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(1987). IU (CORT), 30 minutes
Examines research on human–animal communication that indicates chimpanzees and dolphins
are capable of understanding words rather than just exhibiting learned responses.
Communication: The Nonverbal Agenda (1988). CRM, 30 minutes
Provides an overview of the field of nonverbal communication. Examines how a variety of
behaviors, such as tone of voice, posture, facial expressions, use of space, eye contact, and body
movement may either reinforce or contradict verbal messages.
The Mind: Thinking (1988). CRM, 24 minutes
Thinking is defined as the ability to manipulate a model of the world and to plan a course of
appropriate action. Discusses two “failures” in psychology created by our misunderstanding of
thinking: the Prefrontal Lobotomies and the use of IQ Tests to measure thinking.
CASE STUDY LECTURE LAUNCHER
At the age of 16, Edith Eva Eger’s world turned upside down. She and her family were suddenly
arrested and interned in Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp in Poland. Shortly after they
arrived at Auschwitz, her mother was sent to the gas chamber. Before she was taken away, she
urged Edith and her sister to live their lives fully. “Remember,” she said, “what you put inside your
brain, no one can take away.” (Eger, 1990, p. 6).
In the horror-filled existence of concentration camp life, Edith found that the basic logic of the world
was reversed. The notions of good behavior she had learned growing up “were replaced by a kind
of animal quiver, which instantly smelled out danger and acted to deflect it.” Matters of life and
death were decided as casually as flipping a coin. You could be sent to the “showers of death” for
having a loosely tied shoelace.
After years of being brutalized, the camp inmates longed for freedom, yet, paradoxically, also
dreaded it. When their liberators arrived, some prisoners “rushed forward but most retreated and
even returned to their barracks.”
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CHAPTER 9: COGNITIVE PROCESSES
Edith was a fortunate survivor. She later married, immigrated to the United States, and became a
clinical psychologist. Recently, at the age of 61, Dr. Eger’s need to understand the twisted reality of
the camps motivated her to return to Auschwitz. “I came to mourn the dead and celebrate the living,
I also needed to formally put an end to the denial that I had been a victim and to assign guilt to the
oppressor.” For many years, she had denied the horrible truths of her camp experiences, but
eventually denial was unacceptable to her. By reliving the events of her incarceration and forcing
herself to think about the meaning of that horror, Dr. Eger believes she has become better able to
help others understand events that seem inexplicable in the context of their everyday lives.
The fundamental human desire to comprehend the nature of one’s existence that motivated Dr. Eger
was eloquently described by another survivor of Auschwitz, Italian writer Primo Levi. He reports,
“It might be surprising that in the camps one of the most frequent states of mind was curiosity. And
yet, besides being frightened, humiliated, and desperate, we were curious: hungry for bread and
also to understand. The world around us was upside down and somebody must have turned it
upside down . . . to twist that which was straight, to befoul that which was clean” (Levi, 1985, p.
99).
Edith took her mother’s last words to heart. No one can take away what she has put in her brain.
No one can take away what you have put in your brain. By becoming a psychotherapist, Dr. Eger
chose a career in which she helps others cope with personal realities that defy rational explanation.
Noting that today’s college students have little knowledge of the Holocaust, she hopes “that some
day, when they are ready, my grandchildren will have the curiosity to ask their grandmother
questions about the time when the world was turned upside down. So that if it starts tilting again,
they and million of others can redress it before it is too late” (p. 9).
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CHAPTER 10
Intelligence and Intelligence Assessment
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
On completion of this chapter, students should be able to:
1. Describe both the original purposes of psychological assessment and the purposes for
which it is commonly used today
2. Identify the methods used to assess individual differences in practice
3. Define reliability and validity
4. Compare and contrast the major theories of individual differences
5. Define the construct of intelligence
6. Describe Binet’s approach to intelligence testing
7. Communicate what is meant by the “politics of intelligence”
8. Identify objective and projective intelligence tests
9. Explain the differences between intelligence tests that are theory based and those that are
empirically based
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. What Is Assessment?