Chapter 8- Thinking and Decision Making Flashcards
Cognition
“to know”
Mental processes involved in acquiring, processing, and storing knowledge
Cognitive Psychology
The science of how people think, learn, remember, and perceive
Mental Representations
A structure in our mind- such as an idea or image- that stands for something else, such as the external object or thing
Not present
Many types
Allows us to:
Think about and remember things in the past
Imagine things in the future
Think about abstract ideas, like love, truth justice
The Visual System
Located mostly in the occipital lobes
Older than the verbal system
Develops before verbal ability
We see before we talk
Visual Imagery
Visual representations created by the brain after the original stimulus is no longer present
Brain during visual imagery is activated in same way as it is during visual perception
Therefore, difficult to distinguish between a brain perceiving something and a brain imagining seeing the same thing
Crucial for some cognitive tasks involved in interpreting spatial relationships
Imagining Outcomes
Imagining outcomes makes them more likely to happen
If you form a mental image of an ideal performance, you are more likely to perform that activity better
Performance is improved because the brain is primed by images of the success, the pathways are activated in advanced
The brain is activated in the same way while imagining a task as it is while performing a task
Mental Rotation
The process of imagining an objet rotating in 3D space
Takes 2.5 seconds to determine if same or different
Have to conjure mental picture and manipulate the image to make a judgement about its spatial properties
Boys and men do better than girls and women
May not only be gender directly that leads to differences in spatial ability, but how you identify. People who self-identify as “masculine” have higher spatial ability scores than those who identify as “feminine”
Cause of the Gender Difference in Spatial Ability
Levels of male sex hormone, testosterone
Female rats with injected testosterone during development performed better on spatial tasks, maze running
Relationships in humans among testosterone, gender, and spatial ability is complex and not linear
In humans, females with high levels and males with low levels of testosterone perform better on spatial tasks
Major Function of Thought
To organize and classify our perceptions into categories
Humans organize their environment by naming things and giving them labels
Concept
The basic unit of knowledge
A mental grouping of objects, events, or people
Help organize perceptions of the world
We can store and process concepts in two ways
in a hierarchy and by parallel distributed processing
Concept Hierarchy
An arrangement of related concepts in a particular way
Some being general, others specific
Helps order and understand the world
Example: A dog, Goldie, is a “Golden Retriever,” which is a “dog”, which is an “animal”, which is a “living thing”
2) Parallel Distributive Processing (PDP)
Associations between concepts activate many networks or nodes at the same time
Concepts are activated in the network based on how strongly associated or connected they are to each other
Arranged by similarity
Location of a concept is based on its relation to other concepts
Example: Animals such as bird and fish are closer to each other and farther away from plants such as trees and flowers
Category
A concept that organizes other concepts around what they all share in common
Example: All things that move and eat are “animals”. All things that grow out of the Earth and do not eat are “plants”
Can either be concrete or abstract
Concrete categories:
triangles, cars
Abstract categories
good, consciousness
Prototypes
The best fitting examples of a category
Ex: Robin is a better prototype for the category “bird” than ostrich
Reasoning
The process of drawing inferences or conclusions from principles and evidence
Anytime we use the word “because”
Sometimes allows to draw sound, correct conclusions but not always the case
Cognitive psychologists distinguish between two kinds of reasoning drawn from formal logic
Deductive and Inductive
Deductive Reasoning
Reasoning from general statements of what is known to specific conclusions
Specific conclusion is always correct if the general statement is true
When scientists make specific predictions from general theories
Example: A) All humans are mortal B) Ryan is mortal C) Therefore, Ryan is mortal
Inductive Reasoning
Drawing general conclusions from specific evidence
Less certain conclusions than deductive
Highly likely conclusions
Used when scientists develop theories because they offer general statements that explain many facts or observations
Example: “All the peaches I have eaten have been sweet, therefore all peaches are sweet”
All it takes is one unsweet peach to undermine that conclusion
Casual Inferences
Judgements about whether one thing causes another thing
Often used when we use inductive reasoning
Example: “Every time I get chilled, I catch a cold. So getting chilled must cause colds”
Confirmation Bias
The tendency to selectively attend to information that supports one’s general beliefs while ignoring information or evidence that contradicts one’s beliefs
Inductive reasoning + casual inferences
Wason’s Test To See If People Are More Likely To Falsify or To Confirm Their Own Theories
Gave students the task of determining the hidden rule behind a sequence of three numbers/ triplet
Asked students to guess at the rule by writing down triplets that they thought conformed to it and the reason they selected them
Could make as many guesses and explanatory statements as they wished, until they thought they knew the rule
Then they wrote down what they thought the rule actually was
Actual rule was “the numbers in the triplet must increase in value”
23/29 incorrectly guessed at first
Participants who made an initial incorrect guess at the rule were more likely to rephrase the rule in subsequent guesses, rather than guessing an entirely new rule
Correct answers were more likely to arise when students tried to disconfirm the rule
This experiment shows that people are inclined to test only ideas that confirm their beliefs
Critical
From the ancient Greek word kritikos
Means to question, to make sense of, and to be able to analyze or to be skilled at judging
Critical Thinking
The process by which one analyzes, evaluates, and forms ideas
“The ability to analyze facts, generate and organize ideas, defend opinions, make comparisons, draw inferences, evaluate arguments, and solve problems”
Requires evaluation of evidence and arguments independently of one’s prior beliefs and opinions
Closely related to scientific thinking and reasoning
Qualities To Be a Critical Thinker
Interpreting
Explaining
Self-regulating
Scientific Thinking
The process of using the cognitive skills required to generate, test, and revise theories
Keeps beliefs and reality separate
Belief is not the same as reality
Metacognitive Thinking
Requires the ability to first think and then reflect on one’s own thinking
Questioning one’s own thinking
Knowing what you do and do not know
Ability not universal
Algorithm
step by step
eureka insight
sudden
heuristics
mental short cuts
Methods for making complex and uncertain decisions and judgements
Allows for quick and efficient decisions
Ex: Crossing a street to not be hit by cars, we look both ways before going and make a judgement whether its safe or not
There are two most common types of heuristics
the representativeness heuristic and the availability heuristic
The Representative Heuristic
A strategy used to estimate the probability of one event based on how typical it is of another event
Problems:
Tendency to rely on this strategy instead of other types of evidence
Ex: Personality descriptions that fit certain occupations were used to make probability judgements even when the base rates were given to participants
2) The Availability Heuristic
A strategy we use to make decisions based on the ease with which estimates come to mind or how available they are to our awareness
Often used when people make judgments about the aggressiveness of dog breeds
Relies on immediate examples that comes to a person’s mind when evaluating a topic, concept, method, or decision
Pit bull Study
Pit bulls have bad reputation
Although they are involved in fatal dog attacks, German shepherds are more likely to be involved in fatalities
Media coverage of pit bull attacks tends to be very vivid and thoughts of a snarling pitiful are easily called to mind
Vividness and availability leads us to overestimate how likely certain events are
Stuart McKelvie Experiment
Had participants listen to a list containing an equal number of men’s and women’s names
One list version had all famous male names
Other version had all famous female names
Participants reported that there were more men on the list if they heard the version with famous men
Reported that there were less women on the list if they heard the version with famous women
The names of famous people stand out and become more prominent in memory, therefore participants had better recall
The more available information is to our recall, the more likely we are to be biased towards it
Rational Choice Theory
When given a choice between two or more options, humans will choose the one that is most likely to help them achieve their particular goals- the rational choice
Based on principles of behaviourism
Theorists held that people base financial decisions on a cost-benefit analysis: do the costs outweigh the benefits? If yes, we don’t buy
Evidence Against Rational Choice Theory
If people were rational they would realize that the odds of two events can never be higher than the odds of one of those events alone
The odds of A and B occurring together can never exceed the odds of either A or B occurring separately
Example:
Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice and participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations
WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF EACH OF THE FOLLOWING:
A) Linda is active in the feminist movement
B) Linda is a bank teller
C) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement
Its clear that A is more likely than B, we are likely to say that C is more likely than B.
Shows that people sometimes ignore base rates and are biased by stereotypes and use short cuts to arrive quickly, but not rationally, at their conclusions
Conjunction fallacy
Occurs when people say the combination of two events is more likely than than either event alone
Learning a Second Language
Higher vocabulary in monolingual children than bilingual children
Better executive functioning skills in bilingual children
The Best Way to Learn a New Language
The earlier an individual is exposed to a language, the better
Bilingual infants begin to learn about the properties of their two languages very early in life, before they actually begin to speak
Humans are capable of learning two languages as one
Even if children are not exposed to a bilingual environment from infancy, they can still easily learn a second language
Subtractive Bilingualism
Loss of language fluency with second language learning
Can be avoided if the minority language is supported at home and school
ex: Children who were taught in English or French for the first three years of school had poorer language skills in their own native Inuktitut language, even after one year of school
Sensitive Period
The younger a person is when they acquire the second language, the more proficiently they speak that language
At age 7, learning a second language is difficult
At ages 13 to 15, the sensitive period ends
The length of time the immigrants had been in the United States did not affect the strength or thickness of their accent, but the age at which they had moved to the U.S did.
If they were six when they immigrated and had been in the country for two years, they had much less of an accent than if they were 30 years old when they learned the language but been in the US for 10 years.
Bilingual People
People who are fluent in two languages are capable of more efficient cognitive processing than the who speak only one language
Bilingual speakers have a greater density of neurons in the language centres of the brain
The earlier the second language is learned, the greater the neural density
Are more skilled in theory of mind tasks than monolingual children
Brains of people who learn a 2nd language early in life are more efficient at language processing and more similar when speaking in both languages than the brains of those who learn later
If someone learns a 2nd language at the same time they learn their first language, the brain regions that are active during speech production overlap completely… doesn’t happen when you learn 2nd language later in life
Cognitive Tasks and Second Language
Those who spoke two languages performed better on cognitive tasks and continued to do so later in life
Elderly speakers of two languages developed dementia more than four years later than others
Support the view that stimulation from the environment- learning another language- can enrich our brains and enable them to process information more efficiently
Reasoning in a Second Language
Students performed better in their native language when using deductive reasoning
Second Language Acquisition and Metacognition
By age four, children understand that other people’s thoughts and ideas are different from their own
Bilingual children are aware of what the person they are speaking to know and does not know
