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Psychology L15

Terms in this set (42)

The study of cognition focuses on the mental activities associated with remembering, thinking, knowing, and communicating.
Cognitive Psychology
mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, or people
Concepts
__________ provide a
kind of mental
shorthand,
economizing
cognitive efforts.
Concepts
the best example of a particular concept
prototypes
individual instances in memory of a concept or category
Exemplars
•keep trying different solutions until one finally works
trial and error
•step-by-step procedures that guarantee reaching a solution but can be slow
algorithms
•rules of thumb, simple strategies. faster but more error-prone than algorithms
Heuristics
• a sudden realization of a problem's solution. An aha! Moment
insight
•_________ are useful for making quick decisions
-Sometimes, they can get us into trouble
-Kahneman and Tversky, among others, have identified many of these that people use, and the associated pitfalls
Quick-Thinking Heuristics
basing the likelihood of an event on its availability in memory
Availability heuristic
•basing the likelihood of things in terms of how well they match, or represent, particular prototypes
Representativeness Heuristic
•Some heuristics can lead to ____________, the inability to see a problem from a fresh perspective
fixation
•is a special type of fixation where we get fixated on how an object is typically used.
Functional Fixedness
a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and ignore, distort, or forget to seek evidence against our ideas
Confirmation bias
• the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.
overconfidence phenomenon
tending to overestimate our future free time or underestimate how long it will take to complete a task
planning fallacy
clinging to one's initial conceptions even after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited
belief perseverance
•the way an issue is posed, can significantly affect decisions and judgments
Framing
•People hate losing resources more than they enjoy gaining resources.
Loss aversion
-more likely to continue an endeavor after the investment of money, effort, or time has been made.
Sunk cost effect
•our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them as we think and communicate.
Language
_______ is recognition born of experience
-used often
-adaptive
-can sometimes be perilous, guiding us in the wrong direction (overfeel/underthink)
Intuition
-rules for the correct way to string words together
Syntax
-capacity to communicate in another time or place
Displacement
-capacity to create rather than imitate sentences
Infinite Creativity
•At 4 months, can recognize speech sounds and enter the ______________, uttering various sounds (ah-goo)
babbling stage
•By __________ babbling sounds more like parents' language; foreign sounds are dropped
9-10 months
•At about 1 year first word is spoken; enters __________ , ("Doggy!")
one-word stage
•By age 2, enter ___________, which involves so-called ___________("Want juice!")
two-word stage, telegraphic speech
Language is acquired through familiar principles of operant learning
B.F. Skinner's (behaviorist) take on Language Acquisition
•All languages share a universal grammar - e.g., nouns, verbs, adjectives
•Humans have a built-in readiness to learn grammar rules
Chomsky's (nativist) take on Language acquisition
•Children's brains are pre-wired with structures for language learning.
•Language is actively taught as a part of nurturing and socialization.
•When spoken language starts to develop it is encouraged through play, modeled and reinforced by caregivers and family.
Interactionist explanation for language acquisition
•__________ is a critical period for learning language: if language and speech are not used the neurons which support these skills become pruned
childhood
-Language itself shapes a person's basic ideas
•Linguistic-relativity hypothesis (Whorf, 1956)
•language is ____________ for thinking
not necessary
What do we call the human tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and ignore, distort, or forget to seek evidence against our ideas.
confirmation bias
Chomsky's nativist theory proposed that language learning occurs because:
language is an innate, biological capacity for humans.
_______ are slow, but guarantee a solution, whereas ______ are fast but error prone.
Algorithms; heuristics
Leslie just finished watching a documentary on shark attacks and now she's afraid to go swimming in the ocean because she's afraid she will get eaten by a shark. What concept does this illustrate?
availability heuristic
People who put off working on their assignment until right before its due might be suffering from:
overconfidence phenomenon
Chomsky's nativist theory proposed that language learning occurs because:
language is an innate, biological capacity for humans.
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