Lecture 14 - Human Thought Flashcards
Human thinking
understanding events and people, explaining and solving problems
How can thinking lead us to be incorrect
False understandings or misleading conceptions (procrastination)
What do mental activities allow us to do?
- Represent the world internally
- Thinking about that world
- Guide our interactions with that world
What do we think about?
Concepts
Concepts
Mental goupings of similar objects, events, states, ideas, and/or people
- standard
- complex (abstract thinking)
How do we develop concepts
Prototypes - mental images of an abstract most typical categorization
Organizing concepts - categorization
How close an object is to a prototype then fits into a category
When do prototypes fail?
- Examples stretch the qualities associated with the prototype
- Boundary between the categories of concepts is fuzzy
- Examples contradict our prototypes
Problem-solving
Answer to a complex question or to figure out how to accomplish a goal when the solution is not clear
Algorithm
Step-by Step strategy for solving a problem (quality>speed)
Heuristic
Mental shortcuts that give guidance on how to solve a problem (speed>quality)
Representativeness heuristic
Judgement of likelihood based on the similarity with a particular category
Affect heuristic
Making decision based on emotional reactions regather than careful analysis
Availability Heuristic
Judgement of the frequency of an event based on how easily we can think of examples
Effort Heuristic
Assuming things that took more effort to make are more valuable
Conformation bias
Searching for information which confirms out current explanations disregarding contradictory advice (looking for the answer you want to be correct)
Solution to confirmation bias
Falsify instead confirming
Cognitive Fixation
- Tendency to get stuck in one way of thinking often because of how we understand people
- Limits out ability to think a problem/solution from a new perspective
What is Language
Use of symbols to represent, transmit, and store meaningful information (shapes how you are and why you are)
Linguistic Determinism
Idea that our specific language determines how we think
Advantages to bilinguisme
- Early development of executive control
- more creativity
