Cognition Chapter Notes

* Cognition is a term covering all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating. * We use concepts, mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, or people, to simplify and order the world around us. * In creating hierarchies, we subdivide these categories into smaller and more detailed units. * We form some concepts, which is formed most around a prototype, a best example of a category. * An algorithm is a time-consuming but thorough set of rules or procedures that guarantees a solution to a problem. * A heuristic is a simpler thinking strategy that may allow us to solve problems quickly, but sometimes lead is to incorrect solutions. * Insight is not a strategy-based solution, but rather a sudden flash of inspiration that solves a problem. * Creativity is the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas. * It correlates with intelligence, expertise, imaginative thinking skills, a venturesome personality, intrinsic motivation, and support is offered through a creative environment. * Obstacles to successful problem solving are * Confirmation bias - predisposes is to verify rather than challenge our hypothesis, * Fixation (mental set and functional fixedness) - prevents us from taking the fresh perspective that would let us solve a problem. * The representativeness heuristic leads us to judge the likelihood of things in terms of how they represent our prototype for a group of items. * The availability heuristic leads us to judge the likelihood of things based on how readily they come to mind, which often leads us to fear the wrong things. * We are often more confident than correct which is overconfidence. * Once we have formed a belief and explained it, the explanation may linger in our minds even If the belief was discredited – the result of belief perseverance. * Although it sometimes leads us astray, human intuition – effortless, immediate,