Thinking, Reasoning, and Language Flashcards
What is thinking?
- Any mental activity or processing of information
* Includes learning, remembering, perceiving, communicating, believing, and deciding
What is higher order cognition?
- Decision making and problem solving
- More complex thoughts
- Requires taking basic aspects of cognition and integrating them into a plan of action
What is cognitive economy?
- How our brains simplify information to reduce mental effort
- Keeps information we need for decision making to a minimum
- Oversimplifying can get us into trouble
What are heuristics?
- Mental shortcut
* May have enhanced survival
What is thin slicing?
• Ability to exact useful information from small bits of behaviour
What is cognitive bias?
• Systematic error in thinking
What is representatives heuristics?
- Heuristic that involves judging the probability of an event by its superficial similarity to a prototype
- Basically, based on how prevalent that event has been in past experience
What is the challenge to the representatives heuristic?
Failure to consider basic rate information, which is how common a behaviour or characteristic is in general
What is the availability heuristic?
• Heuristic that involves estimating the likelihood of an occurrence based on the ease with which it comes to our minds
• We use what is “available” in our memory
o What we have been told about this previously
• It’s what makes us bad at estimating stats/calories etc.
Which heuristic is caused by our failure to consider how common a behaviour or characteristic is in general?
Representative heuristic
Which heuristic makes us bad at estimating statistics and calories?
Availability heuristic
What is hindsight bias?
- Tendency to overestimate how well we could have predicted something after it has already occurred
- Hindsight is 20/20
- “It would have worked better if…”
What is confirmation bias?
• Tendency to seek out evidence that supports our hypothesis of beliefs and to deny, dismiss, or distort evidence that doesn’t
What is bottom-up processing?
o Brain processes information it receives and constructs memory from it slowly, building understanding through experience
What is top-down processing?
• Filling in gaps of missing information using our experiences and background knowledge
What are examples of top-down processing?
Perception, chunking, concepts, schemas
What is perception as it relates to thinking?
• Adding raw input to knowledge and experience
What is chunking?
Memory aid organizing information into meaningful groupings, allowing us to extend the span of short term memory
What are concepts?
- Our knowledge and ideas about a set of objects, actions, and characteristics that share core properties
- Ex is we know what properties motorbikes share
What are schemas?
- Memory of how certain actions, objects, and ideas relate to each other
- Helps us mentally organize events like how to go grocery shopping
What is decision making?
• Process of selecting among a set of possible alternatives
What is paralysis by analysis?
o Confusion caused by listing all pros and cons of an emotional decision
• When it comes to emotional preferences, thinking too much causes problems
What is decision management?
o Attempts to bring scientific evidence to business to avoid bias
What is framing?
o The way a question is formulated that can influence the decisions people make
What is neuroeconomics?
o Interested in how the brain works while making financial decisions
o Recently moved to help diagnosis and characterize psychological disorders
What is problem solving?
• Generating a cognitive strategy to accomplish a goal
What are some approaches to problem solving?
Heuristics, algorithms, breaking down steps, analogies
What is an algorithm?
- Step by step learned procedure that is used to solve a problem
- Handy when steps to get to the solution are the same each time
- Ensures we do all the steps
- Pretty inflexible
What is an analogy?
- Reasoning from related examples
* Solves problems with similar structures
What is salience to surface similarity and how does this create an obstacle for solving a problem?
- Salience is how attention-grabbing the thing is
- Means we tend to focus on superficial properties of a problem
- Ignoring surface features and focusing on underlying reasoning to solve problems can be challenging
What are mental sets and how does this create an obstacle for solving a problem?
- Phenomenon of becoming stuck in a specific problem-solving strategy, inhibiting our ability to generate alternatives
- Trouble thinking outside the box because what’s in the box has worked before
What are functional fixedness and how does this create an obstacle for solving a problem?
- Difficulty conceptualizing that an object typically used for one purpose can be used for another
- Become fixated on the conventional use
What is the computer model of the mind?
- Many thought of the mind as a computer, run an algorithm and spit out an answer
- Some things are much easier for us than a computer, such as speech
- We can view situations with context a computer is unable to do
What is the embodiment model of the mind?
- Reflects physically interactive nature of our knowledge and experience
- Knowledge organized and accessed in a manner that enables us to simulate actual experiences
- Sensory areas become activated when people think about objects, actions, and events
What is language and what does it allow for?
- Largely arbitrary system of communication that combines symbols (such as words or gestures) in rule-based ways to create meaning
- Communicating info that enables us or others to accomplish a goal
- Allows expression of thoughts about social interaction
What are the features of languages and how do they relate to going out for dinner?
Phonemes - ingredients
Morphemes – Menu Items
Syntax – Putting Together a Meal
Extralinguistic Information – Overall Dining Experience
Language Dialects – Regional and Cultural Differences in Dining Habits
What are phonemes?
- Sounds of language
- Categories our vocal apparatus produces
- Probably around 100 in total around the world with each language using a subset of them
- English uses between 40-45
What are morphemes?
- Smallest unit of meaningful speech
- Created by stringing phonemes together
- Convey information about semantics (meaning derived from words and sentences)
- Most are words but also includes prefixes and suffixes
What is syntax?
• Grammatical rules governing how we compose words into meaningful strings
• Includes morphological markers
o Grammatical elements that modify words by adding sounds to them that change their meaning (for example adding -ed, or -ing)
• Idealized form of language that is more formal, real-world use may differ
What is extralinguistic information?
- Elements of communication that are not part of the content of language but crucial to interpreting its meaning
- Includes facial expression, posture, gestures, tone of voice etc.
- Allows for inclusion of context to the words that are spoken
What is a language dialect?
- Dialect is a language variation in the same language used by a group of people who share geographic proximity or ethnic background
- May differ in accent, slang, words used, or things like dropping r’s
What is sound symbolism?
o Certain speech sounds seem associated with particular meanings
o Research says language is not completely arbitrary as the words for mother and father are very similar around the world
o May indicate connections between auditory and other sensory systems in the brain that influence language
What is babbling?
o Intentional vocalization that lacks specific meaning
o Helps babies experiment with phonemes
When do children begin to say their first word?
About 12 months
What is the one-word stage?
o Early period of language development when children use single-word phrases to convey an entire thought
What type of language does the average 2 year old produce?
- By age 2, most can produce several hundred words
- By age 2, simple two-word combinations but syntax generally accurate
- Within several months go to 3- or 4-word combinations and produce morphological markers
What are morphological markers?
o Grammatical elements that modify words by adding sounds to them that change their meaning (for example adding -ed, or -ing)
What are similarities of sign language to spoken language?
- Many sign languages spoken in different countries and deaf communities
- Has its own phonemes, words, syntax, and extralinguistic information
- Same areas of brain involved in processing spoken languages become active in signers
- Babies learning to sign learn them in the same way as spoken language and even babble with their hands before learning words and beginning to string them into longer sentences
What is bilingualism?
• Proficient and fluent and speaking and comprehending two distinct languages
What is metalinguistics and is it increased or decreased in bilingual children?
o Awareness of how language is structure and used
o Increased in bilingual children
What is executive control process and is it enhanced or depressed in bilingual children?
o Brain’s ability to oversee and organize most other brain functions
o Enhanced in bilingual children
What is the difference in brain scans of bilingual children and those that learned a second language as an adult?
• Children show brain activation in same place for both languages, when learned as adults, the languages activate different places