Chapter 8

Question 1

What is cognitive psychology? What are 3 important aspects of cognition?

Answer 1

It is a broad field that includes the study of consciousness, memory, and cognitive neuroscience.
Thinking, intelligence, and language.

Question 2

What is Thinking?

Answer 2

Involves manipulating information mentally by forming concepts, solving problems, making decisions, and reflecting.

Question 3

What are Concepts?

Answer 3

They are mental categories that are used to group objects, events and characteristics. (apples are both fruits)

Question 4

Concepts are important for 4 reasons. What are they?

Answer 4

1. They allow us to generalize.
2. Concepts allow us to associate experiences and objects.
3. Concepts aid memory by making it more efficient (we dont have to think about how to sit on a chair every time we see one)
4. Concepts provide clues about how to react to a particular object or experience.

Question 5

What is the prototype model?

Answer 5

It is a model to understand the structure and function of concepts. It emphasizes that when people evaluate whether a given item fits a certain concept, they compare the item with the most typical item(s) in that category and look for resemblance with that item’s properties.

Question 6

What is problem solving?

Answer 6

finding an appropriate way to attain a goal when the goal is not readily available.

Question 7

What are 4 steps of Problem-Solving process

Answer 7

1. Find and Frame Problems: Involves asking questions in creative ways and “seeing” what others do not.
2. Develop Good Problem-Solving Strategies: These include subgoals (intermediate goals) and Algorithms (strategies that guarantee a solution to a problem) Heuristics (shortcut strategies that suggest a solution, not guarantee an answer)
3. Evaluate Solutions
4. Redefine Problem and Solution over Time: “Can we make the computer faster”

Question 8

What is Fixation? Functional Fixedness?

Answer 8

Involves using a prior strategy and failing to look at a problem from a fresh new perspective.
Functional fixedness occurs when individuals fail to solve a problem because they are fixated on a thing’s usual functions.

Question 9

What is Reasoning?

Answer 9

It is the mental activity of drawing conclusions from given information. It uses reason, which is weighing arguments and applying logic to come up with conclusions.

Question 10

What is Inductive Reasoning?

Answer 10

Type of reasoning that involves reasoning from specific observations to make generalizations. It means starting with incoming information and then drawing conclusions.
(Drinking milk, tasting sour, inductive reasoning is the reason you throw out the whole carton)

Question 11

What is Deductive Reasoning?

Answer 11

Reasoning from a true general principle to a specific instance. You are given information and DEDUCING some case is true.

Question 12

What is decision making and how does it differ from reasoning?

Answer 12

Reasoning involves following rules to reach a conclusion. In decision making, such rules may not exists, and we may not know the consequences of those decisions.

Question 13

What are 2 systems of Reasoning and Decision Making?

Answer 13

Automatic (system 1): processing that is rapid, heuristic, associative and intuitive. Following a hunch.
Controlled (system 2): Slower, effortful and analytical. It involves conscious reflection.

Question 14

What is loss aversion?

Answer 14

Refers to the tendency to strongly prefer to avoid losses compared to acquiring gains.

Question 15

What is the Endowment effect?

Answer 15

It is when people set greater value to things they already own compared to objects owned by someone else.

Question 16

What is sunk cost fallacy?

Answer 16

It refers to the fact that people are reluctant to give up on a venture because of past investment. (You have studied 2 years and realized you don’t like that program. You don’t switch majors because it might feel like a waste of 2 years.)

Question 17

What is Confirmation Bias?

Answer 17

The tendency to search for and use information that supports our ideas rather than refutes them.
It is also referred to as myside bias.

Question 18

What is Hindsight Bias?

Answer 18

It is our tendency to report falsely that we accurately predicted an outcome after it has already occurred.
(i knew it all along)

Question 19

What is Availability heuristic?

Answer 19

It refers to a prediction about the probability of an event based on the ease of imagining similar events.
(When you have a sudden fear of flying after you heard about a plane crash)

Question 20

What is Base rate neglect?

Answer 20

It is the tendency to ignore information about general principles in favor of specific, but vivid information.
(For example if you want to guess a students test average, and you are provided that the class average is 75%, that would be a good answer. However if the student told you how many hours they studied, it would interfere with your decision making. Its somewhat like misleading information)

Question 21

What is Representativeness heuristic?

Answer 21

It is the tendency to make judgements about group membership based on physical appearance rather than on available base rate information.
It is basically relying on stereotypes (a concept to make generalization about a group) for decision making.

Question 22

What is Bias blind spot?

Answer 22

It is when people who recognize bias in other people fail to see it in themselves.

Question 23

What is Critical thinking? What are 2 mental habits that are essential for critical thinking?

Answer 23

It is thinking productively and evaluating the evidence.
Mindfulness and Open-mindedness

Question 24

What is Mindfulness?
What can you say about a mindful person?

Answer 24

It is being mentally present for one’s everyday activities.
A mindful person is actively aware of the circumstances of his or her life.

Question 25

What is Open-mindedness?
What is Open-minded thinking?

Answer 25

It is being receptive to other ways of looking at things.
It refers to thinking that is flexible and open to questioning

Question 26

What is Creativity?
How is it characterized?

Answer 26

It is the ability devise unusual ways to solve problems.
Creative thinking is characterized as divergent and convergent thinking.

Question 27

What is Divergent thinking?

Answer 27

A type of creative thinking that produces many solutions to the same problem. It occurs during brainstorming, when you throw out a range of possibilities.

Question 28

What is Convergent thinking?

Answer 28

A type of creative thinking that produces the single best solution to a problem. It is when you take all the possible solutions and finding the right one for the job.

Question 29

What are some characteristics of creative individuals?

Answer 29

1. Playful thinking: you are more likely to consider any possibility and ignore the fear of being judged for silly ideas.
2. Inner motivation: less motivated by external rewards and more from the joy of creating.
3. Willing to take risks: not being afraid to make mistakes.
4. Objective evaluation of work

Question 30

What is Intelligence?

Answer 30

It is the all-purpose ability to do well on cognitive tasks and to learn from experience.
Intelligence refers to how well someone can think (how well they can problem solve, reason, decision make, critically analyze and be creative.)

Question 31

What are good criteria for a good intelligence test?

Answer 31

Validity: refers to the extent to which a test measure what it is intended to measure. We say a test has a high criterion validity if measures relate to important outcomes.

Reliability: The extent to which a test yields a consistent measure of performance. A test can be reliable and not valid, cannot be valid without being reliable.

Standardization: involves developing uniform procedures for administering and scoring a test, as well as creating norms that tell us which scores are considered high/low.

Question 32

What is Mental age and who developed that concept?

Answer 32

It is an individual’s level of mental development relative to that of others.
Alfred Binet

Question 33

What is intelligence quotient and who made it?

Answer 33

IQ consists of an individual’s mental age divided by chronological age multiplied by 100.
It was devised by William Stern.

Question 34

What is a Wechsler scale and what are its 3 versions?

Answer 34

It is another measures of intelligence.
1. Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (16+): includes vocabulary, working memory capacity, math problems and ability to complete jigsaw puzzles.
2. Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (6-16): vocabulary and comprehension, putting blocks to form a pattern.
3. Wechsler Pre-School and Primary Scale of Intelligence (as young as 2.5): asked to point at picture that depicts a word, complete block design and answer common knowledge.

Question 35

What is Spearman’s g?

Answer 35

It is the idea that intelligence is a general ability, which he called g.

Question 36

What is a Normal distribution?

Answer 36

Distribution refers to the frequency of various scores on a scale. Normal Distribution is a symmetrical Bell-Shaped curve with a couple of outliers on each side.

Question 37

What is a Culture-fair test?

Answer 37

They are intelligence tests that are intended to be culturally unbiased. It includes questions that are familiar to people for all socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, or no verbal questions.

Question 38

Explain why we can’t possibly have culture-fair tests, rather culture-reduced tests.

Answer 38

It is because the definition of intelligence varies from one culture to another. Language might also have different meaning or interpretation. Even pictures may have bias because some cultures can have less experience with drawing and photographs.

Question 39

What is Heritability? What does it heavily depend on?

Answer 39

It is the amount of observable differences in a group that can be explained by difference in genes.
It heavily depends on the environment the individual was raised in. It dictates whether the genotype can be observed as a phenotype, or whether it remains dormant.

Question 40

What are 4 environmental interventions that can positively affect childhood?

Answer 40

1. Dietary supplements: polysaturated fatty acids (Omega-3 fatty acids) such as breast milk. fish oil, salmon, walnuts, spinach and avocados increase IQ by 3.5 points.
2. Educational interventions: early childhood education can improve IQ by 4+ points
3. Interactive reading: parents asking open-ended questions, encouraging the child to read and engage. IQ 6+ points.
4. Preschool: sending a child to preschool increases IQ by 4+ points. For economically disadvantaged children, it raised IQ by as much as 7 points.

Question 41

What is the Flynn effect?

Answer 41

It is an effect of education on intelligence. It is that IQ test scores are rapidly increasing around the world.

Question 42

How do you describe someone who is gifted?

Answer 42

They are people who have high intelligence (IQ 130+) and/or have a superior talent in a certain area.

Question 43

What is Intellectual disability and what 3 areas does it affect?

Answer 43

It is a condition of limited mental ability that affects functioning in
Conceptual skills: language, reading, writing, math, reasoning and memory
Social skills: empathy, social judgment, interpersonal communication and ability to make friends
Practical skills: self-management of personal care, job responsibilities, money management, recreation, and organizing school and work tasks.

Question 44

What is the difference between Organic and Cultural-familial intellectual disability.

Answer 44

Organic is caused by a genetic disorder or brain damage.
The other results at least in part from growing up in a below average intellectual environment.

Question 45

What is the triarchic theory of intelligence?
Who was it developed by?

Answer 45

It says intelligence comes in multiple forms
Analytical: the ability to analyze, judge, evaluate
Creative: the ability to create, design, invent and imagine
Practical: ability to use, apply, implement and put into prac.
Developed by Robert J. Sternberg.

Question 46

What are the 9 types of intelligence (“frame of minds)?
Who suggested it?

Answer 46

Verbal: ability to think in words and use language
Mathematical:
Spatial: ability to think 3D
Bodily-kinesthetic: manipulate objects, be physically adept.
Musical: sensitive to pitch, melody, rhythm and tone.
Interpersonal: understand n interact effectively with others
Intrapersonal: ability to understand oneself.
Naturalist: ability to observe patters in nature
Existentialist: ability to grapple with big questions of human existence.

Question 47

What is infinite generativity?

Answer 47

It is the ability to produce an infinite number of meaningful sentences.

Question 48

What are the 5 basic rule systems for language?

Answer 48

1. Phonology: a language’s sound system. It is made up of basic sounds called phonemes.
2. Morphology: a language’s rules for word formation. Pre- -tion -ing are morphemes.
3. Syntax: the language’s rules for combining words to forma acceptable phrases and sentences.
4. Semantics: the meaning of the words and sentences in a particular language. “the bicycle talked to the boy” is semantically incorrect.
5. Pragmatics: the ability of language to communicate even more meaning that what is said. “bus station?” = “Can you point me towards the bus station?”

Question 49

What is the linguistic relativity hypothesis?

Answer 49

It states that language determines the way we think. For example, the Inuit have a dozen or more words for snow compared to a few from english. Thus english people cannot distinguish snow as well because they have no words for them. This has been criticked because people believe words reflect rather than cause the way we think.

Question 50

What did Noam Chomsky argue about language?

Answer 50

He argued that humans come into the world biologically prewired to learn language at a certain time in a certain way.
Children cannot possible learn the full rules of language by imitating only. Rather, nature must provide children with a biological, prewired, universal grammar that allows them to understand the basic rules of all languages and to apply it.

Question 51

How are language and the brain related?
Hint: left hemisphere, 2 areas, hippocampus

Answer 51

Language processing mainly occurs in the brain’s left hemisphere. Recall Wernicke’s area (middle front) is responsible for language comprehension while Broca’s area (toward the back) if for speech production.
Broca’s is not directly involved in talking, rather it sends and coordinates messages to sensory neurons (representing words) and motor neurons (for articulation) in preparation for speaking. It is inactive while talking.
At 9 months old, hippocampus (stores and indexes many kinds of memory) becomes fully functional. It is also the time where infants appear to be able to attach meaning to words.

Question 52

What are the behaviorist’s view about language?

Answer 52

They believe language is a complex learned skill, just like piano or dancing.

Question 53

What is Cognitive Appraisal?

Answer 53

It refers to the person’s interpretation of a situation. It includes whether the situation is viewed as harmful and threatening, or challenging.

Question 54

What is Coping?

Answer 54

Form of problem solving that involves managing taxing circumstances and seeking to reduce stress.

Question 55

What are 2 steps people appraise (interpret) events?

Answer 55

1. Primary appraisal: individuals interpret whether an event involves harm or loss that has already occurred, a threat in the future, or a challenge to overcome.
2. Secondary appraisal: evaluating the resources and determining how effectively they can be used to cope with the event. It comes after primary and it also depends on the degree to which the event is appraised and harmful/challen.

Question 56

What is Cognitive reappraisal?

Answer 56

Regulating our feelings about an experience by reinterpreting it in a different way. Results show that is decreases negative feelings, decreased activation in the amygdala and increased activation in prefrontal regions.

Question 57

What is benefit finding? (It involves reappraising)

Answer 57

It means looking at a stressful life event in a particular way, focusing on the good side that has resulted from it.