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cognitive psychology > thinking > Flashcards

thinking Flashcards

1
Q

what is duncker’s definition of a problem

A

a problem arises when a living organism has a goal but does not know how this goal is to be reached

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2
Q

what are the 3 crucial elements of a problem

A
  • starting state
  • a set of processes that can transform the starting state into the goal state
  • goal state
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3
Q

what is the behaviourist approach

A

problem solving occurs through an incremental process of trial and error

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4
Q

what is the gestalt approach

A

problem solving occurs through a process of restructuring and insight

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5
Q

what is thorndike’s puzzle box 1898

A
  • placed a at in a puzzle box with a clasp that held the door shut
  • outside the cage was a piece of fish to encourage the cat to escape
  • the cats experimented with different ways to escape the puzzle box and reach the finish
  • eventually they would find a lever which opened door
  • thorndike recorded the time it took for the cat to solve the problem
  • after the cat escaped, he put them back in the cage to see how long it took them to escape again
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6
Q

what are the results of thorndike’s puzzle box experiment

A
  • in successive trials, the cats learnt that pressing the lever had favourable consequences
  • sped up over trials
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7
Q

what can we conclude from thorndike’s puzzle box experiment

A
  • progressively faster
  • trial and error - incremental
  • proposed law and effect - any behaviour followed by pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated and any behaviour followed by unpleasant consequences is likely to be stopped
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8
Q

what did gestalt draw a distinction between

A
  • reproductive thinking and productive thinking
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9
Q

what is reproductive thinking

A

involves a re-use of previous experience

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10
Q

what is productive thinking

A

involves a novel restructuring of the problem

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11
Q

what did kohler find - saltan’s insight

A
  • gave chimps problems to solve
  • chimp in cage and bananas outside of cage
  • if given 2 sticks that were too short to reach bananas on their own he would give up
  • after time he made a longer sticks by using the sticks together to reach bananas
  • restructured problem
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12
Q

how can we conclude kohler’s findings

A
  • insight rather than trial or error
  • chimps were cared for rather than thorndikes cats
  • birch - apes raised in captivity didn’t show the same level of insight
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13
Q

what are wallas four stages of creative thinking

A
  • preparation
  • incubation
  • illumination
  • verification
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14
Q

what is preparation

A

a problem is formulated and initial attempts are made to solve the problem

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15
Q

what is incubation

A

the problem is set aside and no conscious work is done on it

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16
Q

what is illumination

A

a sudden inspiration provides a new insight into the way in which the problem might be solved

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17
Q

what is verification

A

conscious work on the problem develops and tests the inspiration to provide a full solution to the problem

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18
Q

what did Helmholtz say about incubation followed by illumination

A

happy ideas come unexpectedly, without effort like an inspiration

19
Q

what did Hadamard say about incubation followed by illumination

A

unconscious activity often plays a decisive part in discovery, that periods of ineffective effort are often followed, after intervals of rest or distraction by moments of sudden illumination

20
Q

what did silveira 1971 find

A
  • the cheap necklace problem
  • control group worked on problem for half an hour - 55% people solved the problem
  • experimental group - work for half an hour and then interrupted with 30 min break before carrying on - 64% solved problem
  • other experimental group - worked for half an hour and then had 4 hour break - 85% solved problem
  • incubation does help
21
Q

what did murray and denny 1969 do

A
  • pps were divided into high and low ability groups on the basis of their performance on a use of objects test of creativity
  • given 20 mins to solve a complex practical problem
  • incubation group had 5 min break
  • control group had no break
  • found for high ability pps the break acted as a distraction so were faster with no break
  • for low ability pps they were aided by the break and required a period of incubation
  • shows individual differences in whether incubation period is effective
22
Q

what are barriers to successful problem solving

A
  • functional fixedness
  • the einstellung effect
23
Q

what is functional fixedness

A

people fixate on one property of an object and cannot think about it in a different way

24
Q

what is the einstellung effect

A

people learn a particular strategy for solving a problem which has produced success in the past and continue to use it even when it’s inappropriate

25
Q

what did duncker find about functional fixedness

A
  • support candle on the wall so it doesn’t drip onto the table below
  • found pps tried to nail candle to the wall or glue to the wall with wax
  • he then altered material by taking nails out of the box - pps no longer fixated on the box’s function of holding nails
    instead they can use it as a candle holder
26
Q

what is the nine dot problem

A
  • overcoming fixedness
  • connect all dots without lifting pen from paper
  • most people assume they must stay within the square but you must draw outside the square
27
Q

what is the water jug problem

A
  • the luchins 1942
  • the task is to work out how to use the jugs to measure the final quantity
  • the negative effect of previous experience when solving new problems - biased by previous experience to use all jugs
27
Q

what did brown and mcneill find and research

A
  • feeling-of-knowing
  • we sometimes feel closer to the solution even if we can’t solve it
  • 57% people can name the first letter of the word even if they can’t name it
28
Q

what did metcalfe find

A
  • feeling-of-warmth
  • sometimes predict how close to a solution you are
  • compared feelings of warmth for incremental and insight based problems
  • feelings of warmth predicted performance on incremental problems but not insight problems
29
Q

what is normative reasoning

A
  • using mathematics
  • real decision making scenarios often include probable information
  • probability theories can therefore be used to define the best possible decision in these scenarios
  • an example is bayes’ theorem
30
Q

what is bayes’ theorem

A

mathematical rule for inverting conditional probabilities allowing us to find the probability of a cause given it’s effect

31
Q

what is human reasoning

A
  • much psychological research has looked at situations where human reasoning is not normative
  • kahneman and tversky systematically investigated some situations where human reasoning is biased
  • they proposed that these biases occur because people use heuristics to answer complex probabilistic questions
32
Q

what is the representative heuristic

A

kahneman and tversky
- the assumption that representative or typical members of a category are encountered more frequently

33
Q

what research did kahneman and tversky 1973 do

A
  • pps asked to judge professions from brief character descriptions
  • box contained 100 brief descriptions of people - 30 were of engineers and 70 were of lawyers
  • had to draw description out box and say whether they were a lawyer or engineer
  • pps ignore the base rate probabilities and instead base their judgment on whether the description sounds like an engineer
34
Q

what is the linda problem

A
  • tversky and kahnemen
  • describes a person and asked pps to make judgments
  • the conjunction fallacy - a reasoning error that people think chances of 2 things happening together is greater than the chance of just one thing happening alone
35
Q

what is the gambler’s fallacy

A
  • the mistaken belief that future tosses of a coin are influenced by past events
  • head and tails are equally likely, it doesn’t matter what came before as the coin has no memory
36
Q

what is the availability heuristic

A
  • decision makers asses the frequency of a class or the probability of an event by the ease with which instances or occurrences can be brought to mind
37
Q

what did tversky and kahneman 1974 do to reserach the availability heuristic

A
  • asked pps what was more frequent - word which has k as first letter of 3rd letter
  • 69% say k as the first letter which is incorrect
  • easier to access words that start with the letter k
38
Q

what did lichtenstein et al 1978 find about availability heuristic

A
  • investigated the judged frequency of lethal events
  • pps overestimate low frequency events
  • pps underestimate high frequency events
39
Q

what is base rate neglect

A
  • people ignore the general prevalence of an event happening
  • they favour the info that relates to a specific case they are presented with
  • the base rate is required to make correct probability judgments
40
Q

what is the taxi cab study

A
  • tversky and kahneman
  • people tend to think the taxi was more likely to be blue than green
  • pps focus on the witness’ accuracy and neglect the base rate of taxi cabs driving in the city
41
Q

what did casscells et al 1978 find

A
  • medical diagnosis study
  • 45% of pps responded by ignoring the base rate
42
Q

what did cosmides and tooby 1996 find about base rate neglect

A
  • present the medical problem with probability and frequency formats
  • probability format - high number make errors
  • frequency format - high number of people choose correct answer

cognitive psychology (8 decks)

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