Ch. 10-13 - Visual Imagery, Language, Problem Solving, Decision Making

conceptual peg hypothesis

concrete nouns create images that other words can “hang onto”

mental chronometry

determining how long it takes to carry out a cognitive task

propositional representations

relationships can be represented by abstract symbols/statements

imagery neurons

fire both when looking at visual stimulus and when imagining it

Unilateral neglect

damage to parietal lobe causes brain to ignore one half of the visual field

phonemic paraphasia

similar composition (“tephelone” instead of “telephone”)

neologistic paraphasia

similar in sound but purely invented (“mo” instead of “no”)

word frequency effect

we respond quicker to high-frequency words than to low-frequency

speech segmentation

ability to perceive individual words even though there are pauses between them

transitional probabilities

understanding the chance that certain sounds will follow another in language

lexical ambiguity

when words have more than one meaning

biased dominance

a meaning of one word occurs more frequently than another

balanced dominance

when multiple meanings are equally likely

parsing

mental grouping of words into phrases to help determine meaning

situation models

mental representation of what the text is about

problem of inducing structure

problems where we discover relationships within the parts of the problem

problems of transformation

problems where one must carry out a sequence of transformations to reach a specific goal

functional fixedness

we usually perceive an item in the common way it is used

mental set

persistence in using problem-solving strategies that have worked in the past

operators

actions that take the problem from one state to another

Means-end analysis

problem solving strategy of reducing the difference between the initial state and the goal state by creating sub goals

analogical problem

using a solution to a similar problem to guide the solution of a different problem

absolute methods

investigation of high-level experts in a task specific to their field

relative methods

comparing more to less experienced individuals

Divergent thinking

open-ended, involving many potential solutions

inductive reasoning

drawing conclusions (general) from pieces of evidence (specific)

availability heuristic

estimated probability of an event is determined by how easily instances come to mind

Illusory Correlations

thinking two events are linked together

Representativeness heuristic

estimated probability of an event based on how much it resembles a mental prototype

base rate fallacy

tendency to ignore percentage of existing elements in the world

conjunction fallacy

estimating the odds of two events happening together as greater than the odds of either event alone

law of large numbers

the larger the sample, the more representative it will be of the population

confirmation bias

basing judgments off information that conforms to a belief we already have, and ignoring information that goes against it

belief bias

overlooking the fact that the logic is invalid because we believe the conclusion

opt-out procedure

requires someone to actively take a step in refusing a specific outcome; often people don’t take action

how we differentiate words

transitional probabilities, statistical learning, cues