Cognition Flashcards
What are Heuristics
- Rules of thumb that produce quick solutions at the cost of possible errors
- usually gives the correct answer
What are algorithms?
Procedure that always produces a correct solution
What is inductive reasoning?
Specific → general
What is deductive reasoning?
- General → specific
What is a syllogism?
- Specific to deductive reasoning
- a deductive scheme of a formal argument consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion
What are base rates? How are they ignored?
- indicate probability based on the absence of other information
- people tend to ignore base rates in favor of information that is irrelevant to the outcome
What is the representativeness heuristic?
estimating the likelihood of an event by comparing it to an existing prototype that already exists in our minds
What is the availability heuristic?
you make a decision based on an example, information, or recent experience that is that readily available to you, even though it may not be the best example to inform your decision
What is confirmation bias?
the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories
What is a normative approach?
- focuses on what people ought to do
- specific to inductive reasoning
What is a descriptive approach?
- Focuses on what people actually do/how we reason
- specific to inductive reasoning
In problem-solving, what is the initial state, the goal state, and the current state?
- Initial state = where the problem starts
- The goal state = Where you are trying to get to
- the current state = At the beginning of the problem the initial state and the current state are the same, but you want to create a situation where the current state is the goal state
What is a weak method of problem-solving?
Methods you can bring to bear when you don’t have expertise or a lot of information available
What is the means-ends-analysis?
Always keeping your current state and goal state in short-term memory and trying to connect them
What is forward chaining?
Moving the current state toward the goal state
What is backward chaining?
Moving the goal state toward the current state by creating a sub-goal
What is the difference between experts and novices in problem-solving?
- Experts and novices do not differ in the use of weak methods
- Experts and novices do differ in domain knowledge
What is the paradox of expertise?
The better you get at doing something, the less conscious awareness you have of how you do it
How can analogies be helpful?
- Can help better understand a complex problem
- Puts complex problems into simpler terms/understandable terms
What is functional fixedness?
- the conclusion of duncker’s candle problem
- Because something is already serving one function, it cognitively blocks us from using it for another purpose
Do labels help or hurt memory for pictures?
- labels help if they help us make sense of it
- if the label is not consistent with the use, then it harms us
- The way we talk about pictures, exerts an influence on how we remember them
What is linguistic relativity?
- also called linguistic determinism
- The language that you speak determines how you perceive, think about, and remember the world around you
What are the conditions for a proper test of linguistic relativity?
- Need to test more than one language (multiple languages)
- Linguistic differences
- independent demonstration of cognitive differences
Why was so much research done with colors?
- Different languages treat colors very differently
- Color vocabulary vary a lot between languages
- English has a lot of color terms compared to other languages
Describe the research done with the Tarahumara and what its findings tell us about linguistic relativity?
- Green, Blue, and another Blue circle with those labels
- Ask non-english and english speakers to say which colors are more similar to each other
- English speakers choose the two titled blue because of the label
- non english speakers choose the green and blue middle one because of their looks
Does language affect how we reason and remember about the world?
- Language can clearly influence our ability to perceive, remember and solve problems
- The ability of language to determine how we perceive remember and solve problem is limited
What are mental sets?
a tendency to only see solutions that have worked in the past
What is the difference between automatic and controlled systems?
- Automatic = quick, parallel, requires little effort, is not easily controlled, and is not sensitive to stressors
- Controlled = slow, serial, requires attention and effort, is easily controlled, and is sensitive to stressors
What is belief perseverance and confirmation bias?
- Belief perseverance = the tendency to maintain one’s beliefs even in the face of evidence that contradicts them
- confirmation bias = the tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs
What is framing?
people decide on options based on whether the options are presented with positive or negative connotations
What is loss aversion?
the tendency to avoid losses over achieving equivalent gains
What are overconfidence and hindsight biases?
- Overconfidence bias = the tendency for a person to overestimate their abilities
- Hindsight bias = one becomes convinced they accurately predicted an event before it occurred (after the event occurred)
Define language and identify the following features of language: phonemes, morphemes, and syntax.
-Phonemes: the smallest unit of sound
- Morphemes: the smallest unit of sound that has meaning
- Syntax: word order
