Cognition: Problem-Solving and Decision-Making

Question 1

Cognition

Answer 1

mental activity that goes on in the brain when a person is processing information; Organizing information, understanding information, and communicating information

Question 2

What do Congitive Psychologists study?

Answer 2

concepts, problem solving, decision making

Question 3

Concepts

Answer 3

mental groupings of similar objects, ideas, events, or people

Why are concepts important?

Makes our lives faster, easier, and more predictable; brain works less to work through concept I imagine

Question 4

How do we form concepts?

Answer 4

Artificial and Natural concepts

Question 5

Artificial Concepts

Answer 5

(formal concepts): arise out of logical rules or definitions; all of those meeting the criteria are included, and those missing features are excluded ; Often found in scientific disciplines

Example: triangle has 3 sides and 3 angles(must have these to be included as a triangle)

Question 6

Natural concepts

Answer 6

categories that have “general rules” about what belongs; we create a “prototype” or “best example”

Example: concept of bird, a robin or sparrow may come to mind since it captures “birdness” lol

Question 7

Problem Solving

Answer 7

moving from a given state(problem) to a goal state(solution)

Question 8

Problem solving strategies

Answer 8

Algorithms, Heuristics, Insight

Question 9

Algorithms

Answer 9

step by step procedure that, if appropriate, will always result in solution

Example: math problems, assembly instructions(building furniture), rubic’s cube

Question 10

Heuristics

Answer 10

an educated guess, your “go to” strategy; applying shortcut solutions based on past knowledge and experience

o Advantage: provide shortcuts to solutions
o Disadvantage: increased errors

Example: Unscramble SPLOYOCHYG
* Psychology 😊

Question 11

Insight

Answer 11

when puzzling over a problem and we suddenly divine an abrupt, true-seeming, satisfying solution; the “AHA!” moment

Example: think of one word that goes with all three of the following
 Pine, crab, sauce

Question 12

Barriers to problem solving

Answer 12

Mental sets, functional fixedness, confirmation bias, and incubation

Question 13

Mental sets

Answer 13

can only think of solutions that have gone before, lack of creativity, inability to see things from a fresh perspective

Example:
Physician sees 9 patients in a row with the same illness; 10th patient comes in with some similar symptoms; Because of experience with the first nine patients, the doctor diagnoses the 10th patients with the same illness; Could be dismissing symptoms that may point to a different illness altogether

Question 14

Functional Fixedness

Answer 14

view objects as only serving in their intended capacity; fail to see objects can serve more than one purpose

Example: life hack videos show how objects can be used for a variety of purposes

Question 15

Confirmation Bias

Answer 15

we tend to favor evidence that confirms our preconceived ideas

Example: sample 2-4-6; There is a rule used to generate these three numbers, what is it?

Question 16

Incubation

Answer 16

some problems require a period in which we allow the most pertinent facts to come into focus, allowing the distracting or irrelevant info to fade from our minds

Question 17

Decision Making

Answer 17

When we make decisions, we either
* Engage in concerted problem-solving efforts, weighing the pros and cons, doing research, weighing the evidence(Example: choosing a new fridge; size, price, features we want)

Use intuition: our facts automatic, unreasoned feelings and thoughts

Question 18

Which through decision process do we use most?

Answer 18

Intuition, because it is easier, faster, and often successful; BUT NOT ALWAYS; Sometimes we only take in what we want from decision, can lead to remorse and regret of decision made; Want to favor some decisions over others

Question 19

Common errors in decision making

Answer 19

Availability Heuristic, Overconfidence, Belief perseverance, and Framing

Question 20

Availability Heuristic

Answer 20

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; information that is more vivid, recent, or distinctive will more easily come to mind, leading to us thinking that it happens frequently

Example: Deer are the most dangerous animals to humans in America, but we relate to other animals that have caused shocking, unusual deaths; Think it is most likely to happen from other animals because of their newsworthiness/random; Deer not mentioned because it causes deaths so frequently

Question 21

Overconfidence

Answer 21

the tendency to be more confident than correct, to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgements

Example: the “planning fallacy”; Student routinely underestimate the number of days it will take to complete an assignment, project, paper, test prep

Question 22

Belief Perseverance

Answer 22

clinging to one’s original beliefs even when faced with legitimate evidence to the contrary; No matter how much evidence, still thinking one way

Example: estimating grade a student gets for the class based on points left, some still argue they can score higher than evidence claims

Question 23

Detailed example of belief perseverance

Answer 23

researchers gave mixed evidence to people on each side of an issue; Study A and Study B, conservatives and liberals; Both sides were impressed with the study that supported their view and disputed the opposing study; Showing both groups the same mixed evidence increased their disagreement on the issue

Question 24

Framing

Answer 24

how an issue is posed can greatly affect our perceptions and their our decisions and judgements

Example: 10% of patients die during this surgery, rate your concern on scale of 1-10

Example: 90% of patients survive during this surgery, rate your concern on scale of 1-10