Psy Chapter 9

psy

Chapter 9: Thinking, Language, Intelligence

Cognition/cognitive psychology: The branch of psychology that specializes in the study of cognition

Includes way we know and understand the world; how knowledge and understanding is described

Cognitive Psychologists study these mental activities

concept formation

problem solving

decision making

judgment formation

Thinking

Thinking involves mentally manipulating information by forming concepts, solving problems, reasoning, and making decisions.

The manipulation of mental representations of information

How we think

Mental images:

Thinking involves concepts, which allow us to

Concepts: Concepts are mental categories used to group similar objects, events, and characteristics;

Allows organizing complex phenomena into simpler, more easy to use categories, to generalize and relate experience and objects

The of thinking

Forming concepts can be difficult, particularly as complexity increases.

Concepts with harder to learn

Prototypes: Typical, highly representative examples of a concept.

matching new items to the prototype provides a quick and easy method for including items in a category Decisions based on

Solving Problems:

Problem solving --an attempt to find an appropriate way of attaining a goal when the goal is not readily available.

Good problem solving involves a series of graduated steps: finding and framing the problem, developing subgoals, using algorithms and heuristics, and evaluating solutions.

other problems—Algorithm---A rule which, if applied appropriately, guarantees a solution to a problem. guarantees solving a particular problem

Can use even if don’t understand why it works (math formulas)

Heuristic--simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently.

An informal rule of thumb or mental shortcut that may lead to a problem

reduce complexity; efficient

than algorithms; more...