Thought, Language, & Intelligence Flashcards
Cognitive psychology
Study of all the mental activities that are involved in thinking, such as knowing, remembering, solving problems, making judgements and decisions, and communicating.
What are mental representations? How are they organised?
The basic building blocks of thinking.
Organized into concepts: mental categories that group similar things
Name two ways to define concepts that don’t have clear boundaries.
Prototype
Family resemblance
Prototype
A kind of best example or average member of a concept, has most of the features associated with the concept
What is the hierarchy concepts can be organised into?
Basic: concepts like table,
Superordinate: concepts are more abstract ones like furniture, that include the base level ones,
Subordinate: concepts are more specific concepts within the base level ones, like dining table
What are two examples of approaches to problem solving?
Trial and error
Algorithm
What is insight?
Sudden, conscious change in understanding.
What’s the effect of adding constraints and assumptions when reasoning through a problem?
Makes it easier to choose, but means you may miss some good options
What are mental sets? Give an example.
Mental frameworks or analogies that help us solve new problems, which we gain through experience.
Example: Fortresses and tumours. 10% could solve problem without fortress analogy, 80% with it.
What is functional fixedness?
Example of a mental set.
Tendency to focus on object’s typical functions and ignore other potential functions.
Mental sets are generally helpful but if we rely on them we can sometimes miss more creative or better solutions.
What is restructuring?
When prior experience hinders us from solving a problem, we have to restructure our mental set.
Judgements
Conclusions drawn from evidence that often lead to decisions
Decisions
Choices that influence behaviour
Do people like having lots of options?
Yes, but it can make it harder for them to decide. Example with supermarket samples of jam–people spent more time trying out samples when there were 24 different kinds available, but bought less jam, than when there were fewer samples.
Bounded rationality
Decision-making is constrained by:
the limitations in human thinking,
the availability of information,
time
Dual-process theories (NOT two-factor theory)
Say we have two modes of thinking.
We can use the controlled system which is slow, takes a lot of effort, and is very rational.
Or we can use the automatic system which is fast and fairly effortless and leads to “good enough” decisions most of the time (I’d debate that).
Heuristics
Heuristics are, usually unconscious, mental shortcuts that help us come to decisions efficiently
The representativeness heuristic
The shortcut for deciding how frequent or probable something is based on how well it represents or is prototypical of a category. E.g. woman basketball player.
The availability heuristic
The shortcut for deciding how frequent or probable something is based on how easily it, or examples of it, come to mind. E.g. murder vs suicide.
What are affective reactions? How are they useful? How can they be harmful?
A gut reaction that tells you whether something will be good for you or bad for you.
In rare cases, a person may not have these (due to brain damage) and makes poor decisions. Shows how useful they are.
Affect can be manipulated without our awareness. See: advertising.
Affect heuristic
Tendency to use the affect (good or bad) we associate with various things to make judgements and decisions.
Stinky bin study
Showed people judge things more harshly when they are experiencing a negative emotion like disgust
Belief perseverance
The tendency for people to stick to their beliefs, even when presented with evidence that disconfirms them.
What is framing? What are two ways it works?
The way an issue, decision or problem is described.
When people are uncertain, their thinking can be easily swayed with framing because it:
○ Shifting the decision maker’s reference point
○ Implicitly recommending an option