COGNITION: THOUGHT

Introduction
What is Cognitive Psychology?
• Study of perception, learning,
memory, thought, and language in
knowledge acquisition
AssumptionsCognitive Psychology
- Mental processes exist

- People are active processors

- Cognitive processes can be studied

 Concept Formation
• Concepts:
• Mental categories used to classify
events and objects according to
common properties

• Concept Formation:
• The way people organize and
classify events and objects,
usually to solve problems
 Concept Formation
• Classification:
• Separating dissimilar events,
finding commonalities, and
then grouping similar items
together One of These Things
(Is Not Like The Others)
 Problem Solving
• Problem solving
• Confronting and
resolving situations that
require insight or
determination of some
unknown elements
 How do we solve new Problems?
• Learning Theory
• Trial-and-error

• Gestalt Theory
• Insight

• Information-Processing
Theory
• Purposeful registration and
retrieval of information.
Figure 7.2 Stages in Problem Solving
 Approaches to Problem Solving
• Algorithm
• Strategy involving applying a set of
rules until the problem is solved.

• Guarantees a correct solution.

• Impractical due to lack of rules in

most situations and time demands.
 Approaches to Problem Solving
• Heuristic
• Strategy that involves the
use of flexible guidelines
(rules of thumb)

• Does not guarantee a

correct solution

• Efficient
 Barriers to Problem Solving
• Functional Fixedness
• Inability to see that an object can
have a function other than its
stated or intended use.

• Mental Set
• Limited ways of thinking about
possibilities.
• Creativity involves breaking out
of mental sets.
Creative Problem Solving

• Creativity:
• generating ideas that are original,
novel, and appropriate.
• Original responses:
• do not copy or imitate another
response
• Novel responses
• are new or have no precedent
• Appropriate responses
• are reasonable in terms of the situation
 Ways of Thinking
Convergent Thinking
• Narrowing choices and
alternatives to arrive at one
answer.

• Limits creativity

• Example:
• Where is the Eiffel Tower?
 Ways of thinking

Divergent thinking
• Expanding options.
• Facilitates creativity
Reasoning
& Decision
Making
Formal REASONING
• Information provided
• Method available (e.g. algorithm)
• One correct answer

Informal
• Information often missing
• No method
• Multiple solutions
 DECISION MAKING

• Decision making: assessing and

choosing among alternatives
• Trivial or complex
 Uncertainty: Estimating
• Decisions can beProbabilities
based on:
(a) formal logic
(b) hypothesis, testing
(c) an educated guess

Educated Guess: making a decision

based on knowledge from past
experiences
 Educated
Problems with Estimating
Guess
Probabilities

• Because of their mood or lack of

attention, people may act
irrationally, ignore key data, and
make bad decisions
 Barriers to Good Decision Making

Gambler’s Fallacy:
The belief that an event is
more likely to occur if it
has not recently occurred.
 Barriers to Good Decision Making
Belief in small numbers
Decision based on a small number of
observations
 Barriers to Good Decision Making
Availability heuristic
Judging the probability of an event
based on how easy it is to think of
examples of it
 Barriers to Good Decision Making

Overconfidence
Being so committed to one’s own
ideas that one is often more
confident than correct
 Barriers to Good Decision Making
Confirmation bias
People cling to beliefs
despite contradictory
evidence
 Barriers to Good Decision Making
Fallacy of Composition:

Belief that what is true of the parts is

also true of the whole