Chapter 9: Thinking and Intelligence Flashcards
A concept is a mental category that groups what?
Objects
Relations
Activities
Abstractions
What is a basic concept?
Easier to acquire than concepts with few or many instances. Used most often because they convey an optimal amount of info
When deciding if something belongs to a concept, we compare it to a _______ which is representative of the concept
prototype
What is Whorf’s theory?
The words used to express concepts may influence or shape the way we think about them
What are cognitive schemas?
Mental network of knowledge, beliefs, and expectations concerning an aspect of the world
_______ _______ lie outside of awareness but can be brought into consciousness when necessary
Subconscious processes
What do psychologists suggest multitasking should be called?
Task switching
What are nonconscious processes?
Remain outside of consciousness, but still affect behaviour? They are involved in implicit learning
What is an algorithm?
A problem-solving strategy guaranteed to produce the correct/best solution, even if the user doesn’t know how it works
What are heuristics?
Mental shortcuts to help limit options to a manageable number and reduce cognitive effort for decision. These are very important and used often
Some problems lend themselves to nonconscious processes such as _______ and _______.
intuition, insight
This is purposeful mental activity to reach a conclusion
Reasoning
What is the difference between formal and informal reasoning problems?
Formal: a single correct/best answer
Informal: no clearly correct solution
What is dialectical reasoning?
A process in which opposing facts or ideas are compared and weighed in order to reach the best solution
Difference between affect and availability heuristics?
Affect heuristic: tendency to consult emotions to judge a situation
Available heuristic: tendency to judge the probability of a type of event by how easy it is to think of examples or instances
What is the conjunction fallacy?
Mistaken belief hat finding a specific member in 2 overlapping categories is more likely than finding any member of the larger, general category
What is the framing effect?
Tendency for people’s choices to be affected by how it is presented, or framed to them
People often forgo economic gain because of ________ ________ we are motivated to see fairness prevail
fairness bias
What is the hindsight bias?
People often overestimate their ability to have made accurate predictions
This is when a person only pays attention to evidence that confirms their belief
Conformation bias
Ted is using the same strategies to solve a problem that worked for him before, but it does not seem to be working well. What is Ted demonstrating?
A mental set
Most psychologists believe that a general ability, __________ (_____), underlies mental performance
g factor (Spearman’s G)
What are the 2 types of general ability (g factor)?
CRYSTALLIZED (accumulated knowledge and skills)
FLUID (reason and use new info to solve problems)
Knowledge or awareness of your own cognitive processes and the ability to monitor and control these processes
Metacognition
What are the aspects of Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence?
ANALYTICAL (info-processing)
CREATIVE (skills to new situations)
PRACTICAL (application of intelligence; tacit knowledge)