Cognition 8-10% of AP Exam

1. Cognition8-10% of AP Exam This includes: thinking(cognitive processes), problem solving, creativity, language, memory

2. Information drawn from a variety of sources. No one textbook had all of the information suggested by College Board Acorn book. Thus, I used a number of sources as well as research on specific topics. References: Weiten, Wayne, Psychology: Themes and Variations, 7th ed. Myers, David, Myers’ Psychology for AP*, Ciccarelli, Saundra K. and White, J. Nolan, AP* Edition Psychology

3. From Sherlock Holmes from A Study in Scarlett by Arthur Conan Doyle Mr. Watson-Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said Stamford, introducing us. “How are you?” he said, cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.” “How on earth did you know that?” I asked, in astonishment.

4. When asked, Holmes explained his reasoning as follows: I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thought ran so swiftly through my mind that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of the intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, “Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then.

5. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan. The whole train of thought did not occupy a second.

6. Admittedly, even the fictional Sherlock Holmes has remarkable powers of deductive reasoning, even ordinary people display the power to sort through a vast array of perceptual inputs and deduce what they see in the real world. Reference: Weiten, Wayne, Psychology: Themes and Variations, 7th ed.

7. A bit of background The earliest studies by E. B. Titchener (Wundt’s student) relied on introspection to unlock to secrets of the mind. By the beginning of the 20th century, psychologists actively discouraged the study of mental processes due to behaviorism as the predominate view. John B. Watson

8. John B. Watson • Topic was ignored for many years due to John B. Watson’s claim that thinking was sub-vocal speech (1925) • Not worthy of study

9. Do Not Try This at Home! • Scott Smith provides evidence against this claim by having himself paralyzed by curare • What happened?

10. By, the 1950s, there was a “cognitive revolution” in which psychologist such as Herbert Simon argue that behaviorist exclusive focus on overt responses was doomed to yield an incomplete understanding of human functioning.

11. What is cognition (cognitive process)? Cognition- all mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering and communicating Mental manipulations Thinking may be referred to as cognition

12. What do cognitive psychologist study? Logical and illogical ways we create concepts, solve problems, make decisions and form judgment

13. Thinking- mental processing • Directed thought • Problem solving • Understanding • Decision making • Non-directed thought • Comprised of images • Mental imagery • Daydreaming

14. Effortful vs. Automatic Processing • Effortful Processing- encoding that requires attention and conscious effort • Rehearsal can boost effortful processing • Often produces durable and accessible memories • AP content learning is effortful • Automatic Processing- unconscious encoding of incidental information such as space, time and frequency and of well-learned information, such as word meanings • What you ate for dinner yesterday is automatic processing

15. Try this .citamotua emoceb nac gnissecorp luftroffE With practice (rehearsal), this task can become more automatic rather than effortful.

16. Deep vs. Shallow Processing • Shallow processing • maintenance rehearsal • Involves simple repetition of the presented materials • Not effective encoding • Examples- • Draw a penny (may not “work” anymore due to so many new pennies. • What color is the top stripe of the American Flag? • The bottom stripe? • How many of each color? • In what hand does the Statue of Liberty hold her torch? • The White House is on the back of a $20. What is on the back of a $10? A $5? A $1?

17. Answers • Examples- • Draw a penny (may not “work” anymore due to so many new pennies. • What color is the top stripe of the American Flag? • The bottom stripe? • How many of each color? • In what hand does the Statue of Liberty hold her torch? • The White House is on the back of a $20. What is on the back of a $10? A $5? A $1? • There are many “new” pennies now and this activity is difficult to “prove.” • RED • RED • 7 red and 6 white • RIGHT • $10 Treasury Dept., $5 Lincoln Memorial, $1 The word ONE

18. Just FYI

19. Deep vs. shallow processing • Deep processing • Elaborative rehearsal • Coding by forming associations between new information and information already stored • Makes information meaningful

20. Focus vs. Divided Attention • Focus or selective attention- • The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus • An example is the “cocktail party effect”

21. Focus vs. Divided Attention • Divided attention- attempt to focus attention on more than one task, sensory input or bit of information • Not exactly “multitasking”

22. To think about the countless things we must each day, we need to simplify. How? • Concepts- Ideas that represent a class or category of objects, events or activities • Recall: • Piaget • Scheme • Assimilation • Accommodation

23. Conceptual Categories • A list of properties/features, which are not necessary or sufficient, but which characterize the prototype, which is the idealization of the category • An organization in terms of similarity to an idealized member • Reference: Cognitive Linguistics, Croft & Cruse

24. Concept Categories • Formal Concepts • Concepts that are defined by specific rules or features • Example: What is a square? • Two-dimensional figure with four equal sides and four angles adding up to 360 degrees • Other examples: acid, limestone, rectangles, double-blind experiment, conditioned stimulus • Natural Concepts • Concepts people form as a result of their experience in the real world • Example: What is a vehicle? Car, boat, raft,, truck, bobsled • Natural concepts a a bot more “fuzzy.” Is a whale a fish or a mammal?

25. Hierarchical Organization of Conceptual Categories Superordinate Level-the most general form of concept (vehicle, fruit, animal, utensil) Basic Level Categories-an example of a type of concept around which other similar concepts are organized (dog, car, pear, knife, table) Subordinate Level- the most specific category of a concept such as a very specific example (German Shepard, Honda, Bradford pear, steak, card table)

26. Not all thinking is in the form of concepts • Mental Imagery-representations that stand for objects or events and have a picture-like quality • Try this: Tell me as fast as you can how many windows are in the place you live? Shout it out when you have determined a number. • .

27. Try This: • Tell me as fast as you can how many windows are in the place you live? Shout it out! • Usually you will find that the first people to shout out an answer have fewer windows in their homes than those who take longer. • You might notice that people will look up, as if looking at an image that only they can see. • If asked, they will say that to determine the number of windows was determined by a “walk through” of their home. • Reference: Ciccarelli, Saundra and White, J. Nolan, AP Edition Psychology, 2nd Ed.

28. Prototypes • An example of a concept that closely matches the defining characteristics of a concept • Apple

29. Problem Solving

30. Test Your Wits?

31. Test Your Wits: Your have two minutes to read each question, decide on your answer quickly and record your answers in lower case letters. 1. What goes up a chimney down, but won’t go down a chimney up? 2. What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries? 3. What was the highest mountain in the world before Mt. Everest was discovered? 4. What grows down when it grows up? 5. A farmer had 4 haystacks in one field and twice as many in each of his other 2 fields. If he put the stacks from all 3 fields together, how many haystacks would he have?

32. 6. First discovered in ancient times, what invention allowed people to see through solid walls? 7. A man carefully pointed his car due east and then drove for 2 miles. He was then 2 miles west of where he started. Why? 8. What can you put in a stainless steel box that will make it light? 9. What common word is pronounced incorrectly by a majority of Yale and Harvard graduates? 10. What goes around the world but stays in the corner?

33. Test Your Wits: We will work in groups of 3 or four for an additional two minutes. Write your group answers in CAPITAL letters.

34. 1. What goes up a chimney down, but won’t go down a chimney up? 2. What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries? 3. What was the highest mountain in the world before Mt. Everest was discovered? 4. What grows down when it grows up? 5. A farmer had 4 haystacks in one field and twice as many in each of his other 2 fields. If he put the stacks from all 3 fields together, how many haystacks would he have?

35. 6. First discovered in ancient times, what invention allowed people to see through solid walls? 7. A man carefully pointed his car due east and then drove for 2 miles. He was then 2 miles west of where he started. Why? 8. What can you put in a stainless steel box that will make it light? 9. What common word is pronounced incorrectly by a majority of Yale and Harvard graduates? 10. What goes around the world but stays in the corner?

36. Did you work better with a partner or by yourself? • 1. umbrella • 2. towel/mop/sponge • 3. Mt. Everest • 4. duck/goose • 5. One • 6. Windows • 7. Drive in Reverse • 8. A flashlight or hole • 9. “incorrectly” • 10. a postage stamp

37. Problem Solving Definition – the goal directed process initiated in the presence of some obstacles and the absence of an evident solution

38. Steps in Problem Solving

39. Preparation • Define the problem • Gather information • Consider solutions • Assess how the problem is structured

40. Production Random search (Trial and Error Method) Algorithms (any method that guarantees a solution; step-by-step procedure) Heuristics (mental shortcuts: requires some knowledge and experience to draw upon; “rule of thumb”)

41. Incubation Optional stage of “sleeping on it.”

42. Evaluation Did the solution satisfy the demands of the problem?

43. Insight • A sudden change in perception that results in a solution to a problem • Wolfgang Kohler • Sultan

44. Problems or Hindrances • Confirmation Bias • Mental Set • fixation • Functional Fixedness • Misuse of heuristics – • availability and representativeness • Overconfidence • Belief perseverance

45. Confirmation Bias A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence Public Park FRQ

46. Mental Set/ fixation • Examples • Definition- • A tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past • Fixation- the inability to see the problem from a new perspective, by employing a different mental set

47. Functional Fixedness • Definition • The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; as impediment to problem solving • Examples

48. Heuristics (a strategy for problem solving) • Availability heuristics- based on the estimated probability of an event based on the ease in which relevant instances that come to mind (this is based on YOUR experience) • Examples • Representative heuristics- based on the estimated probability of an event on how similar it is to the prototype of that event (this is based on how similar it is to a TYPICAL experience) • Examples

49. Overconfidence • Examples • Definition- • The tendency to be more confident than correct-to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments

50. Belief Perseverance • Definition- • Clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited • Examples • FRQ 2013 John and editorial