7.1-7.3 Flashcards
or cognition refers to the mental activity that goes on in the brain when a person is organizing and attempting to understand information and communicating information to others.
Thinking
There are two types of thinking, referred to as
system 1 and system 2
Involves making quick decisions and using cognitive shortcuts
Guided by our innate abilities and personal experiences.
SYSTEM 1
Relatively slow, analytical, and rule-based
Dependent more on our formal educational experiences.
SYSTEM 2
refer to the mental representations that stand for objects or events and have a picture-like quality.
Mental images
is weaker than normal perception. It provides a weaker perceptual experience than sensory reception.
Mental imagery
Information goes from
the eyes to the visual
cortex of the occipital
lobe and is processed
by other areas of the
cortex that compare
the new information to
information already in
memory.
Actual Image
Areas of the cortex
associated with stored
knowledge send
information to the
visual cortex, where
the image is perceived
in the “mind’s eye.”
Mental Image
Takes shorter time to
interpret since it is a
bottom-up process.
actual image
Takes longer to
generate since it is a
top-down process.
mental image
refers to the process that researchers used to be able to see the overlap that occurs in brain areas activated during visual mental imagery tasks as compared to actual tasks involving visual perception.
Functional Neuroimaging
During both types of tasks, activity is present in the following:
Frontal cortex (cognitive control)
Temporal lobes (memory)
Parietal lobes (attention and spatial memory)
Occipital lobe (visual processing)
We can store information in multiple ways, including both
a depictive pictorial format and in a propositional descriptive format.
refer to the ideas that represent a class or category of objects, events, or activities.
Concepts
Refer to concepts that are defined by specific rules or features that are quite rigid.
FORMAL CONCEPTS
Refer to concepts that people form not as a result of a strict set of rules but rather as the result of experiences with these concepts in the real world.
NATURAL CONCEPTS
refer to an example of a concept that closely matches the defining characteristics of the concept.
Prototypes
are one of the ways people organize the information that bombards their senses everyday.
Concepts
Organizations may take the form of
schemas or scripts.
refer to the mental generalizations about objects, places, events, and people.
Schemas
refers to the kind of schema that involves a familiar sequence of activities.
Scripts
refers to the process of cognition that occurs when a goal must be reached by thinking and behaving in certain ways.
Problem-solving
refers to the process of cognition that involves identifying, evaluating, and choosing among several alternatives.
Decision-making -
Refers to the method in which one possible solution after another is tried until a successful one is found.
Trial and Error (Mechanical Solution)
Mechanical solutions can also involve solving by
ROTE
(a learned set of rules).
rote
Refer to the very specific, step-by-step procedures for solving certain types of problems.
Algorithims
Will always result in a correct solution if there is a correct solution to be found and you have enough time to find it.
Algorithims
Also known as the “rule of thumb” as these are simple rules intended to apply to many situations
Heuristics
Refer to an educated guess based on prior experiences that helps narrow down the possible solutions for a problem.
Heuristics
Unlike algorithms, ____ will not always lead to the correct solution.
heuristics
Refers to the assumption that any object (or person) sharing characteristics with the members of a particular category is also a member of that category.Can be used or misused to create and sustain stereotypes.
Representativeness Heuristic
Refers to the process of estimating the frequency or likelihood of an event based on how easy it is to recall relevant information from memory or how easy it is for us to think of related examples. - Impacts our judgment based on how easy it is to bring an example to mind, not the accuracy of what we recall.
Availability Heuristic
A more useful heuristic that does work much of the time done by working backward from the goal.
Working Backward
Sometimes it’s better to break a goal down into subgoals so that as each one is achieved, the final solution is much closer
Subgoals
refers to when the solution to a problem seems to come suddenly to mind, seemingly just “popped” into your head
“Aha!” moment
Insight
refers to a block to problem solving that comes from thinking about objects in terms of only their typical functions.
Functional fixedness
refer to the tendency for people to persist in using problem-solving patterns that have worked for them in the past. People then are often hesitant or even unable to think of other possibilities.
Mental sets
refers to the tendency to search for evidence that fits one’s beliefs while ignoring any evidence that does not fit those beliefs.
Confirmation bias
