Consciousness

Question 1

Libet’s delay (and brain activity before intention)

Answer 1

Stimulation at the medial lemniscus (an incoming nerve pathway)
• Very little distance to travel
• Still referred backwards 500 ms (backdated)
• Had arrival signature from distant location
• Skin stimulation does evoke potentials within tens of milliseconds,
but may take hundreds of milliseconds more to consciously register
• But the conscious awareness is backdated nearly to the real time that it
occurred
• If our conscious awareness is trailing our physical existence by up to a
half second, how do interact with the world?
(For example returning a serve in tennis)

Question 2

Postdiction

Answer 2

an explanation after the fact. an effect of hindsight bais that explains claimed predictions of significant events

Question 3

Cognitive Unconscious

Answer 3

• Consciousness is a state of awareness of sensations or ideas, such
that we can:
• Reflect on these sensations and ideas.
• Know what it “feels like” to experience these sensations and ideas.
• Report to others that we are aware of these sensations and ideas.

The cognitive unconscious is the broad set of mental activities of
which we are completely unaware that make cognition possible.

In many cases we are aware of the products of cognition but unaware
of the processes that lead to these products.
• Retrieving information, such as a name, from long-term memory.
• Seeing and reading a written word, making inferences about missing
features.
• Recalling an episodic memory, and perhaps committing a memory error.

Question 4

causal attribution,

Answer 4

the interpretations of what caused our
thoughts or behavior, also demonstrate how much of our cognitive
processing occurs unconsciously.
• “This name seems familiar, so it must be someone famous.”
• “The face seems familiar, so it must be the person who robbed me.”

Question 5

language ambiguity

Answer 5

We are usually unaware that a word or phrase could
have more than one meaning.
• Selection of the contextually appropriate meaning
happens unconsciously.

Question 6

implicit memory

Answer 6

implicit memory is accompanied
by no conscious
realization that one is
being influenced by past
experience.

Patients who have suffered brain damage also
provide evidence for unconscious processing.
•Recall that some patients with amnesia have
impaired explicit memory but preserved implicit
memory.

Question 7

Blind Sight

Answer 7

• Blind sight is a pattern observed in patients with damage to the
primary visual cortex.
• These patients have no visual awareness, yet can correctly “guess”
the locations of objects and reach for them.

Question 8

Action slips

Answer 8

We can perform tasks unconsciously if we arrive at that task with an
established routine that can be guided by habit.
• These routines are efficient, but they are also inflexible.
• Action slips, or doing something different from what you intended,
often take the form of doing what is normal or habitual.

Question 9

access consciousness

Answer 9

how information is

accessed or used within the mind.

Question 10

phenomenal consciousness

Answer 10

is concerned with the

subjective experience of being conscious (Block, 1997).

Question 11

Splitting the Brain experiment

Answer 11

Left hemisphere: dominant for language
• Right hemisphere: dominant for spatial relationships
• Splitting the brain splits the mind: the brain halves contain
independent perceptions, thoughts, and consciousness
• Gazzaniga: split-brain experiments and research

the Interpreter: a left hemisphere process that strives to make sense
of events
• Hemispheres work together to reconstruct experiences
• Split brain research: left hemisphere / right hemisphere actions and
explanations do not correlate

On the basis of limited information, the left hemisphere attempts to explain
behavior governed by the right hemisphere.

Question 12

neuronal workspace hypothesis

Answer 12

The neuronal workspace hypothesis is a claim about how the brain
makes conscious experience possible.
• The proposal is that “workspace neurons” link together the activity of
various specialized brain areas.
• Stimuli become conscious when linked to each other in a dynamic,
coherent representation that the workspace provides.

The workspace makes possible a range of important behaviors:
• Thinking about an object or idea after the stimulus has been removed (working
memory)
• Reflecting on relationships or combinations among various inputs or ideas
(generativity, creativity)
• Adjusting the processing in one system in light of what is going on in other
systems (flexibility)

Question 13

Intentional Behavior

Answer 13

Some researchers have argued that conscious experience is what
allows us to produce spontaneous and intentional behavior.
• For instance, blind sight and amnesia suggest that perceptual
information or memory has to be conscious before someone will put
that information to use.

Question 14

Deductive Reasoning

Answer 14

You start with a general claim and if it is true you move on to test the next prediction asking, what else must be true?

Question 15

Inductive Reasoning

Answer 15

Coming up with a conclusion from your observations

Question 16

Induction

Answer 16

a pattern of reasoning in which one seeks to draw
general claims from specific bits of evidence.
• Based on what you know about Allen, what is likely to cheer him up today?
• Based on what you know about cars, what is the best kind to buy?

Question 17

Inductive Reasoning

Answer 17

• Premises are based on observation
• We generalize from these cases to more general conclusions with
varying degrees of certainty

Strength of argument
• Representativeness of observations
• Number of observations
• Quality of observations

Used to make scientific discoveries
• Hypotheses and general conclusions
• Used in everyday life
• Make a prediction about what will happen based on observation about what
has happened in the past

Question 18

heuristic

Answer 18

• Recall that a heuristic is a strategy that is reasonably efficient and
works most of the time. In using a heuristic, we gain efficiency at the
expense of more error.
• Judgment heuristics include:
• Attribute substitution
• Availability heuristic
• Representativeness heuristic

Question 19

Attribute substitution

Answer 19

Attribute substitution is a strategy used when we do not have easy
access to a desired piece of information.
• Instead, we base our decision on readily available information (a
proxy or index) that we believe is correlated with the desired
information.

Question 20

Heuristics

Answer 20

Heuristics: A way of calculating an answer that is probably going to result in a correct answer or a very close estimate

Question 21

Availability heuristic:

Answer 21

What are my “available” memories

with respect to the exams I have taken? What do those memories tell me about the success of cramming?

Question 22

Representiveness heuristic:

Answer 22

Our belief that each memory
we have is probably representative of all our other memories as well; a single data point is used to represent many data points

Judging the likelihood of things or objects in terms of how well they
seem to represent, or match, a particular prototype.

Question 23

Law of large numbers

Answer 23

the larger the number of individuals randomly
drawn from a population, the more representative the resulting
group will be of the entire population

Question 24

Covariation

Answer 24

The impact of heuristics on judgment can also be seen in how people
think about covariation.
• Covariation is a relationship between two variables such that the
presence or magnitude of one can be predicted by that of the other.
• Covariation can be negative or positive, and can vary in strength.

Question 25

illusory covariation

Answer 25

An illusory covariation is a
pattern that people believe
they perceive in the data
such that one variable
predicts another.
• A study of Rorschach inkblots
found that even when
fictitious patients and
fictitious responses were
randomly paired, people
believed they had found
patterns.

Question 26

Confirmation bias

Answer 26

a tendency to be more responsive to evidence that confirms one’s beliefs and less responsive to evidence that challenges one’s beliefs.

Question 27

• Base-rate information

Answer 27

is information about the broad likelihood of a

particular category or type of event.

Question 28

Diagnostic information

Answer 28

is information indicating whether an

individual case belongs to a category.

Question 29

Kahneman and Tversky (1973):

Answer 29

Base-rate information: The individuals being described were chosen
randomly from a group of 70 lawyers and 30 engineers.
• Diagnostic information: An individual description suggestive of a
prototypical lawyer or engineer, e.g., “likes carpentry, sailing, math
puzzles, dislikes politics.”

When provided only with the base-rate and no diagnostic
information, participants understood the probabilities of a person
from the group being a lawyer or engineer.
• However, when provided with both base-rate and diagnostic
information, participants ignored the base rates and used only
diagnostic information.

Question 30

Belief perseverance

Answer 30

• Belief perseverance is a tendency to continue endorsing a belief even
when evidence has completely undermined it.

Question 31

Categorical syllogisms

Answer 31

Categorical syllogisms
are logical arguments
containing two premises
and a conclusion.
• Syllogisms can be valid
or invalid.

ex. all M are D
All D are C
Therefore, all C are M

Syllogism is valid if conclusion follows logically from its two premises
• Aristotle’s “perfect” syllogism
• Premise 1: all A are B
• Premise 2: all B are C
• Conclusion: Therefore, all A are C

Question 32

Conditional syllogisms

Answer 32

A conditional statement has the format “If X, then Y.”
• The first part (antecedent) provides a condition under which the
second part (consequent) is guaranteed to be true.

One type of conditional statement is modus ponens, or affirming the
antecedent.
• If P is true, then Q is true.
• P is true.
• Therefore, Q must be true.
• People generally reason well with problems that rely on modus
ponens.

Another type of conditional statement is modus tollens, or denying the consequent.
• If P is true, then Q is true.
• Q is false.
• Therefore, P must be false.
• People generally reason poorly with problems that rely on modus tollens.

Two common errors are affirming the consequent.
• If P is true, then Q is true.
• Q is true.
• Therefore, P must be true. (invalid)

And denying the antecedent.
• If P is true, then Q is true.
• P is false.
• Therefore, Q must be false. (invalid)

Question 33

The Wason Four-Card Problem

Answer 33

Falsification principle: to test a rule, you must look for situations that
falsify the rule
• Most participants fail to do this
• When problem is stated in concrete everyday terms, correct responses
greatly increase

Question 34

pragmatic reasoning schema

Answer 34

A pragmatic reasoning schema is a set of rules
derived from experience that define the inferences
appropriate to a specific situation.
•One schema may define rules appropriate to
thinking about the situation “permission” whereas
another is used for “cause and effect” relations.

Question 35

descriptive theory

Answer 35

Our descriptive theory of decision making suggests that we do not
follow the principle of utility maximization.
• Instead, our decisions sometimes seem inconsistent and open to
framing effects.

Question 36

Heuristics vs Algorithms

Answer 36

Algorithms, which are very time consuming, exhaust all possibilities
before arriving at a solution. Computers use algorithms.

• Heuristics are simple, thinking strategies
that allow us to make judgments and
solve problems efficiently. Heuristics are
less time consuming, but more error
-
prone than algorithms.

Question 37

General Problem Solving Procedure

Answer 37

• Problem solving can be thought of as a search, as if you were
navigating a maze.
• Initial state – the knowledge and resources you have at the outset.
• Goal state – the state you are working towards.
• Operators – available tools or actions.
• Path constraints – limits that rule out some operations.

Question 38

problem space

Answer 38

the set of all states
that can be reached
in solving a problem,
as one moves, by
means of operators,
from the initial state
towards the goal
state.

One option would be to explore the entire problem space, but for
most problems the space is too vast.
• For instance, in a game of chess, the problem space has billions of
paths within just a few turns.
• For such problems, we can’t explore the entire problem space; we
need heuristics.

Question 39

The Hill Climbing Strategy

Answer 39

The hill-climbing strategy is
the heuristic to choose an
option that moves you in the
direction of the goal.
• However, many problems
require you to move away
from the goal state.
• For instance, some M’s and
C’s must be carried back from
the second bank to the first.

•A hill-climbing strategy
also is not helpful for the
“Tower of Hanoi”
problem.

Question 40

Tower of Hanoi

Answer 40

The rings must be moved
one at a time, and with
each move, a ring cannot
be placed on a smaller
ring.

Question 41

means-end analysis

Answer 41

In means-end analysis, the problem-solver asks at each step how the
current state can be made more similar to the goal state, using
available operators.
• Typically this results in breaking the problem into smaller
subproblems, each with its own goal.

Systematic comparison between initial state to goal state
• Hierarchical approach to these two states
• May involve invocation of routines/sub-routines to make progress towards
goal state
• Maximizes use of automaticity
• Experts: more practice, more sub-routines, can “think” in bigger pieces,
more sensitivity to patterns in data

Question 42

Heuristics

Answer 42

1. means-ends analysis - like discrepancy-reduction–a constant
   comparison of the solution and the current state.
   • 2. working forward - from start to finish
   • 3. working backward - from finish to start
   • 4. generate and test - tests various types of solution paths
   • 5. Analogy - using isomorphic problems

Question 43

Confirmation Bias

Answer 43

Confirmation Bias: A tendency to search for information that

confirms a personal bias.

Question 44

Positive vs Negative Transfer

Answer 44

Knowing the solution to one problem helped you to solve a second,
similarly-structured problem (Positive Transfer)
• Sometimes, though, such a mindset can prevent you from solving a
problem (Negative Transfer)

Question 45

well defined vs ill defined problems

Answer 45

in a well defined problem the goal state as well as the available operators are clearly specified. In an ill-defined problem, the goal state and the available operators are not clearly specified

Question 46

Functional fixedness

Answer 46

• Functional fixedness refers to a tendency to be rigid in thinking
about an object’s function.

The candle problem
demonstrates functional
fixedness.
• The participant must
realize that the box is not
just a container for the
tacks, but can be used as
a platform for the candle.

The two-string problem
also illustrates functional
fixedness.
•How can these two
strings be tied together,
if they can’t both be
reached at the same
time?

Question 47

problem-solving set

Answer 47

A related problem occurs when people get locked into a particular
line of thinking when trying to solve a problem.
• The problem-solving set is the collection of beliefs and assumptions
a person makes about a problem.
• A related concept, Einstellung (“attitude”) refers to a problemsolver’s
perspective, including beliefs, habits, and strategies.

Question 48

Working backwards

Answer 48

• 1) Start with goal state; 2) Conceptualize second-to-last state before goal
reached 3) How to get to that step? (rather than focusing exclusively on goal
state)

Question 49

The Insight Sequence

Answer 49

1. Representation phase – you begin to work on the problem; often
   this initial representation is incorrect
   • 2. Solution phase – you attempt to solve the problem
   • a. failure
   • b. impasse – a period in which you feel “stuck” and no active problem solving
   occurs
   • 3. Restructuring – you create a new representation of the problem
   • a. failure, which leads back to impasse
   • b. success

Question 50

insight vs non-insight problems

Answer 50

Insight is the sudden realization of a solution (an “Ah-Ha! Moment”)
• There is not an experience of working towards a solution
• So…
• Some problems are solved step-by-step and can only be solved this
way (these are Non-Insight Problems)
• Other problems can only be solved by a sudden realization (Insight
Problems)

• Non-Insight Problem (algebra):
• factor 16y^2 – 40yz + 25z^2

• Insight Problem:
• A prisoner was attempting escape from a tower. He found in
his cell a rope which was half long enough to permit him to
reach the ground safely. He divided the rope in half and tied
the two parts together and escaped. How could he have
done this?

An insight problem is a problem that requires the problem solver to
shift his or her perceptive and view the problem in a novel way in
order to achieve the solution. There are several types of insight
problems. The three main types are verbal, mathematical, and
spatial (Dow & Mayer 2003).