Thinking, Intelligence and Creativity Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The condition is semantic dementia.

Semantic dementia, a form of frontotemporal dementia involving the anterior temporal lobes, causes a progressive, general loss of conceptual knowledge: of the meanings of words, of objects and of facts, across all kinds of concepts and in every modality. Episodic memory for recent events is relatively spared in the early stages.

'Semantic impairment' is a descriptive term rather than a condition, and category-specific semantic deficits affect only some kinds of concepts, such as living things. 'Conceptual dementia' and 'monoamine deterioration' are not recognised conditions with this profile.

Answer: C

The correct code is (P)-(1), (Q)-(4), (R)-(3), (S)-(2).

• A conjunctive rule joins attributes with AND: an instance must have both, for example red and square.
• A disjunctive rule uses OR: either attribute is enough.
• A conditional rule takes the form IF ... THEN.
• A biconditional rule takes the form IF AND ONLY IF ... THEN.

These are the logical rules studied in concept-formation research (Bourne and others). Options A, B and D give the conjunctive rule the wrong relation.

Answer: A

Sternberg's three kinds of components are performance components, metacomponents and knowledge acquisition components.

In the componential subtheory of Robert Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence:

• metacomponents are the executive processes that plan, monitor and evaluate problem solving;
• performance components carry out the plan, for example encoding, inferring and applying;
• knowledge acquisition components are used to learn new information.

Option B substitutes 'knowledge derived', and options C and D list components that are not in his theory.

Answer: B

The 'Aha' phenomenon is associated with Kohler's insight theory.

Wolfgang Kohler's studies of chimpanzees on Tenerife showed that an animal such as Sultan, after a period of apparently doing nothing, would suddenly solve a problem, joining two sticks or stacking boxes to reach bananas. The solution appeared all at once, as a restructuring of the perceptual field, which became known as the 'aha' experience.

Tolman's latent learning is learning that stays hidden until a reward makes it visible. Seligman's learned helplessness is giving up after uncontrollable aversive events. Bandura's observational learning is learning by watching models. None involves sudden insight.

Answer: D

The levels of object categorisation do not include an Ordinate level.

Eleanor Rosch described three levels of categories: the superordinate level (furniture, animal), the basic level (chair, dog), and the subordinate level (kitchen chair, beagle). The basic level is the one people use most readily: it is learned first, named fastest and carries the most information for the least effort.

'Ordinate level' is not one of the three levels; it is formed by dropping the prefix from the real terms, which is the trap in the question.

Answer: B

The true statement is Function morphemes add detail and nuance to the meaning of the content morphemes.

A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language. Content morphemes carry the main meaning (words such as run, book), while function morphemes, such as prepositions, articles and grammatical suffixes like -s or -ed, add detail and nuance, signalling number, tense and relations between the content words.

The third option says 'largest unit', the reverse of the definition. The study of language above the level of the sentence is discourse analysis, not morpheme analysis. The first option's wording about a 'specific adaptation' does not describe content morphemes correctly.

Answer: B

The keyed difference is that novices tend to use means-end analysis to solve problems.

Studies of expertise, summarised for example by Sternberg, show that novices, lacking rich knowledge of the domain, rely on general strategies such as means-end analysis, working backwards from the goal and reducing differences step by step. Experts instead recognise the problem type from their large, well-organised schemas and work forward to the solution.

The other statements are wrong. Experts' schemas contain a great deal of declarative knowledge. It is experts, not novices, who monitor their own problem-solving accurately. And experts are generally flexible in adapting to new information, though deep entrenchment can sometimes make them less so.

Answer: B

The key gives Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).

Assertion: in Sternberg's account of insight in problem solving, selective encoding means picking out the information that is relevant to the solution from the irrelevant, so (A) is true.

Reason: an algorithm is a step by step procedure that, followed correctly, guarantees a solution to a problem of its type, and textbooks state it that way for problems however complex (the cost may be time, not failure). Read in that textbook sense (R) is a true statement. It describes algorithms, not selective encoding, and selective encoding is a sudden restructuring of what to attend to rather than a step by step routine, so (R) does not explain (A).

Hence the first option (R explains A) is wrong, and the options calling (R) false or (A) false are wrong on the keyed reading. A strict reader may doubt that any procedure reaches a solution to every very complex problem in practice; the key follows the textbook statement, which is the reading to carry into the exam.

Answer: C

The answer is (A) is true but (R) is false.

The assertion is true. People expect a random process to produce results that look random, for example that coin tosses will alternate heads and tails, and that a run of six heads is less likely than a mixed sequence, though both are equally likely. This belief underlies the gambler's fallacy.

The reason is false. This misconception of chance comes from the representativeness heuristic, judging a sequence by how much it resembles our idea of randomness, as Tversky and Kahneman showed. The availability heuristic, judging frequency by how easily examples come to mind, is a different bias.

Answer: B

The theory is Prospect theory.

Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory (1979) describes how people actually make decisions under risk and uncertainty. People evaluate outcomes as gains and losses relative to a reference point rather than as final states; losses loom larger than equal gains (loss aversion); and small probabilities are overweighted. This explains framing effects and why people are risk-averse for gains and risk-seeking for losses.

The theory of planned behaviour predicts behaviour from attitudes, norms and perceived control. Correspondent inference theory is about attributing dispositions from actions. Equity theory concerns fairness in relationships and at work.