Cognition- Thinking And Reasoning Flashcards
What is thinking?
-Broad term for a range of different activities including:
Problem solving
Reasoning
Judgement and decision making
Is usually directed towards some goal
What is problem solving?
A scientist created a drug that he thought would cure a new disease. First, he had to test the drug. He selected people at random who had the disease-
-150 people received the drug and were not cured
- 150 people received the the drug and were cured.
-75 people did not receive the drug and were not cured
- 300 people did not receive the drug and were cured
Is the drug effective? No
Stanovich,2003, Stanovich and west, 1999
Problem solving
‘An effort to overcome obstacles obstructing the path to a solution’ (Reed,2000)
Problems can be:
- well defined in that you have all the information you need and know what needs to be done to solve the problem (specific goals, clearly defined solution paths and clear expected solutions)
- subtract 72 from 596
- find the area of a triangle
- ill-defined in that some aspect is not well defined (no clear goals, solution paths or expected solutions)
-Solve the world crisis
-Write a great novel
Problem solving Newell and Simon, 1961: Wenke and French,2003
-One method for studying how to solve well-defined problems is to develop computer simulations
- problem solving consists of a number of states
- initial state- statement of the unsolved problem
- a problem space- all possible actions that can be applied to solving a problem, given any constraints
- algorithms- sequence of operations that may be repeated and that, in theory, guarantee the solution to a problem
- a test
But the human mind does not work in that way, the limits of our working memory prohibits us from considering more than just a few possible operations at one time
Barriers to success
Functional fixedness
Tendency to focus on the main function of an object and so not seen that it could be used in other ways to help solve the problem
Mental set
Learn particular ways of doing things and continue to apply them when they are not appropriate or are not the easiest way to solve the problem
Reasoning
- process of drawing conclusions from the principles and from evidence (Leighton and Sternberg,2004, Sternberg 2004, wason and Johnson-laird, 1972)
In reasoning we move from what is already known to infer a new conclusion or to evaluate a proposed conclusion
Deductive reasoning
Reasoning from general premise to more specific conclusions
Major premise- general statement
Minor premise- statement of a specific instance related to the major premise
Conclusion- statement derived from the relation between 2 and 1
1- all presidents are politicians, bide is a president, biden is a politician
Inductive reasoning
Reasoning from specific cases to more general, uncertain conclusions
Sparrows,eagles and doves are birds, they can all fly, all birds can fly?
Conclusion is probably, based upon evidence
Inductive generalisation
-Proceeds from a premise about a sample to a conclusion about the population
- no matter how much confirming evidence we find we can never be certain that our hypothesis is correct
- In research, when we reject the null hypothesis, we use statistical generalisation ( inductive reasoning). We never know for sure whether we are correct in rejecting the null
- finding numerous birds that fly supports the hypothesis that all birds fly but does not prove it
-Instead we should be looking for evidence that refute the hypothesis
Desicion making
Classic view- desicion making is a rational process (Von neumann and Morgenstern, 1947)
- calculate expected utility of each alternative and select the best one
- calculated by multiplying the value of an alternative by the likelihood of it happening
Theory seems to apply when presented with two simple choices but most life decisions are more complex
Loss aversion
- a cognative bias- the pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. People are more willing to take risks to avoid a loss than make a gain
- it is often possible to frame a given desicion problem in more than one way
- framing the outcome in a positive Vs negative terms produces a reversal of our preferences.
Judgement
Life full of uncertainty, to be successful we must be able to determine the likelihood of uncertain events (or the uncertain quantities)
What types of judgement?
-Similarity/difference
-Frequency
-Probability
Heuristics
-Use subjective probability
Often based on partial or incorrect information or flawed reasoning and prejudice
Often based on heuristics (rules of thumb) and non- relevent information
Why we use heuristics- objectives calculation of probabilities (or perfect rationality) is computationally demanding.
In the real world
- time is short
-Infornation is limited
-Informaton is ambiguous
-Cogantive resources are limited
Heuristics can lead to systematic biases in judgement and desicion making
Heuristics include
-Representativeness- ignore base rates
-Availability
- anchoring
Representative heuristic
- when we are trying to assess how likely a certain event is we often make our desicion by assessing how similar it is to an existing mental prototype
-Gamblers fallacy- our belief that the probability of a random event occuring in the future is influenced by previous instances of that type of event
(When one believes that the pattern representative of past events is now likely to change)
Availability heuristic
Tendency to use information that comes to mind quickly and easily when making judgements
Anchoring heuristic
-Cognative bias that causes us to rely too heavily on the first piece of information we are given about a topic
The dunning-Kruger effect
-Persons lack of knowledge and skills in a certain area cause them to overestimate their own competence
- those who are the most ignorant- in the bottom 25% of any skills also overestimate themselves the most (Dunning and Justin,1999)
Examples
- 42% of employees at a software company assessed their own performance as being in the top 5%
- about 88% of people rate themselves as ‘above average driver’s’
Heuristic errors
Biases are not mere errors
Heuristic errors reveal the normal mechanisms of reasoning
Rational Vs adaptive
a trade off- to get the logically correct answer 100% of the time no matter how long it takes? to get an answer quickly, which is usually right?
Impliations
-Cognative biases reveal the character of human thought
- the majority of our cognitions is ‘arational’
This means that we are not fully rational or logical even when we think we are
Your sense of our own rationality is clouded by our fundamental irrationality
Dual process model of thinking
System 1- context dependent- focuses on existing evidence and ignores absent evidence, concerns everyday desicion making, generates impressions and inclinations, not logic based and prone to error, operates automatically and quickly with little to no effort
System 2- abstract, conscious reasoning, logical and reliable, slow and requiring effort, transfers information from obe situations to a new situation
Criticism
Dual process have multiple and vague definition
There is a continuum of processing styles, not types
Language and thinking
Are the resulting cognative systems different? Eg mental universe of an English speaker may be different from that of a Chinese speaker because they happen to speak different languages
Sapir- Whorf hypothesis (two forms)
The strong version (linguistic determinism) language determines thought
The weak version (linguistic relativity)- language only influences thought
Example- perception of colors comes from color naming influence of the language. All languages do not divide the colors into the same number of basic categories
What is prospective memory?
Definition: remembering to carry out an intended task at the appropriate time at some point in the future (McDaniel and Einstein,2007)
Important aspect of everyday cognition
Essential to everyday living
Examples
-Remembering to post a letter, meet a friend ect
Failures
- inconvenient
- embarrassing
Can be a risk to mental health and wellbeing
Can be deivistating
Prospective memory- important to remember
Prospective memory requires retrospective memory
Eg- suppose you agree to buy food for yourself and flatmates
You require- intention to go to supermarket (PM)
And what you agreed to buy (RM)
Types of prospective memory
McDaniel and Einstein(2007)
-Event based- the appropriate moment for executing an intended action is triggered by an external cue or event (eg post box)
-Time based- the intended action is carried out at a specified time (eg 3pm) or following the elapse of a period of time(eg 15 mins)
-Performance in event based tasks typically better than in time based tasks
-Argued that time based tasks more difficult because rely on self initiated processes
-Might this more affected by alcohol use?
Factors effecting PM efficiency
Mood- negative mood states affect perspective memory
Might also affect self-reports of PM
Negative self appraisals
Use of recreational substances
-Alcahol,smoking,ecstacy/MDMA, meth
Assessing prospective memory
Questionnaires
-Prospective memory questionnaire (PMQ)
-prospective and retrospective memory questionnaire (PRMQ)
Naturalistic experiments
-Returning postcard to researchers,telephoning researchers
Lab experiments
-Typically, participants are engaged in an ‘ongoing tasks
- PM conditions- continue performing the ongoing task but press a different button if you can see a cue
