Chapter 8: Thinking, Reasoning, + Language Flashcards
thinking
any mental activity or processing of information
cognitive misers
investing as little energy as possible unless it’s necessary to do so
congitive misers use a variety of ____
heuristics
heuristics
mental shortcuts, to increase our thinking efficiency
function of cognitive misers
-draw inferences that provide mental shortcuts many times a day + mostly they are right
-simplify what we attend to + keep the information we need for decision-making to a manageable
-may lead us to a faculty conclusion as well
representativeness heuristic
judging the probability of an event based on how prevalent that event has been in past expereince
-reflected by stereotyping
example of representativeness heuristics
if a coin is tossed 6 times, is a sequence of HTHHTH more likely to occur than a sequence of HHHHTH? If you answer YES, you used representativeness heuristic to make the judgment
-because it seems more random
base rate
how common a behavior or characteristics is in general
example of base rate
if you think that an airplane is more dangerous than traveling to another state via a car you are disregarding base rate
availability heuristic
-estimating the likelihood of an occurence based on how easily it comes to our minds
-how available it is in our memories
example of availability heuristic
-ex.1: a teacher teaches in a way that emphasizes rote memory of concepts. It is a strategy that comes to mind easily + highly available to many teachers. But is it the best strategy
-ex.2: assuming Newberry Street is dangerous because you head about a robbery there + now you always avoid it
hindsight bias
-the “I know it all along” effect
-our tendency to overstimulate how accurately we could have predicted something happening once we know the outcome
confirmation bias
tendency to seek out evidence that supports our hypotheses/beliefs + dismiss evidence that doesn’t
belief perserverance
maintaining a belief despite new information that firmly contradicts it
what type of bias?
Tim failed general psych twice. He developed the belief that psych courses are too hard to take. He has since avoided signing up for any psych courses in college.
belief perserverance
what type of bias?
Chinese zodiac indicates that people born in dog years are high in loyalty. Ken was born in 2006, a dog year + he says: “I am a loyal person because I was born in a dog year.”
confirmation bias
what type of bias?
Jill won the lottery. Her friend says, “I knew you would get it!”
hindsight bias
top-down processing
filling in the gaps of missing information using our experience + background knowledge (perception, chunking, etc.)
concept
our knowledge + ideas about objects, actions, + characteristics that share core properties
schemas
concepts we’ve stored in memory about how certain actions, objects, + ideas relate to each other
linguistic determinism
-we cannot experience thought without language
-extreme version of top-down processing in which no ideas can be generated without linguistic knowledge
evidence against linguistic determinism
-children can perform many complex cognitive tasks long before they can talk about them
-language areas become activated when people read but those brain regions aren’t especially active during other cognitive tasks, such as spatial test + visual imagery
linguistic relativity
emphasizes that characteristics of language shape our thought processes
another name for linguistic relativity
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis