Lecture Guide Chapter 7 Cognitive Thinking Intelligence and Language Based on the text Psychology Ciccarelli and White 2009 Gen Psych Sciartelli F09 Cognition What is it Thinking cognition mental activities associated with knowing remembering deciding solving judging and communicating Psychologists that study cognition are called Cognitive Psychologists and Cognitive Neuropsychologists What is a major theme Conservation of resources energy short cuts often help sometimes get us in trouble Concept a mental grouping of similar objects events ideas or people Why develop concepts To simplify conserve speed up guide and problem solve To organize and speed up our thinking Concepts Formal by definition the exception less common than natural What is something If you are able to immediately come up with a visual image and are able to define it Ex a triangle immediately a three sided figure Natural by prototype mental image or best example Put all important features into a prototype and use it for comparison Ex sports first mental prototype most common or what you play generally football baseball if you play golf you think golf Ex vehicles car bus train bicycle Often put together in hierarchies Schema organized generalizations about objects places people and events Ex suburbs Most people come up with what a suburb is looks like Scripts schema that involves familiar sequence of behaviors Ex brushing your truth The script is picking up the toothbrush put on toothpaste brush your teeth What are mental images Internal picture like representations How do they help thinking Reflect real life in many ways Organization speed less cumbersome than verbal in many situations Mental maps help find things including self Ex how many windows are in your house Walk through your house mentally to count them 1 Problem Solving thinking and behaving in ways to reach a goal What helps 5 methods that people use to solve problems 1 Trial and Error try different ways until one works AKA mechanical Ex children putting shape blocks into holes eventually find the hole that the block will fit into not systematical One of the simplest and works if you don t run out of time Used most often by children 2 Algorithms step by step procedures that guarantee a solution can be labor intensive Ex scrambled letters put every letter in every place You try ALL solutions A ten letter words could make up to 900 000 solutions but will guarantee a correct solution eventually Speedier but more error prone 3 Heuristics A simple thinking strategy An educated guess based on past experience Narrows down possible solutions Rule of thumb Ex what letters likely go together means end analysis kid s television show finding out what worked for others in the past and using it to your advantage Your friend sends you to the store to buy blueberry juice something you ve never seen there but she is sure they have it How will you find it using Trial and error Go down random aisles and start looking until you find it Algorithm Go down EVERY aisle Might take forever but if they have juice you will find it Heuristic Go straight to the juice aisle 4 Insight solution comes suddenly and often novel vs strategy based Aha 5 Creativity the ability to combine ideas and behaviors in new ways increase chances of success in certain situations What hurts 2 Fixation 1 Confirmation Bias tendency to search for information that supports what we already think and to ignore or distort information that contradicts our beliefs Ex baby jack in the box don t know what gender the baby is people think the baby boy is angry people think the baby girl is afraid Mental Set tendency to approach problems from only one way especially in the past Ex OTTF what comes next One two three four five six seven Ex JFMA what comes next January February March April May June July The failure to see from a new perspective can slow problem solving 2 3 Functional Fixedness tendency to think of things only in terms of usual functions which can block problem solving Think of other ways to use things that aren t there normal purpose Ex give a group a box of matches a candle and a thumbtack ask them to get the candle to attach to a bulletin board empty matches from box use the box to hold the candle then thumbtack to the board Ex shower no body wash but shampoo Making Decisions and Forming Judgments Using and Misusing Heuristics these next two generally helpful shortcuts can lead the smartest of us into dumb decisions Representative Heuristic judging how likely something is in terms of how well it seems to represent or match particular prototypes can help or hurt may lead us to ignore other relevant information like base rates Ex lottery coin flip Amus Tversky and Daniel Kahneman 1974 Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 Availability Heuristic estimate likelihood of something based on its availability in memory If instances come to mind readily maybe due to vividness or personal experience we presume the events are common Ex planes vs cars people are more afraid of dying in a plane crash even though you are more likely to die in a car accident shark attacks Overconfidence we are often more confident than we are correct we overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments Ex think we can get things done faster than we actually can The Belief Perseverance Phenomenon tendency to cling to your initial conceptions even after the basis on which they formed has been discredited Can we break a belief by being aware Not enough Must be forced to think from the other person s perspective Intuition an effortless immediate automatic feeling or thought as contrasted with explicit conscious reasoning Ex baby chicks difficult to tell gender experts can tell through intuition immediately which gender the baby chicks are without any explanation as to how Effects of Framing how an issue is posed can significantly affect decisions and judgments Ex patients need an operation two groups tell first group that 10 die tell the other that 90 live the first group is more likely to be afraid of dying during the operation Language form of communication based on a system of symbols Language can be spoken written and or signed It is used to communicate with others but also forms the basis of thought for most of us which contributes to memory and problem solving All Human Languages have at least 3 things in common 1 Series of agreed upon symbols words 2 Organizational rules 3 Infinite generativity endless 3 How many human languages are
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