Ch. 6 Flashcards
What are the components of thought?
Thinking is a cognitive process in which the brain uses information from the senses, emotions, and memory to create and manipulate mental representations, such as concepts, images, schemas, and scripts
Represent objects and events from direct experience
Natural concepts
The most representative examples of a conceptual category
Prototypes
Defined by rules
Artificial concepts
What is particularly important for coordinating brain activity?
The frontal lobe
Making judgements without consciously reasoning
Intuition
A cluster of related concepts that provides content and expectations about the features likely to be found when you encounter familiar people, situations, images, and ideas
Schema
A cluster of knowledge about sequences of events and actions expected to occur in particular settings
Script
What abilities do good thinkers posses?
They have a repertoire of effective strategies called algorithms and heuristics, and they know how to avoid common impediments to problem solving and decision-making.
Problem solving procedures or formulas; guarantee a correct outcome if applied correctly
Algorithms
Cognitive strategies used as shortcuts to solve complex mental tasks; do not guarantee a correct solution
Heuristics
Tendency to respond to a new problem in the manner used for a previous problem
Mental set
Inability to perceive a new use for an object associated with a different purpose; a type of mental set
Functional Fixedness
Using unnecessary restrictions; not thinking “outside the box”
Self-Imposed Limitations
Makes us pay attention to events that confirm our beliefs and ignore evidence that contradicts them
Confirmation Bias
The tendency, after learning about an event, to “second guess” or believe that we could have predicted the events in advance
Hindsight Bias
Faulty heuristic caused by basing an estimate on a complete irrelevant quantity
Anchoring Bias
Faulty heuristic strategy based on presumption that, once people or events are categorized, they share all the features of other members in that category
Representativeness Bias
Faulty heuristic strategy that estimates probabilities based on the availability of vivid mental images of the event
Availability Bias
The impairment of effective decision making when one is confronted with an overwhelming number of choices
Tyranny of Choice
What produces extraordinary creativity?
Knowledge; expertise, aptitude, personality characteristics
Amount of trait variation WITHIN a group that can be attributed to genetic differences
Heritability
