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P/F Writing Assignment for Day 10
Chronic diseases and accident prevention as cognitively demanding jobs
Try this! How many hazards can you find in this picture? Bring it to class
Writing assignment:
1. Please develop two very different possible explanations—two competing theories—for why early IQ predicts later health. As described in your readings, the IQ-health link has been confirmed (actually exists)—your task here is to come up with alternative hypotheses that could possibly explain it. (For example, what explanation might a g theorist propose vs. what a skeptic of g theory might propose? Draw on your reading, where helpful, but try to go beyond it.)
2. Please describe the ways in which driving a car might, or might not, be cognitively demanding. Provide specific examples, and draw on evidence to support your claims. Here are two kinds of evidence you can draw upon:
· NALS findings about what increases literacy items’ “process complexity” (number of features to match, literalness of match, number & proximity of distracters, amount information to be integrated, number & literalness of inferences required, number & level of numeric operations to be determined).
· Job analysts’ findings about which particular job attributes and work contexts seem to pump up a job’s overall complexity (e.g., Tables 5, 7, and related text).
· NOTE: making your case will require you to create a logical connection between driving and g: (a) describe specific examples of tasks or challenges faced in driving [drawing on your experience], (b) describe exactly how those tasks are or are not complex [drawing on the evidence], and (c) then explain why the complexity of the tasks has anything to do with g, that is, with being cognitively demanding [drawing on evidence]. No linkage, no cigar.
3. Reminder: Please email me a thesis statement for your paper before Monday. (Several sentences only)
· Thesis=the claim you will prove plus the gist of the argument you will use to prove it.
· Note that this is much like a lawyer’s opening argument in a court case: “I will prove ___, and will do so by providing evidence that: (a)___(b)__(etc.)_ (DON’T USE THESE WORDS—I AM JUST ILLUSTRATING THE IDEA!!!)