Thinking and language

Question 1

Concept

Answer 1

mental groups of similar objects; give us much information with little effort

Question 2

Prototype

Answer 2

the best example of a given concept

Question 3

What is the purpose of concepts?

Answer 3

Concepts give us much information with little effort, aids in decision making, communication, and organization

Question 4

What is the purpose of a prototype?

Answer 4

The more something represents our prototype, the faster we are at recognizing it as an example of the concept

Question 5

What happens to a concept in memory?

Answer 5

Once we encode a particular concept our memory may shift toward the concept prototype, basis for stereotypes

Question 6

Face study

Answer 6

shifts to the prototype.
Face #1 the man was 70% Caucasian, and 30% Asian, naturally more people chose the face that looked the most Caucasian.
Face #2 was the opposite, 70% Asian, 30% Caucasian, and people chose the face that looked the most Asian.

Question 7

Heuristics

Answer 7

Mental shortcuts; efficient but can lead to errors. Based on prototypes, leads to stereotypes.

Question 8

Algorithms

Answer 8

Methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a problem. Takes the longest time and effort but leads to little to no errors.

Question 9

Insight

Answer 9

“Aha!” sudden and often novel realization of the solution, pops into mind. Least common and has little to no research found on it.

Question 10

Representativeness bias

Answer 10

judging the likelihood of an event by comparing it to existing prototype; overestimating the importance of similarity

Question 11

Choosing the correct statement (representativeness bias example)

Answer 11

Choosing the statement that is more likely, people who are rational are more likely to choose the statement that has one uncertain event rather than two, because the probability of any two uncertain events occurring together is always less than the probability of either happening alone.

Question 12

Availability bias

Answer 12

Judging the likelihood of an event in terms of how salient or available it is in our memory.

Question 13

Availability bias examples

Answer 13

People are more afraid of things that are on the news, which are more unlikely to happen, like a shark attack, while they should be more afraid of what kills the most people like heart attacks or car accidents, which are more likely to happen.