PSYC 100 - Topic 8: Cognitive

Cognition

All mental activity

Cognitive revolution

A shift in psychology in the 1950’s that moved away from behaviorism and towards studying internal mental processes

What is mental process?

It involves knowing, understanding, remembering, and communicating information

Subgoaling

Breaking a large goal into smaller manageable goals

Value

Effectively makes a large task more manageablt

Trial and Error

Possible solutions are attempted one after another until one is succesful

High effectiveness value

Eventually finding the solution

Low efficiency

Is time consuming

Algorithms

Step-by-step procedure for solving certain types of problems

Value of algorithms

Highly effective and efficient, but don’t exist for most problems

Heuristics

Mental shortcuts that have little to no effort

Educated guess is based on what?

The prior experiences

Value of heuristics

High efficiency, but not always accurate

Mental set

Tend to keep us problem-solving patterns that have worked for us in the past. But many of these think outside of the box