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Thinking

7/23/16 3:20 PM

Cognition
• Mental activities associate with thinking, knowing, remembering,
and communicating
Cognitive psychology
• Study these mental activities
o Concept formation
o Problem solving
o Decision making
o Judgment formation
Concept
• Mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas or people
Prototype
• Mental image or best example of a category
o Matching new items to the prototype provide a quick and easy
method for including items in a category [as when comparing
feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin]
Algorithm
• Methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a
particular problem
• Contrasts with the usually speedier – but also more error – prone
use of heuristics
• All combinations used for word scrambling
Heuristics
• Simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments
and solve problems efficiently
• Usually speedier than algorithms
• Throw out all YY combinations
• Other heuristics? –
Insight
• Sudden and often realization of the solution to a problem
• Contrasts with strategy –based solutions
Confirmation bias
• Tendency to search for information that confirms ones
preconceptions
Mental set
• Tendency to approach a problem in a particular way

Especially a way that has been successful in the past but may or
may not be helpful in solving a new problem
Functional fixedness
• Tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions
• Impediment to problem solving
Availability heuristic
• Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in
memory
Framing
• The way an issue is posed
• How an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and
•

judgments
o Ex:
§ What is the best way to market ground beef?
ú As 25% fat or 75% lean
Belief bias
• The tendency for ones preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning
• Sometimes by making invalid conclusions seem valid or valid
conclusions seem invalid
Belief perseverance
• Clinging to ones initial conceptions after the basis on which they
were formed has been discredited
Overconfidence
• Tendency to be more confident than correct
• Tendency to overestimate the accuracy of ones beliefs and
judgments

Language and Thought
Module 30

7/23/16 3:20 PM

Language
• Our spoken, written, or gestured works and the way we combine
them to communicate meaning
Phoneme
• In a spoken language, the smallest distinctive sound unit
Morpheme
• Ina language, the smallest unit that carries meaning
• May be a word or a part of a word [such as a prefix ex: pre- ]
Grammar
• A system of rules in a language tat enables us to communicate and
understand others
Semantics
• The set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes,
words, and sentences in a given language
• Also, the study of meaning
Syntax
• The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible
sentences in a given language
• 40 sound units create 16060 approx
...
F
...
We just need to add adequate nurture
so that it can unfold
Linguistic determinism
• Whorfs hypothesis: language determines the way we think
•

Intro

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