Thiking and learning pdf

What is cognition

mental activities associated with processing, understanding, remembering and communicating

concepts

a mental groupings of related objects, events and people

• having a mental grouping help simplify our thinking and expression

prototype

a mental image that best represent a concept

How are concepts formed

by our brain associating items with definition and prototypes

Why are we rational - Solving problems

We are rational because we can solve problems to cope with new situation

Methods to problem solving

Algorithm

• a methodical logical procedure that guarentees solving a particular problemm

Heuristic

• A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficently but is more error prone than heuristic

Insight

• A sudden flashes of inspiration

Trial and Error

• the process of trying all possible solution

Obstacles to Problem solving

Confirmation bias

• The tendency fto search for information that confirms our ideas

Fixation

• Inability to see a problem from a fresh p erspective

• Fixation can be caused by our success in solving past problems

Mental set

a set that predisposes how we think

• Our tendency to repeat the solutions that worked in the past

• This is a type of fixation

Perceptual set

A set that predisposes what we perceive

avaiability heuristic

estimating the likelikhood of events based on their availability in memory

Intuition

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or though as contrasted with explicit and conscious reasoning

Overconfidence

our tendency to overestimate the the accuracy of our knowledge and judgements

• Overconfidence is also adaptable

Representative Heuristic

estimating the likelyhood of event based on how it represent the prototype

Belief perseverence

our tendency to clign to one initial conception after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

Framing

the way we present information in our mind

Blief bias

the tendency to seek confirmation of our hunches or exiting beliefs

• we more easily see the illogic of conclusions that counter our beliefs

Language

our spoken, written or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning

Structure of Language

Phonemes - the smallest distinctive sound uni

morphene - smallest unit of language that carries meaning

grammar

a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understadn each other

Language develoipment

Children qacquire simple then complex language overtime

• at around 4 months old children can discirminate speech sounds, read lips and match sound and babble

• Babbling is not based o the baby’s home language, only after 10 month it does, and the baby also loses the ability to recognize and say phonemese form other languages

One word stage language

the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words

Two-word stage

beginning about age 2 the stage in speech development during which ac hild speaks mostly two word statements

telagraphic speech

early speech state in which a child speaks like a telegram using mostly nouns and verbs

Skinner operant conditioning theory lang dev

we learn language by Association then imitation and reinforcement

Chomsky inborn u niversal grammar theory lang dev

Each child have an inborn universal grammar

• children learn their environments’s language, however they acquire untaght words and gramkmar at too extraodinary of a rate to be explained solely by learning procinpiples meaning children have a mechanism that help them learning language

Cognitive neuroscientists statistical learning theory lang dev

There is a mcritical period for mastery of grammar (1-7 yrs old)

• Says that the mind is a blanker slate

• Language develops via a gradual change of network connections based on experience

• Second language learned early in life activiate the same frontal lobe areas as the first language does

lingustic determinism

language determins the way we think

Procedural Mmory

WE have a mental image of how to do something but we can’t explain it in words

• we can mentally practice and improve our performance ont asks

• We can mental imagine a result

Semantics

• In a given language, semantics is the set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds

Syntax

• syntax is the set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences