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COGNITION:
THOUGHT
Introduction
What is Cognitive
Psychology?
Cognitive Psychology
Assumptions
Concept Formation
• Concepts:
• Concept Formation:
Concept Formation
• Classification:
• “fuzzy concepts”
Concept Formation and
Stereotyping
• Our natural tendency to form
concepts and categorize leads to
stereotyping
• Only solution is to educate
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
• Gestalt Theory
• Information-Processing Theory
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
• Mental Set
Creative Problem Solving
• Creativity:
– generating ideas that are original, novel,
and appropriate.
– Original responses:
– Novel responses
– Appropriate responses
Ways of Thinking
Convergent Thinking
• Example:
Ways of thinking
Divergent thinking
• Example:
Reasoning
& Decision
Making
REASONING
• Reasoning =
– purposeful process
– Allows us to:
- Formal vs. informal
REASONING
Formal
Informal
LOGIC
Logic:
Tools
• Deductive Reasoning
• Inductive Reasoning
DECISION MAKING
• Decision making:
• Trivial or complex
Uncertainty: Estimating
Probabilities
• Decisions can be based on:
(a) formal logic
(b) hypothesis, testing
(c) an educated guess
Educated Guess:
Educated Guess
Problems with
Estimating 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
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
Artificial Intelligence - definition
• Artificial intelligence – a field that
draws on concepts from both
cognitive psychology and computer
science to develop artificial systems
that display some aspects of humanlike intelligence
Limitations of AI
• Well-defined and ill-defined problems
• Lack of common sense
• Lack of creativity
Neural Networks
• Various bits of information are
stored in different parts of the brain
• A convergence zone
Neural Networks:
Hierarchical Network Model
• Assumes a hierarchy in which a particular word
is stored under the higher order category that
subsumes it, which in turn is stored under a yet
higher category
• EXAMPLE:
Neural Networks:
Parallel distributed processing
• parallel distributed processing
(PDP)
• PDP involves many operations
taking place at the same time
in various parts of the brain