Critical Thinking in Psychology

Vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts from the lecture notes.

Inductive Reasoning

Involves observing specific trends or patterns, and then generalizing.

Pavlov's Dogs and Inductive Reasoning

The dogs observed specific instances of a bell being rung when food was served and generalized that bells signal food.

Deductive Reasoning

Honeybees went to the orange 'flowers,' indicating they were able to utilize deductive reasoning.

Law of Syllogism

A form of deductive reasoning utilized by honeybees. All bees go to flowers for food; therefore, I will personally choose the orange flower for food.

Chinese Room Thought Experiment

A thought experiment that demonstrates that a system can produce correct responses without understanding.

Clever Hans

A horse who could seemingly perform arithmetic but was actually reading body language.

Clever Hans Effect

Animals relying on human posture, voice intonation, etc., when responding to a human’s question.

Confirmation Bias

Skeptics suggest that Bunny the dog's communication is a combination of the Clever Hans Effect and this.

Animal Intelligence

Thinking of an animal’s abilities with respect to our own often prevents us from truly understanding how they DIFFER, and thus the unique abilities they possess.