Chapter 8 Flashcards
Cognition
All of the mental activities associated with thinking, including knowing, remembering, solving problems, making judgements and decisions, and communicating.
Cognitive psychology
The study of these mental activities and how they work
Mental representations
An internal mental symbol that stands for some object, event, or state of affairs in the world
Concepts
A mental category that groups similar objects, events, ideas, or people
Family resemblance
A concept that can have a set of features that each family member has some subset of, even though different family members have different subsets of features
Prototype
A best example or average member of a concept that incorporates most of the features most commonly associated with it
Basic-level concepts
Words like apple and bird
Superordinate concepts
More abstract and encompass basic-level concepts. Words like furniture, fruit, and animal
Subordinate concepts
More specific concepts within basic-level concepts, like rocking chair, Granny Smith apple, and hummingbird
Algorithms
A step-by-step procedure for solving problems that guarantees a solution
Insight
A sudden, conscious change in a person’s understanding of some situation or problem.
Mental set
A mental framework for how to solve problems based on prior experience with similar problems
Functional fixedness
An obstacle to problem solving that involves focusing on an object’s typical functions, thus failing to recognize atypical functions that could help solve a problem
Restructuring
The process of reorganizing one’s understanding of a problem to facilitate a solution
Judgements
Conclusions we draw from evidence we have at hand
Decisions
Choices that affect our behavior
Rational decision
A decision based purely on reason and logic
bounded rationality
The idea that rational decision making is constrained by limitations in peoples cognitive abilities, available information, and time
Dual-processing theories
People have two types of thinking that they can use to make judgements and decisions
Controlled system
Slower and effortful, leads to more thoughtful and rational outcomes
Automatic system
Fast and fairly effortless and leads to decent outcomes most of the time
Heuristics
A mental shortcut that allows people to efficiently solve problems and make judgements and decisions
Representative heuristic
A mental shortcut for judging the likelihood of something based on how well it represents some category
Availability heuristic
A mental shortcut for deciding how frequent or probable something is based on how easily examples come to mind
Affect heuristic
A mental shortcut for making judgements and decisions that involves relying on affect- the good-for-me feelings we associate with various objects and events in the world
Confirmation bias
The tendency to look for and weigh evidence that confirms preexisting beliefs more strongly than evidence that is inconsistent with those beliefs
Belief perserverance
The tendency for people to resist changing their beliefs, even when faced with disconfirming evidence
Framing
The particular way that an issue, decision, or set of options is described. Framing can change decisions by shifting the decision maker’s reference point
Loss aversion
The tendency to make choices, including riskier ones, that minimize losses
Overconfidence bias
The tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one’s knowledge and judgements
Hindsight bias
The tendency, once some outcome is known, to overestimate the likelihood that one would have predicted that outcome in advance