Cognition Flashcards
The availability bias
Tendency to recall only information immediately accessible in memory
Anchoring and adjustment
A bias that causes us to set an initial value as a starting point and then not change it sufficiently to truly solve a problem
Representativeness bias
Random things should LOOK random
Nonrandom things should LOOK (represent) nonrandom
Gambler’s fallacy- The belief that the odds of a random event increase if it hasn’t happened lately
conformation bias
We actively (instead of nonconsciously) seek out information that confirms the info
in our schemas (our preexisting beliefs)
Why are we so often wrong about decisions?
Our minds create “meaning” from our experiences, often mistakenly.
Assimilation, Hindsight, Availability, Representativeness, and Confirmation biases
often give us “inaccurate” explanations
AND hide info from us that would give the “right” answer IF WE THINK MORE
DEEPLY about the problem. GO BEYOND WHAT IS IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE!
Language
Noam Chomsky and the Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
Skinner and “Verbal Behavior” (language learned as a result of operant
conditioning)
Skinner was wrong:
1. These processes cannot possibly account for the speed with which we learn
language
2. Each person is capable of uttering an almost infinite number of sentences that are
completely different from any sentence ever heard before.
surface structure
the grammatical structure of the sentence (follows the rules of
syntax)
deep structure
(underlying representation)- what the sentence means (follows the
rules of semantics)
transformational rules
how we convert one to the other and back again
Impact of language
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity
(language shapes thought)
Labeling- Sometimes the ways in which we perceive situations, and people,
depends on how we label them.
Embodied cognition
Metaphor- a thing that is symbolic of something else. Our thoughts are often metaphors for our emotions.
Ex:
Eye for an eye
I’m feeling down
My heart is broken
