Personality, Intelligence and Psychometrics - Essay Example

Personality, Intelligence and Psychometrics Discuss the potential sources of error and bias in the development and application of intelligence tests. Intelligence tests are advantageous and useful, yet at the same time, disadvantageous as errors and biases may occur in the development, as well as in the application of these. Cultural biases are one of the reasons as to why intelligence tests may have errors and biases in its development and application. The country where these tests were developed may be following a standard set of norms, and values that may not be applicable to the other side of the world - which is an entirely different culture. Western culture is very much liberal and expressive compared to that of the Eastern culture. Lifestyle may also vary, noting still, it's relevance with culture. Culture involves spirituality, traditions, customs, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours, serve as filters through which the person may respond to its surroundings. Another of the potential sources of error and bias in the development and application of intelligence tests is the ongoing debate of whichever is more influential, heredity or environment - nature vs. nurture. In this aspect, the validity of the test is also affected, thus affecting its development and application. With such controversies continuing, the tests are still in use, but not anymore the sole determiner of the child's mental and emotional abilities and conditions ("Intelligence Tests"). 2. Describe and evaluate, with minimum guidance, contemporary theories of personality and intelligence. Theories of personality have a widespread interest among most schools of psychology and had contributed many ideas in this field of psychology. Freud's theory on personality centres more on the human sexuality, whereas psychologists such as Jung and Horney may beg to differ. However, when it comes to contemporary theories of personality, it is usually connected to intelligence. The cognitive aspect of personality is popularized by Carl Jung. In this theory, it states that by changing our thoughts, it follows that we change our moods, our anxiety, and the state of our relationships. With such, an individual tends to decrease his or her anxiety, and even improve their relationships with others (Heffner). Personality according to other psychologists, deals only with one's emotions, especially needs as individuals in terms of the physiological nature, as well as the emotional nature. However, most of them have failed to see how the mind or the cognitive aspect affects personality - seeing it as a very strong influence on one's emotional and physiological needs. The mind is a very powerful thing - as the saying goes, "mind over matter" - wherein the mind can literally control a person's emotions by justifying or rationalizing any event or circumstance that the person might be going through. A similar effect goes for a person's perception to actually increase or decrease his or her anxiety on a situation - depending on how he or she might perceive it. 3. Compare and contrast theories equating intelligence either with "mental speed" or "working memory". Mental speed may be characterized by the person's ability to calculate ideas, or come up with ideas but may not necessarily mean that high level of intelligence is the basis for such. Working memory, on the other hand, requires the individual the ability to understand spoken sentences, or remembering a string of numerical digits. In this aspect, intelligence is based on the individual's ability to process information, requiring efforts mentally. Mental speed is too, requiring intelligence. However, a person who is very much familiar with a certain idea, or topic may be faster in speed, compared to the other who may not be as familiar with it. However, familiarity to something doesn't measure level of intelligence. 4. Appreciate the relationship between theory and assessment of individual differences. An individual difference is the fact that not all humans are alike - exactly. Test theories assess individuals at how unique they are from another. It was developed to account for sampling differences within domains, and can be generalized to account for differences between these domains. Just like different samples of words will yield somewhat different estimates of vocabulary, as well as different cognitive tasks, like for example, performance in vocabulary and math or arithmetic. The theory of Individual Differences makes it so clear that each person has his or her own ability in performing certain tasks, making the individual someone different than his neighbour. Personality, as well as cognitive ability is very much connected, and the assessment and theory of such is very much in agreement that it is very clear for most individuals, as to the theory and validity of Individual Differences (Revelle). 5. Critically evaluate the humanistic approach to personality. The humanistic approach to personality is a part of the theoretical and therapeutic system of psychology. This approach emphasizes particularly on the human processes - the uniqueness of the individual, the validity of the subjective experience, the freedom of choice, and the tendency for each individual to strive to realize his potential. This kind of approach grew out of the works of Abraham Maslow. This approach to personality simply defines the personality of an individual out of the measurement of how he copes with his needs. Personality includes the cognitive aspect and it is something very much important. However, in the Humanistic approach, it is only the individual's needs that define his or her personality. Individual differences may be linked here, as well as perception, but nothing amounts to the wholeness of the personality in terms of the different aspects of personality (Chaplin). 6. Evaluate Freud's structure of the mind. According to Sigmund Freud, the structure of the mind contains 3 aspects: the Id, the Ego, and the Superego. When they all work together, they produce a complex behaviour known as personality. The Id functions in the irrational and emotional part of the mind, making it the source of all basic needs and feelings. The Pleasure Principle is the only rule for the Id. The Ego on the other hand, functions in the rational part of the mind. The Ego is in touch with reality, and is aware that a person cannot always get what he wants. The Reality Principle is the Ego's rule. The Superego is the last part of the personality to develop. This is referred to generally, as the moral part of the mind. The Superego is the embodiment of all the rules, as well as the societal and parental values that has been bestowed upon each individual. The Superego forms the Ego Ideal, which provides rules for good behaviour, and the Conscience, which is a collection of the things that the child feels his parents will disapprove of or punish. All three aspects must be well-balanced in order to have reasonable mental health. If the Id is too strong, the individual is bound up to self-gratification, and is uncaring to other people. If the Ego is too strong, the result may be a very efficient and rational person, yet he may be boring and distant. If the Superego, on the other hand, is dominating the individual's personality, the result may be a person who is feeling guilty all the time, and may have quite a saintly personality (Neil 2004). Learning, memory and perception 1. Describe some theoretical differences between notions of short -term memory and working memory. Short term memory is very much similar to Long term memory. However, short term memory is used in situations or circumstances wherein the need for retention of certain information doesn't require it to be long term. Working memory, on the other hand, is short term memory made up of complex set of interacting subsystems - like trying to understand a spoken sentence, or remembering a string of digits (Orangi). 2. Using examples, describe how experience affects visual perception. Perception, according to Tichtener, is a group of sensations to which meaning is added from past experience. Experience directly affects visual perception as it only shows the person what the individual recognizes out of past experiences. For example, a native in an island who has never seen a ship may not be able to see a ship in front of him, but rather a big platform-like house similar to a cliff and may be deemed as something strange. A child who was never exposed to sea creatures, specifically shrimps, may think of it as an insect, and would really believe it to be an insect, such as a worm or caterpillar as he has never been introduced to an object called shrimp before (Chaplin). 3. Describe some advantages and disadvantages of operant approaches in the treatment of phobias. The operant approach is by nature a response approach. The stimulus need not be known, but how it reacts to the environment is actually the concern. Phobias are strong, irrational fear elicited by a specific stimulus or situation. Treating phobias with the use of operant approaches may cause the individual to get over his fear/phobia on something, yet not knowing the stimulus for such may not "cure" it completely. A certain phobia may have its roots within the person's unconscious, and not delving into the stimulus, and just focusing on the response may just resolve it temporarily (Chaplin 337). 4. What do we mean by systematic desensitization Systematic desensitization is a technique in behaviour therapy developed by Joseph Wolpe. In this technique, the patient imagines a hierarchy or anxiety-producing situations under conditions of physical relaxation with the aim/goal of weakening the anxiety responses (Chaplin 460). A woman who always thought of flying in airplanes caused anxiety for her may be asked to visualize a beautiful picturesque of her destination, calming down her senses. Essay questions: 1. What advantage, if any, does Baddeley's Working Memory model offer over Atkinson & Shiffrin's concept of short term memory Baddeley proposed, together with Hitch, a working memory model as an alternative to the concept introduced by Atkinson & Shriffin. Baddeley & Hitch's model is made up of three main components: the Central Executive, the Phonological Loop, and the Visuo-spatial Sketch-pad. The Central Executive acts as the supervisory systems and controls the flow of information from and to its short-term memory storage systems that are dedicated to the verbal and visuo-spatial domains. The Phonological Loop provides four findings: the effect of phonological similarity, the word length effect, the effect of articulatory suppression, and the effect of irrelevant speech. The Visuo-spatial Sketchpad on the other hand, is used to remember shapes, colours, or the location or speed of objects in space. Atkinson & Shiffrin's 'multi-store' memory model, states that the human memory involved three stages: Sensory, short-term, and long-term. In this model, a person may be able to see, hear, as well as feel things around him, but may only retain a small number of it in his memory. Baddeley and Hitch's model states that different information has components specifically for its retention. However, Atkinson & Shiffrin's model states that each stage builds off the one preceding - information that can't make it through the short-term memory has no possibility of becoming imprinted in long-term memory. 2. Using two examples describe and discuss how the study of visual illusions informs us about the human visual system. The human visual system analyzes the interactions between visible electromagnetic waves and the objects around us, takes out information about the world from them, and makes visual perception possible. In visual perception, an individual creates a figure or shape that does not appear as such in reality, but we can have a mental representation of it, so that despite various circumstances, it can still be recognized the individual. Optical/visual illusions provide a very good way to study how the brain fills in missing or ambiguous information, thus opening new doors in learning more about the way people perceive the world. One example of such illusions, is the Hermann grid, in which gray spots appear at the intersections of the rows and columns that has been made by the squares. If you are staring directly at one of the intersections, the gray spot disappears, and instead, looks white. This is because the individual is using the cells of the fovea, which doesn't do much correction of the area's surroundings. In this visual illusion, a phenomenon called lateral retinal inhibition occurs. Another category of illusions involve the subjectivity of contours, wherein the figure can become the background, and vice versa. An example of this would be two faces facing each other that delimit a space forming a goblet, and thus, one's perception can alternate between the faces looking at each other, and the goblet (Dubuc). 3. Demonstrate an understanding of concepts and neurocognitive models. Neurocognitive models emerged in the past two centuries as a solution to the longstanding antagonism between two opposing views in neuropsychology. The reconciliation of these views began with the idea of Wernicke's idea that complex functions of cognition are properties of distributed systems of linked brains regions are composed of elementary functions expressed by the individual regions (Bressler). Neurocongition involves the control and coordination of sensory and motor processing areas in other cognitive functions such as selective attention, working memory maintenance, and episodic memory retrieval. Neurocognitive models illustrate the cognitive functions linked with the areas of the brain such as the neural pathways, or the cortical networks. It seeks to understand how the brain's structure, as well as its function is related to an individual's thought and behaviour. These models tend to create an understanding on how the brain functions, and why such head injuries or traumas may reduce the neurocognitive ability of one's brain. Or neurological problems and disorders such as schizophrenia may also be defined further with neurocognitive models. 4. Display understanding of theories of perception and attention and the different methodologies used in the research of perception. Perception is basically the ability to recognize and interpret directly through the senses, or the intellect, whereas attention is the capability of the individual to concentrate or focus using his mental powers upon an object. How the brain perceives something doesn't necessarily mean that it is exactly what it is in reality. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, "not everything that stimulates our sensory receptors is transformed into a mental representation. Rather, we selectively attend to some objects and events and ignore others. If we could not select, we would be automatons reduced to responding to whatever stimulus happened to be the strongest at any moment. Our behaviour would be influenced solely by whatever thought, memory, or impulse was passing through our minds, and we have no goal-directed control over our actions." In perception, various methods in research have been used, including the determining of how perception works by the use of visual or optical illusions. This method have defined perception in a clearer light showing to us that our minds could play tricks on us, especially with the environment that the object comes with. The filter theory of 1958, also proposed that attention was a limited capacity channel that determined the serial processing of the perceptual system (TIP-Concepts). 5. Describe the behavioural principles of reinforcement, punishment, extinction, discrimination, and generalization, and identify applied examples of each. In behavioural psychology, there are methods that act as stimulus in the development of an individual. Reinforcement and punishment are two stimuli that have been developed by B.F. Skinner. Reinforcements can either be positive or negative, whereas they are otherwise known as reward and punishment, respectively. These are the things that shape the individual's behaviour in society - such as whether these would get them into trouble, or give them a pat in the back. Extinction on the other hand, is the gradual diminution in magnitude or rate of a conditioned response withdrawal of the reinforcement or of the instrumental reward. Discrimination however, is the process of distinguishing between two subjects, as well as the process of distinguishing differences between stimuli. Generalization is the process of forming an idea or judgement applicable to an entire class of objects, people, or we may also say, events. Identification on the other hand, is the process of recognition - placing objects or individuals in a class according to certain characteristics (Chaplin). 6. Describe specific memory problems associated with brain damaged patients, and understand theoretical claims regarding the neuroanatomical bases of different memory functions. Memory problems associated with brain damaged patients usually include conditions such as Alzheimer's dementia, amnesia, and the like. Alzheimer's dementia is a case wherein the person goes into senility, only retaining the memory he or she has had a long time ago. In this sense, they can retain long term memory they have encoded in their brains a long time ago, but cannot anymore retain short term memory that they are currently experiencing. Amnesia, on the other hand, is the deleting of one's memory, thus turning it into something like a "blank slate". However, there may be several kinds such as temporary amnesia, wherein the memory comes back after some time; partial amnesia, wherein the memory lost is just partial, and the individual can still remember some while forgetting the others; there could also be the worst case, total amnesia, wherein the individual cannot remember anything, even his name. However, it may be categorized as temporary amnesia, when a stimulus triggers a part of the brain, thus restoring the person's memory. According to Winbald, Hardy, Backman, and Nilsson, in terms of memory function and brain biochemistry in aging and senile dementia, the cortical motor areas are relatively not involved in the neuro-degenerative changes in normal aging and in Alzheimer's Dementia, or Senile Dementia, and this might provide a nueroanatomical basis for the mildly to moderately senile's success in memory performance when motor action is involved. Read More