Chapter 8: Thinking, Reasoning & Language Flashcards
Thinking:
“ALPACABD”
A - Activity
L - Learning
P - Perceiving
A - Any mental processing of information
C - Communicating
A - And
B - Believing
D - Deciding
Any mental activity or processing of information, including learning, remembering, perceiving, communicating, believing, and deciding
what does cognitive psychology focus on?
the processes and content of thought
System 1 Thinking (Intuitive)
Quick and reflexive
Little mental effort required
Relies on heuristics
System 2 Thinking (Analytical)
Slow and reflective; deliberate
Requires mental effort
Humans are ___
“cognitive missers”
humans tend to conserve cognitive resources by simplifying information processing and decision-making. Engaging in system 2 uses mental energy. Being cognitive misers allows us to simplify our world and attend primarily to what is meaningful and manageable.
Representativeness heuristic:
Involves judging the probability of an event by its similarity to a prototype
Imagine you meet a person named Sarah, who is an introverted, quiet, and shy individual. She enjoys reading books, spending time alone, and is very organized. When asked to guess Sarah’s occupation, you might immediately think she is a librarian, as her personality traits and interests seem to match the stereotype of a librarian. However, this assumption doesn’t take into account the actual statistical probability of Sarah being a librarian, considering the wide range of other possible occupations she could have.
In this case, the representativeness heuristic leads you to judge Sarah’s occupation based on the stereotype of a librarian rather than considering other possible occupations or the actual likelihood of her being a librarian.
what does ignoring base rates mean?
People do not consider the actual frequency (number of people) of the membership in categories
Availability Heuristic:
estimates of the likelihood of an occurrence are based on the ease with which examples of the occurrence come to our minds
if something can be easily recalled or imagined, people tend to assume it’s more common or likely to happen.
Hindsight Bias:
Tendency to overestimate how well we could have predicted something after it has already occurred
Once we know what happened or what worked or didn’t work, it is easy to see how events led to it. It does not mean we could have predicted the outcome.
A.K.A. the “I knew it all along effect”
confirmation bias
the tendency to seek out evidence that supports our beliefs and deny, dismiss, or distort anything that contradicts them
Important to consider disconfirming evidence
what do we need to consider in order to prevent hindsight bias?
disconfirming evidence.
what influences lower-level processes
context and higher-level knowledge
what is a concept?
knowledge an idea about a set of objects, actions, and characteristics that share core properties
what are schemas?
can guide us in situations
what is decision-making?
the process of selecting among a set of possible alternatives
what is framing?
the way information is presented activates different information in the LTM, which influences decisions
what is problem-solving
generating a cognitive strategy to accomplish a goal
what are two approaches to solving problems and what do they do?
Algorithms: step-by-step procedure used to solve a problem
Heuristics: use of mental shortcuts to solve a problem
what is the salience of surface similarities?
Focus on attention-grabbing features of problems and try to solve two superficially similar problems in the same way
Example: Imagine you are shown pictures of two animals - a dolphin and a shark. Both have streamlined bodies, fins, and live in the ocean. The salience of surface similarities might lead you to think that dolphins and sharks are closely related species, as they share several apparent features. However, in reality, dolphins are mammals, while sharks are fish, and their similarities are a result of convergent evolution rather than close relatedness. By focusing on the superficial similarities, one might overlook the significant differences in their biological classification and evolutionary history.
Mental Sets:
The phenomenon of being stuck in a specific problem-solving strategy, which inhibits our ability to generate alternative strategies
Functional Fixedness:
Difficulty conceptualizing that an object typically used for one purpose can be used for another
Language
A largely arbitrary system of communication that combines symbols (such as words or gestural signs) in rule-based ways to create meaning
what is language based on?
for the most part, arbitrary symbols
Phonemes:
the basic units of sound in a language
ex: Bat and Pat have one different phoneme (/b/ vs. /p/)
Morphemes:
smallest units of meaning in a language
Created by linking phonemes together
Syntax:
set of rules for arranging words to form sentences
Linguistic Determinism:
All thought is represented verbally, therefore language determines thinking
Linguistic Relativity:
language can shape our thinking but is not absolute in determining our thoughts
A.K.A. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
E.g., Colour perception
E.g., Intentionality and memory
