts and uses them to infer a more general rule to account for those observations or facts; also called hypothesis construction.

Question 3

availability bias

Answer 3

Tendency, in reasoning, to rely too much on information that is readily available to us and to ignore information that is less available.

Question 4

confirmation bias

Answer 4

Tendency of people to seek evidence that confirms, rather than disconfirms, their current hypotheses.

Question 5

predictable-world bias

Answer 5

Tendency to believe that events are more predictable than they actually are.

Question 6

Deductive reasoning

Answer 6

Logical reasoning from the general to the specific; the reasoner begins by accepting the truth of one or more general premises or axioms and uses them to assert whether a specific conclusion is true, false, or indeterminate.

Question 7

Insight problems

Answer 7

A problem that is difficult to solve until it is viewed in a new way, involving a different mental set from that originally taken.

Question 8

mental set

Answer 8

A habit of perception or thought, stemming from previous experience, that can either help or hinder a person in solving a new problem.

Question 9

functional fixedness

Answer 9

The failure to see an object as having a function other than its usual one.

Question 10

stereotype threat

Answer 10

The threatened feeling that occurs, during the taking of a test, when a person is reminded of the fact that he or she belongs to a group that, according to a culturally prominent stereotype, is expected to perform poorly on the test.

Question 11

flynn effect

Answer 11

The systematic increase in IQ scores (about 3 points per decade) observed over the twentieth century.