Professional Documents
Culture Documents
episodic memory is memory of life events. episodic memory is declarative (can be expressed
verbally).
Both types of memories are associated with different areas of the brain.
Slow wave is where muscles repair and grow, deep sleep, slow delta waves, not motor paralysis
Rem sleep is where the brain is restored, rapid delta waves, dreams, motor paralysis
Mental models
Car point A Point13
Stimulants - nicotine, caffeine
LANGUAGE
Sounds
• Phonology
Organisation
• Syntax
Meaning
• Semantics
Implied meaning
• Pragmatics
Phonemes
• Smallest units of sound that constitute so each
◦Th, s, a
Morphemes
• Smallest unit of meaning
◦Anti-, house, the, -ing
Phrases
• Groups of words that act as a unit to convey a meaning
◦In the den, the rain in Spain, ate the lolly
Sentences
• Organised sequence of words that express a thought or intention
◦The house is old. Did you get milk?
Phonology is the structure of sounds that can be used to produce words in language
Phonemes
• Morphemes
• propositional representations
Internominal colours
Pragmatics refer to the way that language conveys meaning indirectly by implying rather than
asserting
Non-verbal communication
• Vocal intonation
• Body language
• Gestures
• Physical distance
• Facial expressions
• Touch
Discourse is the way that people ordinarily speak, hear, read and write in interconnected sentences
◦Exact wording
◦Conversation
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
• Empiricism/Nurture
◦Language is entirely learned
• Nativism/Nature
◦Some aspects of language are innate
• Skinner suggested that children receive different reinforcement for speech sounds
Overextension - label a cat “kitty” and incorrectly use “kitty” when labelling a rabbit or other furry
animals
Critical period - time period to Aquire language until it becomes very difficult to learn language
◦Sign language
THOUGHT
Benjamin Lee Whorf stated that language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can
think about
◦More recently it has been argued that this is not entirely true
Thoughts can be conceived of as a language of the mind.
◦Thinking involves mentally manipulating the representations to achieve some sort cognitive
purpose
Mental models = allow us to describe or explain, or even make prediction of how things might
work
“Research suggests that children who do not develop a secure attachment with a primary caregiver
as infants (particularly those children who have experienced extreme neglect), later in life can
experience problems in romantic relationships, this is theorised to be because their mental model of
how others respond to their needs has not been developed properly or has formed to teach them
that others will not meet their needs and so forming adult attachments can actually be very difficult.
So this mental model is describing something quite abstract but it is attempting to explain how an
individual makes sense of the world and thinks about how things (in this case relationships) work.”
◦Children don’t get enough affection and don’t form attachment with someone (parent/
caregiver)
‣ These children experience relationship problems
‣ This happens because their mental model of how other respond to their needs
isn’t developed properly
◦summary, a mental model and be predicting how the world and many other things
(relationships) work
Concepts
• A mental representation of a class of objects, ideas or events that share common properties
• Categories based on defining features (dog - 4 legs, tail, fur, and cute)
◦prototype - an abstraction that has been formed using the shared features
◦A prototype bird may look like a lot of birds, but not look like one particular bird
Hierarchy of concepts
Language
Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar - innate grammatical rules that facilitate language
development
Overextension = use a label to label more general things (every animal is a dog)
Under extension = too specific (parents car is not the same as every other car)
REASONING
Reasoning is The process of which people generate and evaluate arguments and beliefs
◦logical reasoning that draws a conclusion from a set of assumptions and premises that are
based on the rules of logic
◦An inverted conclusion is made about the probability of some state of affairs, based on the
available evidence and past experiences
Algorithms - step by step procedures that always find a solution if one exists
Means-ends analysis - involves identifying the principle differences between the initial and goal
state, then taking action to reduce ...
Deductive reasoning
• Specific premises are given
◦The dog always barks when there is someone at the door, and the dog barked
Indicative reasoning
• A conclusion is is made about the probability of some state of affairs, based on the available
evidence and passed experiences
◦Casper is a cat
◦Casper like to take showers
◦Therefor all cats like to take showers
• Generalising from specific instance to an entire category
Syllogism
• A form of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn from two given assumed propositions
◦in this case the reasoning was correct and Holly was blonde, however are the premises
logical ? NO
• if the premises are correct, deductive reasoning can lead to the correct certain conclusion
Belief bias is when the conclusions that concur with real world knowledge are judged to be valid
Belief bias is the tendency to accept conclusions because they are believable, rather than
being logically valid
Analogical reason is the process by which people understand a novel situation in terms of a
familiar one
• we use analogies to categorise novel situations, make inferences, and solve problems
Relational similarity
PROBLEM SOLVING
Problem solving
I’ll-defined problems
• Occurs when both the information needed to solve the problem and criteria is vague (e.g. leader
tasked with improving morale)
Algorithm
• systematic procedure that will produce a solution to a (simple) problem
Mental stimulation
• Mentally rehearsing the steps needed to solve the problem
Means-ends analysis
• Involves identifying the principle differences between the initial in the goal state then taking action
to reduce the differences
• involves dividing the problem with the subgoals and taking intermediate steps to solutions
◦Golf is an explanation
Functional fixed ness is the tendency to fixate on a function of an object and to ignore other
possible uses
A mental set is the tendency to keep using the same problem solving methods because they
worked in the past
Confirmation bias
• The tendency to search for confirmation of what we already believe
DECISION MAKING
The process by which an individual ways the pros and cons of different alternatives in order to
make a choice
◦be haviourist
‣ People can
learn and
discriminate
stimuli without
conscious
thought
◦psychodynamic theory
‣ Suggest of the unconscious motives and emotions impact on problem-solving and
decision-making
Heuristics
• Representative heuristic : where we match an object in its category but ignore information
about the probability of it occurring
• Availability heuristic: we decide that the events we can easily recall are common and typical
• Bounded rationality States that people are bound by their environment, goals and cognitive
resources