Cognitive psychology

Events that are more easily remembered are judged as being more probable than those that are less easily remembered. We estimate frequency/probability in terms of how easily we can remember examples of something

Correlation appears to exist, but either does not exist or is much weaker than assumed. example stereo types.

The probability that A comes from B can be determined by now well A resembles properties of B.

Relative properties of different classes in the population.

Proability of two events can not be higher than the probabilty of the single constituents.

The largest number of indivduals randomly drawn from a population, the more representative the resulting group will be of the entire population.

Tendency to selectively look for information that conforms to our hypothesis and overlook information that argues.

The argument with the most typical example of a category in the premise is the strongest argument.

The argument with the greatest coverage of a category is stronger.

People are rational, if they have all relevant information they will make a descision that results in the maxium expected utility.

Outcomes that are desirable because they are in the persons best interest. Maximum monetary payoff.

Verbal behavior. Languaged is learned through reinforcement. Rewarded for using correct language, not rewarded for using incorrect language.

Assuming that small samples will be representative of the population from which they were selected

Underemphasizing important information about base rate (what is more common in the population)

We establish an anchor and then make adjustments based on other information

The tendency to be more sensitive to potential losses than to potential gains○ People won’t take a 50/50 bet to win $200 or lose $100, even though the average = $50 gain per bet.

The influence of irrelevant aspects of a situation (i.e. wording of the problem) on decision making

Expending additional resources to justify some previous commitment that has not worked well.

The tendency to prefer inaction to action when engaged in risky decision making.

A tendency for individuals to repeat a choice several times in spite of changes in their preferences

Syntactic structures. Human language coded in the genes. Underlying basis of all language is similar. Saw studying language as a way of studyiing the mind. (Behaviorist say NO!)
This individual proposed that language acquisition is genetically programmed.

Goal is to discover psychological process by which humans acquire and process language.

All the words a person understands.

Shortest segment of speech that, if changed, changes the meaning of the word.

Smallest unit of language that has meaning or grammatical function.

"fill in" missing phonemes based on context of sentence and portion of word presented.

The process of perceiving indivdual words from the continuous flow of the speech signal.

Respond more rapidly to high frequency words (in lexical decision task)

Our ability to acess words in a sentence is affected by sematics. Attempt to figure out what a sentence means as we read it.

Words have more than one meaning. Context clears up ambiguity after all meanings of a word have been breifly accessed.

Stimulus activates a representation of the stimulus. Respond more rapidly if activation is still present when stimulus is presented again.

Meanings of words and sentences (think dictionary)

Rules for combining words into sentences (think grammar)

Mental grouping of words in a sentence into phrases.

More than one possible structure, more than one meaning.

Parser assumes new word is part of the current phrase.

A sentence in which the meaning that seems to be implied at the beginning turns out to be incorrect, based on information presented later in the sentence.

The study of how we understand text and stories.

This property is important because it allows the reader’s mind to relate information from one part of a story to a different part of the story.

Mental representation of what a text is about. Represent events as if experiencing the situation. Point of view of protagnist.

Freud believed that speech errors are caused by unconscious motivations.

Exchanging phonemes between words (flighter luid instead of lighter fluid.

An incorrect word is substituted for the correct word. Often related to top down processing. Terrain-Train

Conversations go more smoothly if participants have shared knowledge.

Speaker constructs sentences so they include
-given information
-new information
-new information can then become given information

Using similar grammatical constructions
Alice bought me a sandwitch vs. Alice bought a sandwitch for me.

Production of a specific grammatical construction by one person increases chances other person will use that construction.

The nature of language in a particular culture can affect the way people in that culture think.

Stimuli in same categories are more difficult to discriminate from one another than stimuli in two different categories.

Cognitive process by which people start w/info and come to conclusions that go beyond that information.

Reasoning that involves syllogisms in which a conclusion logically follows from premises.

-two statements called premises
-third statements called conclusion
-The conclusion follows from the premises based on the rules of logic.
-Categorical syllogism
Describe relation between two categories using all, no, or some. Ex all birds are animals.

-Premise 1: All A are B
-Premise 2: All B are C
-Conclusion: Therefore, all A are C

Ask people if conclusion follows logically from premises

Ask people to indicate what logically follows from premises

Use of words all, some, or no (none) creates an over all mood that can influence the evaluation of the conclusion.

If syllogism is true or agrees with a person
beliefs, more likely to be judged valid

A specific situation that is represented in a person’s mind that can be used to help determine the validity of syllogisms. Create, test,
and revise.

-Two premises and a conclusion
-first premise has the form “if p, then g”
- second premise is a statement about “p” or “g”
-antecedent “if” term
-consequent “then” term

Effect of using real world items in a conditional reasoning problem. Task to determine minimum # of cards to turn over to test a given rule. Ex: E K 4 7 Rule: If there is a vowel on one side, then there is an even number on the other side. Test: which cards need to be turned over to test the rule? Only need to turn over E and 7.

To test a rule, you must look for situations that falsify the rule. Most participants fail to do this. When problem is stated in concrete everyday terms, correct responses greatly increase.

If A is satisfied, B can be carried out. People are familiar w/rules Ex. If you are at least 21, you can drink alcohol at the bar.

A way of thinking about cause + effect in the world that is learned as part of experiencing everyday life.

Wason task governed by built-in cognitive program for detecting cheating. In contrast to permission schema. Evidence exists both for
+ against each perspective.

In this type of task, participants decide whether a string of letters is a word or not.

This approach to parsing takes into account both semantic and syntactic information to determine parsing as a person reads a sentence.

This is the type of structure of language, with small components (ex: phoneme) making up larger components (ex: word) that can make up an even larger component (ex: sentence).

This type of inference connects an object or person in one sentence to an object or person in another sentence (such as a pronoun).

This type of reasoning results in conclusions that are not 100% true and is based on evidence

The type of valid syllogism is represented in the form “If p then q. Not q. Therefore not p.”
is called (Hint: affirming/denying the…)

The law of large numbers states that a larger __________leads to a more representative group of a population

This model of text processing involves a mental representation of what a text is about in terms of objects, locations, and events

This type of inference involves an inference about tools or methods.

This characteristic of the physical energy produced by conversational speech is also responsible for making new languages difficult to parse

The First Cognitive Psychologists

Mental chronometry
Measures how long cognitive process takes

Reaction–time (RT) experiment
Measures interval between stimulus presentation and person’s response to stimulus

Flow diagram representing what happens
as a person directs attention to one stimulus

Second is a flow diagram for
broadbent’s filter model of attention.
Information that goes through the
filter gets picked up by the detector and stored in memory

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)
o Describes memory as a mechanism that
processes information through a series of stages
o Sensory memory: lots of information;
fades rapidly
o Short term: 15-20 seconds unless
rehearsed
o Long term: long periods of time

o When the type of task that occurs
during encoding matches the type of task that occurs during retrieval
Ex: Rhyming-rhyming instead of rhyming-meaning
o Can result in enhanced memory