Week 12 - Problem Solving & Reasoning Flashcards
Lydia & Linus decided to not vaccinate their baby because they fear that the baby is more likely to suffer severe complications (encephalitis) from the procedure than if the baby developed one of those diseases later in life from being unvaccinated.
This decision is best explained by which one of these cognitive biases?
- Omission bias
- Duration neglect
- Sunk-cost effect
- Anchoring
- Omission bias
Problem solving
It is: Purposeful. Involves controlled processes and automatic processes. Occurs when lacking relevant knowledge to produce an immediate solution. Involves searching for or generating a solution, strategy or plan.
PROBLEM SPACE
The set of states, or possible choices,
that faces the problem solver at each step
in moving from an initial state to a goal state
Trial and error learning
Edward thorndike
Law of Effect: If a random action is followed by a reward, this action will be strengthened and is likely to occur again in the future.
Problem. Solving
Insight learning (gestalt approach)
Wolfgang kohler
Solving a problem by developing an understanding of the problem’s underlying structure. This leads to the experience of suddenly realizing how to solve the problem (insight).
NOT trial-and-error Learning
Sudden arrival of solution after thinking about it considerably
Problem solving: expertise
SKILL ACQUISITION
Developing abilities through practice so as to increase the probability of goal achievement
Chess playing
ELO Ranking System – precise and valid assessment of a player’s expertise
Development of specific cognitive skills (pattern recognition, selective search) useful in other areas of expertise (allowing generalizations to be made)
Information on remarkable memory for chess positions generalizes to other forms of expertise
Chunking is automatic and occurs during perception. A chunk is the grouping of information in a significant way as a single entity. Takes about 10 seconds.
- This entity is encoded then as a perceptual unit of information. It can be recognized instantly.
- Experts – larger chunks (independent of STM capacity) and have about 100,000 chunks.
- Experts, unlike novices, do not store information as separate units in their STM, but store the chunks that have been established in their LTM.
Chunks - essential developing conditions of productions.
- Experts are quick and intuitive to provide solutions. Blitz chess.
- Experts use a forward search approach whereas Novices use backward search when solving problems.
- Experts use productions that are based on pattern recognition.
- Templates: Schematic structure of fixed and variable information about chess pieces. Larger in experts.
Problem solving: expertise
Medical expertise
Experts and Novices differ in use of:
- Explicit reasoning (slow, deliberate, conscious, analytic reasoning, focal search) = NOVICES
- Implicit reasoning (fast, automatic, non-conscious, non-analytic, global impression) = EXPERTS
- Experts start with implicit reasoning and use explicit reasoning when cross-checking.
- Implicit strategies more often in visual specialities (pathology, dermatology) than technical ones (surgery).
Experts require less time to diagnose.
- Experts glean more information from case slides despite taking less time to process.
- Experts locate and fixate immediately on the problem.
- Experts use exemplar based strategies - rapid search for stored example that closely resembles the case.
- Experts engage in gist based processing – decisions based on crucial information, ignoring less important details, can lead to oversimplifications.
Reasoning
INDUCTIVE ●Wason Rule Discovery Task ●Confirmation versus Falsification ●Confirmation Bias: The predisposition to evaluate information in ways consistent with one’s own pre-existing beliefs
DEDUCTIVE
●Syllogistic Reasoning
All A are B.
All B are C.
Therefore all A are C.
●Conditional Reasoning
●Wason Selection Task
FORM ERRORS
oMatching bias
oAtmosphere effect
●CONTENT ERRORS - Belief bias: Errors in logic from the tendency to accept invalid conclusions that are believable & reject valid conclusions that are unbelievable.
Some fish are not trout (Believable) Some trout are not fish (Unbelievable)
Reasoning
Theories
Mental model theory
Mental models represent possibilities: Each model captures a distinct set of possibilities to which the current description refers.
- Mental models are iconic: the structure of a model corresponds to the structure of what it represents.
- The principle of truth: Mental models represent only what is true, not what is false, in each possibility.
Dual system theories
System 1 (unconscious, heuristic processes)
•System 2 (conscious, analytic processes)
•Human reasoning based on:
(a) Singularity principle: Only a single mental model considered at a time.
(b) Relevance principle: The most relevant mental model is considered (based on prior experience).
(c) Satisficing principle: Current model evaluated by Analytic System 2, and accepted if adequate.
Reasoning
Analogical
Rather than beginning from scratch using heuristics such as means–ends analysis, reasoning by analogy involves thinking of a problem with similar characteristics that has been solved before and use or adapt that solution in the present problem solving instance.
Judgement and decision making
Judgement
How people make use of various information (cues) to draw inferences about situations and events.
- Evaluated in terms of accuracy.
- Heuristics & Biases – error prone but cognitive undemanding
Decision making
How people choose what action to take.
•Evaluated in terms of consequences.
BASE-RATE INFORMATION
The relative frequency of an event within a population
INCONGRUENT PROBLEM
A psychologist wrote thumbnail descriptions of a sample of 1,000 participants consisting of 995 females and 5 males. The description below was chosen at random from the 100 available descriptions.
Jo is 23 years old and is finishing a degree in engineering. On Friday nights, Jo likes to go out cruising with friends while listening to loud music and drinking beer.
Which one of the following two statements is most likely?
(a) Jo is a man
(b) Jo is a woman
REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTIC
Judging probabilities on the basis of resemblance
CONJUNCTION FALLACY
The assumption that specific conditions are more probable than general ones
AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC
The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater “availability” in memory (influenced by recency of the memory, unusualness or associated emotionality).
ANCHORING
The tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the “anchor”) when making decisions.
RECOGNITION HEURISTIC
Using the knowledge that only one out of two options is recognized to make a judgment
OMISSION BIAS
The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral than equally harmful omissions (inactions)
SUNK COST EFFECT
A tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment in money, effort, or time has been made. The sunk cost fallacy is when we continue an action because of our past decisions (time, money, resources) rather than a rational choice of what will maximize our utility at this present time.
DURATION NEGLECT
The psychological observation that people’s judgments of the unpleasantness of painful experiences depend very little on the duration of those experiences.
●Peak/end evaluations: A heuristic to recall the worst instant (PEAK) and the last instant (END)
Judgment and Decision Making
Fast AND FRUGAL
“Take the best, ignore the rest”
•Search rule – find cues in order of validity, Stopping rule – after finding discriminatory cue, Decision rule – choose outcome.
Judgement and decision making
CAUSAL MODEL
We possess valuable causal knowledge that we use to make successful judgements in the real world.
•Judgements under ecologically valid conditions generally more accurate than in lab based situations.
Judgement and decision making
Natural frequency hypothesis
Natural sampling: Process of encountering instances in a population sequentially.
•Through this, we work out frequencies of different kinds of events.
Judgement and decision making
Dual process model
System 1: Automatic and intuitive judgement of problem.
•System 2: Analytical and rule based control processes. Monitors System 1 and corrects if needed.
Judgement and decision making
Complex decision making
Multi-attribute utility theory
•Identify decision relevant attributes.
•Decide how to weight those attributes.
•Obtain a total utility score (sum weighted attribute values to obtain subjective desirability for each option).
•Select option with highest weighted total.
Bounded rationality
Optimization (best choice) is sought, but difficult to estimate time pressure, uncertainty, ill-defined goals, etc.
•People are as rational as their processing limitations permit.
•Satisficing: selection of first choice meeting minimum requirements (satisfactory and sufficing).
