Psych Unit 4

Cognitive Psychology emerged from _____

behaviorism

Cognition

mental process of thinking, learning, and understanding

Cognitive processes mediate the relationship between ___ and ____

behavior and environment

Knowledge

stored representations

Thinking

manipulation of stored representations

Thinking Slowly

used to think that we were deliberative, logical, and rational

Thinking Fast

we are actually instinctive and emotional

Heuristics

we take shortcuts to reduce the amount of thinking that is needed to make decisions —> lead to irrational decisions

Availability Heuristic

decisions are influenced by how readily examples are recalled —> the more we think or hear about something, the more we think its actually happening (probability of something happening)

Availability Heuristic - Politics Example

the more you mention an issue in politics, the more people think how important it is

Representative Heuristic

making a judgement by comparing a person/object to a prototype

Representative Heuristic - Doctor Example

David works at a new medical clinic that employs 5 doctors, 3 PAs, and 12 nurses; David finished his education top of class and has received a lot of praise for his work —> what is his profession? people mostly say doctor but actually statistically likely to be a nurse

Conjunction Fallacy

likelihood of multiple events happening together is more likely than any of those events happening individually

Conjunction Fallacy - Coffee Shop Example

Maya is a 21-year old college student who is passionate about social justice, regularly attends campus events, follows political news, and frequently posts about social issues on social media. She is majoring in sociology and volunteers for a local nonprofit. Which is more likely to be true: maya works at a coffee shop or works at a coffee shop and is actively involved in a campus political organization? 1 is more likely to be true because its more likely that she just works in a coffee shop versus both (stats)

Simulation Heuristic

people express more regret over outcomes that are easier to imagine or “simulate”

Simulation Heuristic - Missing Flight Example

Sandy and Pat are both stuck in traffic, running 30 minutes late for their flight. When Sandy arrives, she is 30 minutes late for the flight, as expected. Pat arrives to see his flight was delayed 25 minutes and just left. Who is more upset? Pat because he was so close —> he’s simulating all these different outcomes that could’ve changed what happened

Confirmation Bias

tendency to search for information that confirms your expectation (and ignore information that refutes it)

Confirmation Bias - Good Luck Charms Example

we’re looking for things that support our hypothesis and ignore things that go against this belief

Rosenhan Study

group of people reported hearing voices to a mental health institution with no other symptoms —> people faking this were admitted and just acted normal —> therapists found things from past that would explain the “voices” —> trying to “confirm” that behavior was atypical. rosenhan said he’d send fakes again and therapists decided 25% were fakes but in reality there were no fakes at all sent

Anchoring

setting a reference point (usually first piece of info) to simplify a situation

Anchoring Example

people who hear number 1x2x3x4x5x6 vs 6x5x4x3x2x1 have different answers depending on what they heard first

Framing

the way you frame things can change the discussion and how people ultimately act

Framing - Immigration Example

Is immigration a problem in the US? vs. How big of a problem is immigration in the US?

Sunk-Cost Fallacy

a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy if they are heavily invested in it (loss aversion)

Sunk-Cost Fallacy

• You have tickets to a pro football game. The day of the game, you see it’s going to be 33 degrees with torrential rain throughout the game. Do you go? What if you had paid $250 for the ticket, and it was non-refundable and non-transferrable? You’re less likely to go if you received the ticket from a friend than if you bought it

Affective Forecasting

predicting how we will feel with any given outcome —> emotions either felt or anticipated and can affect how people make decisions —> we are BAD at predicting

Things that Actually Make us Happy - Dan Gilbert

simple things like exercise, spending time with loved ones, thinking about what we’re grateful for

Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow involve ____ ___-___ ______

different decision-making processes

First IQ Test - Binet Simon Scale (1905)

list of activities that evaluate if kids are ready to go to school —> basis for Stanford Binet Test

Intelligence for Classification

early —> used mental age to classify people which was derogatory

Intelligence and Eugenics

shifts in US against intellectual disability —> used binet test to identify intellectual disability and tried to control disability via eugenics

Army Alpha/Beta Test

assessed cognitive abilities of recruits, ability to serve, and appropriate roles (WWI): Alpha - literate Beta - iliterate —> used widely in business and education —> basis for Wechsler intelligence tests

3 Theories of Intelligence

1: overall (general intelligence)

2: fluid and crystallized intelligence

Multifactor: many —> most common now

Fluid Intelligence

natural abilities: reasoning, problem-solving, in unfamiliar situations —> ex. Young Lebron who is naturally athletic and can jump high

Crystallized Intelligence

knowledge: gained from experience used to solve problems —> ex. Old Lebron - maybe not as athletic but has a lot of experience

Gardener’s 8 Intelligences

1. Word Smart - linguistic

2. Number Smart - logical-mathematical

3. Picture Smart - visual-spatial

4. Body Smart - bodily-kinesthetic

5. Music Smart - musical

6. People smart - interpersonal

7. Self-smart - intrapersonal

8. Nature smart - naturalist

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

a standard score produced by most intelligence tests —> determine what avg is and figure out how people deviate

Most intelligence tests include ____ that can be grouped into _____

subtests and subscales

IQ and Intellectual Disability

70 used as the cutoff —> there’s a bump at the low end of the bell curve because of circumstances and environments which skew the distribution

Vocabulary Subtest - Verbal Comprehension

what is garrulous? —> defining words

Similarities Subtest - Verbal Comprehension

how are capitalism and socialism alike? —> identifying relationships

Comprehension Subtest - Verbal Comprehension

what should you do if you find someone’s wallet in the store? - return it

Information Subtest - Verbal Comprehension

who wrote Faust?

IQ Subscale: perceptual reasoning

attempt to arrange the blocks to match the picture —> test if people need time accommodations

Digits Forward Subtest - Working Memory

3-2-7-6-9-4-1 and repeat out loud

Digits Backward Subtest - Working Memory

7 – 9 – 4 – 5 – 8 – 2 – 6 and repeat out loud backwards (answer – 6285497)

Letter-Number Sequencing Subtest - Working Memory

6 – M – 8 – A – 5 – R – 1

Assessing Intelligence in Infants vs Toddlers

Infant:

• track block

• hold in hand

• search for it when covered

Toddler:

• say “block”

• request block

• make sure mom sees how awesome block is

Cultural and Socio-economic Status Bias (SES) - Lang and Content

tests reflect the culture of the people who wrote, administer, and take it

Cultural and Socio-economic Status Bias (SES) - Stereotype Threat

when people are reminded of a stereotype about their group, they perform worse

Aptitude Test

Fluid Intelligence —> purported to be a measure of general cognitive abilities —> SAT

Achievement Test

Crystallized Intelligence —> measures of learned cognitive abilities —> ACT

____ __ ______ are critically useful to determine strengths and areas in need of support

Profiles of Functioning

The slightest difference between “b” and “p” is due to _____

voicing

“b” and “p”

babies can hear these —> learn a language in two years

Communication is beautiful

two people who have different input and context your whole life are still able to communicate in the same language as someone else with completely different input or context

Communication

the use of a language, gestures, facial expressions to exchange info

Language

a system for exchanging information

Speech

the act of vocal communication

Communication Interchange

sound travels from mouth to ear —> translate to electrical signals —> brain filters human speech from noise —> turns sound into words (bottum-up) —> making meaning —> using whats learned to formulate a response (top-down)

Bottom-Up Processing

takes sound bits and turns them into words and then phrases

Top-Down Processing

takes previous knowledge of concepts and applies them to sound combinations

Major Debate - whether language is modular in the brain or distributed throughout - Modern Research

says systems/networks rather than areas

Phenomes

a sound (b, l, t, o, th) - don’t carry individual meaning —> babies through vocal exploration perceive more phenomes

Morphemes

smallest meaningful unit of language —> typically root word and its affixes -→ ex. cat = 1 morpheme, cats = two morphemes

Morphemes - Overgeneralization

kids learn rules and exceptions to the rule in steps

1. kids pair a words with a meaning before learning the rule (broke means brake in the past)

2. kids learn a rule (-ed means past tense, breaked, and overgeneralize rule to every circumstance)

3. kids learn the exception to the rule (broke)

Lexicon

vocabulary —> directly related to concepts

total lexicon of a language is always changing

1. new: looksmaxing, glow-up

2. dead: snollygoster

3. words with added meaning: sigma - math symbol —> superior

Syntax

the structure of language - how we order words to create meaning

Chomsky - ____ syntax or rules that are present in all languages

universal

Syntactic Rule Example - Recursion

Rule for how you place emphasis when saying something

• Bad bad bad bad call - right

• Bad call call call call - wrong

Semantics

how phrases, words, and sentences communicate meaning

ex. you can say “progress” two different ways and mean two different things

Prosody

patterns of stress and intonation in a language —> can change meaning of words, can add additional information to a word, + can structure a conversation

Gestures

beats —> presenters used to keep people engaged

iconic gestures —> “heart hands”

emblems —> gesture represents a word —> waving a hand

Metaphoric gestures —> abstract ideas/concepts

Why is ASL a language?

its a system with unique syntax and semantics

Behaviorists and Language

language is completely learned, taught

Nativists and Language (Chomsky, Pinker)

the ability to understand and communicate through language is innate —> language module or organ

Interactionists and Language (Bruner)

nature and nurture

Language/Communication Explosion

9-12 months: first words

1-1.5 years: several words —> hard to understand but babbles with prosody

1.5-2 years: puts words into simple phrases

2-3 years: 3 years w/full conversations