Cognitive Psychology - Decision Making, Reasoning And Problem Solving

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Decision Making refers to

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the mental activities that take place in choosing among alternatives

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Decision implies ______ consideration made under _______ and have _____.

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rational;
uncertainty;
consequences

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Rational means to

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consider all the relevant goals and principles.

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What are the three stages in decision making?

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1. Deterministic
2. Probabilistic
3. Informational

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Bounding a problem by listing alternative actions or consequence and developing a decision tree is the _______ phase of decision making

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deterministic

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Assigning probabilities to outcomes or uncertain event is the ________ phase of decision making

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Probabilistic

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Collecting information about crucial uncertain events and estimating feasibility of new information is the __________ phase of decision making

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Informational

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Gollotti describes five stages of decision making. These are:

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1. Goal setting
2. Information gathering
3. Structuring the decision
4. Making hte final choice
5. Evaluating

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Difficult decisions are usually made under conditions of _________

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uncertainty

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Probabilities of uncertainty in everyday decision making are referred to as _________ probabilities and are prone to _______.

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subjective;
error.

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Systematic _______ lead to cognitive _______ which are _______ beliefs.

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biases;
illusions:
mistaken.

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Cognitive illusions are errors in the sense that one's percept.....

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does not correspond with reality.

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Some cognitive illusions stem from using _______ processes

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heuristic

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A heuristic is...

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a rule of thumb, a shortcut method used in thinking, reasoning and/or decision making.

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A strategy in which one estimates the frequency or probability of an event by the ease with which mental operations, such as retrieval of examples or construction of examples can be carried out is called an...

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Availability Heuristic

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Recency and the familiarity of information can affect ______ when using the availability heuristic.

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accuracy

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The belief that outcomes will always affect characteristics of the person that generates them - for example an expectation that the outcome of a series of coin flips will always look random is called the ....

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representativeness hueristic

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Kahneman & Tversky (1973) demonstrated what with regards to representativeness heuristic.

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that people often overlook base rate information (true frequency) when the event is highly representative of the category of events. (Ie coins toss example)

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The gambler's fallacy demonstrates...

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how representativeness may mistakenly be used as a basis for estimating outcomes. A gambler mistakenly believes that the probability associated with a particular event (e.g., the spin of a roulette wheel) is influenced by previous random events (earlier spins of the wheel).

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Tversky & Kahneman (1971) asserted what about sample populations.

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Larger samples are more representative of the population.

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The ______ ________ shows how people make errors when estimating combined probabilities.

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Conjunction Fallacy
ie Heart attack vs heart attack over 50

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Decision making bias caused by a propensity to evaluate outcomes as a positive or negative change from the current state is called..

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Framing Effects

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Anchoring Heuristic is...

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a decision making heuristic in which final estimates are heavily influenced by initial value estimates

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The greater tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment in money, effort or time has been made is known as the

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Sunk Cost Effect

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Illusory Correlation refers to...

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an association between factors that is not supported by data but seems plausible.

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Hindsight bias refers to the tendency to ....

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consistently exaggerate what could have been anticipated in the foresight. You look back and see events as more inevitable than they actually where.

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Confirmation Bias is the tendency to ...

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look for information that confirms rather than refutes one's hypothesis.

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Overconfidence (Lichtenstein & Fischhoff, 1977), which happens more often, is

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where confidence ratings are higher that accuracy.

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The relationship between confidence and accuracy is known as the

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calibration curve

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Klein (1998) found that experts who made decisions in time limited, high pressure, ill defined and uncertain circumstances relied on

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Recognition-Primed Decision Making

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Experts who rely on Recognition Primed Decision making do so using an _________ or ___ _______ and cannot necessarily explain all the factors they used to make the decision.

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intuition; gut feeling

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Improving our ability to make decisions may be helped if we are able to _____.

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Debias

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_________ is the process of transforming information to reach conclusions.

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Reasoning

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The main types of reasoning are:

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Deductive and Inductive

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Propositional and Syllogistic are forms of...

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Deductive Reasoning.

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Deductive reasoning goes from _______ to ______.

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General to Specific

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Inductive Reasoning goes from ________ to _______.

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Specific to General

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Deductive reasoning has two forms of proof they are...

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1. Modus ponens
2. Modus tollens

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Modus ponens refers to

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Conditional statement and specific positive instance implies that...
If p then q. Given p therefore q must follow

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Modus tollens refers to

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conditional statement and a specific negative instance implies that...
If p then q.If not q, therefore p is not the case

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With regards to Modus ponens and modus tollens which one do people have difficulty doing?

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Modus tollens.

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A proposition is a

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statement of fact or an assertion.

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A conditional statement usually has 3 parts, these are...

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1. initial premise
2. a logical connective premise
3. a conclusion

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There are two logical outcomes of a conditional statement, these are:

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Confirming the consequent or denying the antecedent

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According to Wason's (1966, 1968) four card task people showed greater difficulty in applying the modus...

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tollens rule to solve the task

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Reasoning with problems concerning relationships among categories for example "all A are B; Some B are C; therefore Some A are C" is wht type of reasoning.

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Syllogistic

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Syllogistic reasoning consists of three quantifiers, these are...

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All, Some and None

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Holyoak & Nisbett (1988) defined Induction as an inferential process that

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expands knowledge in the face of uncertainty.

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The two main inductive reasoning tasks are:

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Analogical and hypothesis testing

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Syllogistic reasoning has found to be slower and more error prone when

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one or more premises are quantified by "some" or when one or more premise is negative.

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Inference produces conclusions that are

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likely but not guaranteed

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Analogical reasoning is using the relationship

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between 2 variable as the basis of relationship between 2 others

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In Analogical Reasoning the complexity of a problems affects the

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performance (speed/accuracy)

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In analogical reasoning the complexity of a problems depends on 5 things, these are:

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1. Complication of individual terms
2. Knowledge of the reasoner
3. Ease of finding a relationship between A and B
4. Number of possible answers
5. Load on memory

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A form of inductive reasoning that requires constructing and testing a number of hypothesis to determine the rule that accounts for a set of data is known as

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Hypothesis Testing

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Conformation bias refers to

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the tendency to seek only information consistent with one's hypothesis.

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In inductive reasoning it is essential to test for ______ of hypothesis. Hypothesis _____ be proven.

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Falsification; cannot

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Errors in reasoning occur for the following 3 reasons;

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1. Premise phrasing - negative phrases or "some" take more time to process
2. Alteration of premise meaning - people reverse the premise implication eg all wugs are quiggles then all quiggles are wugs
3. Content and Believability effects - personal and meaningful contexts aid reasoning.

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Content effect refers to improved performance of ________ reasoning tasks. Believability effect refers to improved performance on tasks when it _______ their initial assumptions.

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meaningful; confirms

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Problem Solving refers to

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achieving a goal within a set of constraints/limitations.

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Having a desired goal for which no simple or direct means of achieving it is immediately available or obvious is called a

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problem

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There are 4 types of problems, these are:

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1. well-defined problems
2. ill-defined problems
3. knowledge-lean
4. knowledge-rich

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What did Schraw, Dunkle and Bendixen (1995) demonstrate about problem solving performance?

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that performance on well-defined and ill-defined problems was not correlated.

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A well-defined problem has

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clear goals, starting point, set of procedures and known constraints

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An ill-defined problem has

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no clarity on goals and procedures

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A problem that requires little or no specific knowledge, have few constraints and procedures and are known and available are known as

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knowledge-lean problems

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A problem that requires domain specific knowledge and has complex constraints is known as

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knowledge-rich problems

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5 general methods (heuristics) of problem solving are?

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1. Generate and test technique
2. Means-End Analysis
3. Working Backwards
4. Backtracking
5. Reasoning by analogy

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The generate-test technique involves...

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generating possible solutions then testing them for the best solution

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The mean-end analysis involves...

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having a starting point and an end point and generating the step to get form A to B within the limitations.

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Heuristics are

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strategies

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Algorithms can ____ problems but take _____. Heuristics narrow down the problem space by reducing the number of _________ pathways.

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solve; time; solution

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The limitations of the mean-end method of problem solving are that it put an excessive load on

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working memory.

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Newell & Simon (1972) invented the ____ _____ ____ (GPS). Which assumed ____ processing, large ______ ____ memory and limited ____ ____ memory.

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General Problem Solver; serial; long term; short term

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In problem solving working backwards is _____________. And backtracking is ____________.

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Working backwards is starting from the last step before reaching the goal and working back each step towards the start.
Backtracking is going back over a problem to where provisional assumptions were made and adjusting the assumptions.

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Identifying common features to other problems and applying the same logic strategy to solve a problem is what type of problem solving? ie tumour problem and convergence schema

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Reasoning by analogy

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What are the 3 common blocks to problem solving?

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1. Functional Fixation
2. Inappropriate/Incomplete Representations
3. Lack of expertise/knowledge

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When a successful strategy or mental set is repeated during problem solving even when a simpler one is available is known as

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Functional Fixation

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Inappropriate/Incomplete representations of problems are caused when a person...

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chooses an incorrect representation for the problem or interprets the premises of the problem incorrectly.

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In problem solving experts with domain specific knowledge have the following three qualitative advantages over novices...

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1. Experts show advanced memory abilities in their domain.
2. Experts know the constraints on the problem and can transform it from ill-defined to well-defined more easily
3. Experts check procedures more systematically for accuracy
2.

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Identifying common features to other problems and applying the same logic strategy to solve a problem is what type of problem solving? ie tumour problem and convergence schema

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Reasoning by analogy

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What are the 3 common blocks to problem solving?

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1. Functional Fixation
2. Inappropriate/Incomplete Representations
3. Lack of expertise/knowledge

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The tendency to follow a particular strategy that has worked in the past or to see the problem in a certain way rather than another way is known as

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Functional Fixation

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Inappropriate/Incomplete representations of problems are caused when a person...

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chooses an incorrect representation for the problem or interprets the premises of the problem incorrectly.

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In problem solving experts with domain specific knowledge have the following three qualitative advantages over novices...

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1. Experts show advanced memory abilities in their domain.
2. Experts know the constraints of the problem and can transform it from ill-defined to well-defined more easily
3. Experts check procedures more systematically for accuracy

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What are the 4 parts of the problem space?

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1. Initial state
2. Goal state
3. Operators
4. Path constraints

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Any sequence of movements from the initial state to the goal state involves following a....

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path through the problem space

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Insight pays a vital role in

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creativity

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A change in frame of reference or in the way elements of a problem are interpreted and organised is known as

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Insight

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What are the two possible explanations for creative thinking?

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1. Special cognitive processing
2. Everyday cognition

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Unconscious processing or incubation assumes that insight occurs due to

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background processing

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Experiments in unconsciousness processing or incubation has shown...

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mixed results

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Everyday creativity implies that normal cognitive processes are used in generating creative idea. What are the 3 processes as identified by Perkins (1981)?

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1. Directed remembering
2. Noticing
3. Contrary Recognition