thinking and reasoning Flashcards
what kinds of thinking are there?
5 kinds
deductive reasoning - solving problems which have correct answers e.g maths
inductive reasoning - predicting future from past data
problem-solving - how to get from A to B
judgement and decision-making
creative thinking
what is the dual-process theory of reasoning, problem solving and decision making?
what are the strengths and limitations of each system?
system 2
- slow, effortful and sequential but logical, conscious reasoning system
- constrained by limited working-memory capacity
system 1
- automatic and mainly unconscious, called heuristics
- effective when applied in appropriate domain but only approximate and may lead to error if applied to inappropraite domain
what is meant by the availability heuristic?
and what may this lead to?
judge as more probable/frequent events of which more examples are readily available in long-term memory
confounded by availability being due to e.g salience and recency instead of just frequency so availability bias
what is retrievability from LTM determined by?
- recency
- salience
- similarity to current case
- frequency
what are neglect of base rate and representativeness bias and what do they lead to?
tend to ignore our knowledge of base rates (overall frequency of particular events)
due to something having features representative of being in one category then we think they have the standard properties of that category
leads to bias in ignoring other info
what is meant by conservatism and confirmation bias in inductive reasoning?
conservatism - reluctant to abandon thieir hypothesis
confirmatory - tend to seek confirmatory rather than disconfirmatory evidence for your hypothesis
what is meant by means-end analysis in problem solving?
pick general means for reaching a goal and if means is not yet available, create the sub-goal of achieving that means
until one generates a sub-goal that can be satisfied by an available operator
what are several design limitations in cognitive capacities?
properties of memory retrieval
limited working memory capacity
difficulty in attending to relevant info
difficulty in shifting cognitive set
effortfulness of sequential reasoning
what do design limitations in cognitive capacities lead to?
lead to reliance on heuristics (approximate rules of thumb)
result in intrinsic biases when we apply these heuroistics
discuss mental models in deductive reasoning?
where do errors arise?
having been given a set of premises, we imagine one or more possible concrete worlds in which the premises are true (mental models)
we then generate a conclusion or determine whether conclusion offered is valid by examining mental models
errors arise through:
- failure to generate all possible mental models for premises
- lack of working memory capacity for maintaining multiple models
describe Wason’s 4-card problem on conditional propositions?
all cards have letter on one side and number on other
told if card has vowel on one side then has odd number on other
asked which 2 cards have to be turned over to check whether following rule is true
chose to turn A (odd number on other side) but also turned 1 instead of 2 (would not produce vowel and hence confirm rule)
how can performance in Wason’s 4-card problem be improved?
by changing the content and context without changing the formal structure
e.g which cards need to be flipped to check whether person is being legal with alcohol
75% correct with this version compared to 10-20% in original context
also improved when given social rules and permissions
explain why performance of Wason’s 4 card problem is improved when changing the context?
1) deontic reasoning: engage a familiar permission schema for social rules about what ought to happen in certain circumstances as has same truth conditions as logical
2) causal reasoning: if proposition is interpreted as making a causal claim then strength of this relationship is tested
