AP PSYCH 5.7 Introduction to Thinking and Problem Solving

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

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

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 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.