AP PSYCH 5.7 Introduction to Thinking and Problem Solving

Thinking

• Trying to define thinking is incredibly hard
• There are two simple ways to look at thinking
  • Looking at structures of thinking, like Wilhelm Wundt did, or how MRIs do
  • We can also look at the functions of thinking, like William James, or what fMRIs do

Structures

• A concept is a cluster of raw cognitive material
  • Very difficult to have a concept on its own
  • You will either forget it or it will join with something else and no longer be independent
  • Our mind tried to organize concepts so that we don’t have untethered pieces of material stored
• A prototype is a great abstract example
  • Not the perfect, catch-all example, but a really good one
  • When instructed to think of a dog, disregarding any specific dogs that come to mind, you probably think of a middle size dog
  • Not the biggest, not the smallest, but something that encapsulates the average dog size
• An exemplar is the best example you have from experience, but experience can be limited
  • This would be the specific dog that you may have thought of initially
• An artificial concept is the absolute perfect example of itself
  • We rarely think perfect thoughts
  • This does, however, exist; in geometry, a circle is a circle, and it cannot be anything else or any other shape without no longer being a circle

Functions

• We’ll focus on problem solving

Informal Reasoning

• Informal reasoning is like thinking fast, taking short cuts to reach a solution
• Heuristics are short cuts, often based on experience, usually work but not always, fast and efficient
• Top-down processing involves already having an idea of a situation before having the details
  • This can influence how you perceive new information
• A schema is a set of ideas or concepts that help us solve problems
• Mental sets are similar to schema; they are ways of thinking that have worked before
• Mental models are a way of thinking about how thinks interact
  • Bricks shatter glass, we know that’s how the two objects will interact

Formal Reasoning

• Formal reasoning is thinking slow, where we don’t use shortcuts, but we can be much more certain
• An algorithm is a step-by-step process that is guaranteed to work
• Bottom-up processing is gathering as many data pieces as possible before coming to a conclusion
• Syllogism is just using logic
  • Analyzing the situation, seeing relationships, and finding a solution
• Diagnosis is eliminating wrong answers until the right one is left
• Artificial intelligence is similar to algorithms
  • Computers use many step-by-step processes to expand into complex functions like facial recognition, self-driving, text prediction, etc.

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