AP Psych 2.2 - Cognition

• Cognition is all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
• Metacognition is the awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes. Better performance academically.
• A concept is a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people. Simplify thinking.


  Example: The concept of a chair includes baby chairs, dentist chairs, tall/short chair.
• Prototypes are a mental image or category that we create. Matching new items to a prototype, provides a quick method of categorizing. 


  Example: Crow -> Bird | Penguin -> ? (bc it doesn't match our "prototype" of a regular bird).
• A Schema is your own interpretations of certain concept or framework.
• Assimilation is interpreting(explaining the meaning of) our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.
• Accommodation is adapting current schemas to incorporate new information.
• Accommodation is modifying our schema when assimilating information does not work well enough.
• Schemas 2 concepts: assimilation and accomodation.
• Creativity is the ability to produce new and valuable ideas.
• Convergent thinking is the ability to provide a single correct answer.
• Divergent thinking is the ability to consider many different options and use it in new ways.
• Functional fixedness occurs when our prior experiences prevent us from finding creative solutions.
• Algorithms


  step by step procedures that guarantee a solution, contrast to heuristic
• Heuristics


  -simpler thinking strategy

  -faster but more error

  -allows us to make judgments

  -mental short-cute
• Insight


  -sudden realization of a problem's solution; contrast with strategy-based solutions, "Aha!" moment

  -burst of activity in Temporal Lobe
• Confirmation Bias


  -seek evidence to prove our idea rather than against it

  -leads to fixation
• Fixation


  -inability to come to a fresh perspective, driven by confirmation bias
• Mental Set


  -prime example of fixation

  -tendency to approach a problem with the mindset of what has worked for us before
• Intuition


  -an effortless, immediate, feeling or thought

  -contrast with concsiouc reasoning
• Representativeness Heuristic


  -judging the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes

  -may lead us to ignore relevant info

  -Ex: assuming someone's job based on characteristics, ignoring logistics

  -racial bias
• Availability Heuristic


  -judging likelihood of events based on their availability in memory

  -if they come to mind(vividness) we assume they are common

  -often distorts judgement of risk

  -Ex: celebrity gets sick after vaccine, people decide to go with her rather than scientific research
• Overconfidence


  -the tendency to be more confined than correct

  -to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments
• Planning Fallacy


  -led by overconfidence

  -overestimating our future leisure time and income
• Sunk-cost fallacy


  -led by overconfidence

  -we stick to our original plan because we've invested our time, even when switching to a new approach is faster
• Belief Perseverance


  -tendency to cling to our beliefs in face of contrary evidence, stubborn
• Framing


  -the way an issue is posed

  -how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions an judgments

  -good persuasion tool
• Nudge


  -framing choices in a way that encourage people to make beneficial decisions
• Executive Functions


  high-level cognitive processes that enable individuals to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and manage multiple tasks successfully, FRONTAL
• Gamblers Fallacy


  a cognitive bias where people mistakenly believe that the outcomes of a random event are influenced by previous events, even when each event is independent
• Functional Fixedness


  a cognitive bias that limits a person’s ability to use an object only in the way it is traditionally used, preventing them from seeing alternative uses for that object
• Go divergent first (narrow) then convergent (single solution)
• Divergent Example: bricklayers might see a brick, rather then a doorstep
• Convergent example: A doctor will diagnose a patient with a specific illness based on their symptoms.