COGNITION: THOUGHT

1. COGNITION: THOUGHT

2. Introduction What is Cognitive Psychology? • Study of perception, learning, memory, thought, and language in knowledge acquisition

3. Cognitive Psychology Assumptions • Mental processes exist • People are active processors • Cognitive processes can be studied

4. 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

5. Classification: Separating dissimilar events, finding commonalities, and then grouping similar items together Concept Formation One of These Things (Is Not Like The Others)

6. Concept Formation • “fuzzy concepts” • Concepts with unclear boundaries • Defined by using prototypes

7. Is this furniture?

8. Is this Furniture?

9. Is this Furniture?

10. Is this Furniture?

11. Is this furniture?

12. Is this furniture?

13. Concept Formation and Stereotyping • Our natural tendency to form concepts and categorize leads to stereotyping • Eg. Sexism, racism, ageism • Only solution is to educate

14. Problem Solving • Problem solving • Confronting and resolving situations that require insight or determination of some unknown elements

15. How do we solve new Problems? • Learning Theory • Trial-and-error • Gestalt Theory • Insight • Information-Processing Theory • Purposeful registration and retrieval of information.

16. Figure 7.2 Stages in Problem Solving

17. 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.

18. Approaches to Problem Solving • Heuristic • Strategy that involves the use of flexible guidelines (rules of thumb) • Does not guarantee a correct solution • Efficient

19. Group Activity • Each group will be given three items. • Your task is to identify as many uses for each item as possible. • You will have 10 minutes. • Each group will report their results to the class.

20. 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.

21. How would you mount the candle upright on a cork board?

22. The Solution…were you functionally fixed?

23. 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

24. Ways of Thinking Convergent Thinking • Narrowing choices and alternatives to arrive at one answer. • Limits creativity • Example: • Where is the Eiffel Tower?

25. Ways of thinking Divergent thinking • Expanding options. • Facilitates creativity. • Example: • What would you say if you were a Cheerio?

26. Reasoning & Decision Making

27. Reasoning = purposeful process Allows us to: (a)generate logical ideas (b)evaluate situations (c)reach conclusions - Formal vs. informal REASONING

28. REASONING Formal • Information provided • Method available (e.g. algorithm) • One correct answer Informal • Information often missing • No method • Multiple solutions

29. LOGIC Logic: system of reasoning used to reach valid conclusions or make inferences Tools • Deductive Reasoning • Inductive Reasoning

30. DECISION MAKING • Decision making: assessing and choosing among alternatives • Trivial or complex

31. Uncertainty: Estimating Probabilities • Decisions can be based on:(a) formal logic (b) hypothesis, testing (c) an educated guess Educated Guess: making a decision based on knowledge from past experiences

32. 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

33. Barriers to Good Decision Making Gambler’s Fallacy: The belief that an event is more likely to occur if it has not recently occurred.

34. Barriers to Good Decision Making Belief in small numbers Decision based on a small number of observations

35. 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

36. Overconfidence Being so committed to one’s own ideas that one is often more confident than correct Barriers to Good Decision Making

37. Barriers to Good Decision Making Confirmation bias People cling to beliefs despite contradictory evidence

38. Barriers to Good Decision Making Fallacy of Composition: Belief that what is true of the parts is also true of the whole

39. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

40. 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 human-like intelligence

41. Limitations of AI • Well-defined and ill-defined problems • Computers do not define their own problems

42. Limitations of AI • Lack of common sense • computers do not have a referential context in which to interpret situations • Lack of creativity • Computers are programed by people and can not function independent of their programs

43. Neural Networks • Various bits of information are stored in different parts of the brain • A convergence zone is needed to mediate and organize the information located in various areas of the brain

44. Assignment #5 In your view, what are the advantages and disadvantages of a computer that can think like a human. ** Remember to include: Your full name, id, my name, course code (sec 30), date, and assignment #5. HAVE A GOOD WEEK!