Cognitive Final Essays

Describe the Gestalt approach to problem solving and provide an example.

1. Represent the problem 2. Recognise the solution is blocked 3. Restructure the problem 4. Insight - the a-ha moment Kohler studied monkeys and found a sudden insight when they solved the problem. Failure-failure-failure-success. Also, the nine-dot problem.

Pollack and Pickett's experiment on understanding speech found that when participants were presented with individual words taken out of conversations (single words presented alone with no context), they could identify

50 percent of the words spoken by their own voices

Pollack and Pickett's experiment on understanding speech found that when participants were presented with individual words taken out of conversations (single words presented alone with no context), they could identify

50 percent of the words spoken by their own voices.

In an effort to get his sister Sharon to vaccinate her young children, Frank compiled the results from many scientific research studies that show the long-term health benefits of childhood vaccines. Yet when Frank presented the information to Sharon, she refused to believe him, stating that the research was clearly faked by large pharmaceutical companies. Sharon not only said that vaccines are risky but also now claims they are poisonous. What occurred in the conversation between Frank and Sharon?

Backfire effect

Which of the following statements does NOT apply to the results of research on differences between how experts and novices solve problems?

Being an expert in one field can transfer to better problem solving in another field.

Which of the following activities would require Type 2 cognitive processing?

Choosing an entree from a menu

When the process of analogical problem solving was applied to the fortress and radiation problems, which of the following represented the mapping step of this process?

Connecting the fortress with the tumor

Which term best reflects the process of reading and understanding sentences in a story?

Dynamic

Which term best describes the process of brainstorming?

Divergent

Define and give examples of divergent thinking. How does this relate to creativity?

Divergent thinking is the process of thinking that explores multiple possible solutions in order to generate creative ideas. It is spontaneous, free flowing, and non linear. Divergent thinking is open ended and has a large number of solutions. It is more creative because it has more open ended solutions to show a persons creativity.

Dictionaries commonly list the multiple definitions of a particular word in a numbered list, with the first definition as #1, the next definition as #2, and so on. Which concept does this reflect?

Meaning dominance

Which of the following statements is NOT accurate?

Semantics and lexicons are equal in scope.

Explain how the surface and structural features of problems influence people's ability to make effective use of analogies in problem solving. Make sure you define surface and structural features in your answer.

Surface features are specific elements of a given problem, and structural features are the underlying principles that govern the solution to a problem. If a person only looks at surface features, the analogy problem will not be solved as effectively People are most successful at noticing an analogous relationship between problems if they focus on structural features

Consider the following argument: Observation: Here in Nashville, the sun has risen every morning. Conclusion: The sun is going to rise in Nashville tomorrow

The argument is strong because there are a large number of observations

Brain imaging studies reveal that semantics and syntax are associated with which two lobes of the cerebral cortex?

The frontal and temporal lobes

"You can't have any pudding unless you eat your meat," says a man to his son at the dinner table. This is an example of

a permission schema.

Mia has lived in New York City all her life. She has noticed that people from upper Manhattan walk really fast, but people from lower Manhattan tend to walk slowly. Mia's observations are likely influenced from a judgment error based on her using

an illusory correlation

The radiation problem was used in your text to illustrate the role of _________________ in problem solving.

analogy

Wally and Shamika are out on a date. When Shamika asks where they should go for dinner, Wally says, "My coworkers keep telling me about that new Japanese place downtown, so it must be a great place to eat." Wally's response illustrates the use of a(n)

availability heuristic

The typical purpose of subgoals is to

bring the problem solver closer and closer to the goal state.

Use of the word "If" is a good way to identify a(n) ________ syllogism

conditional

If a motorcycle cop believes that young female drivers speed more than other drivers, he will likely notice young female drivers speeding in the fast lane but fail to notice young male or older drivers doing the same. In this case, the police officer's judgments are skewed by the operation of the

confirmation bias.

Intermediate states can be created by

creating subgoals.

In the lexical decision task, participants are asked to

decide whether a string of letters is a word or a nonword

Define both deductive and inductive reasoning and explain how they are different. What does it mean to say that the conclusion to a syllogism is "valid"?

deductive: reasoning concerned with conclusions that follow with certainty from the premises Inductive: conclusions that probabilistically follow from the premises. it is probably true, but not a correct deductive inference, because it is not necessarily true. Often involves categorization and formation of rules or hypotheses A syllogism is valid if the first two premises are true, meaning that the conclusion is true.

Metcalfe and Wiebe gave participants problems to solve and asked them to make "warmth" judgments every 15 seconds to indicate how close they felt they were to a solution. The purpose of this experiment was to

demonstrate a difference between how people solve insight and non-insight problems.

Rosa is in a convenience store considering which soda to buy. She recalls a commercial for BigFizz she saw on TV last night. BigFizz is running a promotion where you look under the bottle cap, and one in five bottles has a voucher for a free soda. If Rosa decides to purchase a BigFizz based on this promotion, which is framed in terms of _________________ , she will use a _________________ strategy.

gains; risk-aversion

The idea that the rules governing the grouping of words in a sentence is the primary determinant of the way a sentence is parsed is part of the ____________________ approach to parsing.

garden path

In New Guinea, tribes that had been isolated for centuries were found that they

had a large number of sophisticated language systems.

One reason that most people do not easily solve the original (abstract) version of the Wason four-card problem is that they

ignore the falsification principle

Sandeep is a generally anxious person. His anxiety sometimes gets in the way when he tries to make decisions. The anxiety Sandeep feels is an example of an __________ emotion.

incidental

Making probable conclusions based on evidence involves_________________reasoning.

inductive

Evidence that language is a social process that must be learned comes from the fact that when deaf children find themselves in an environment where there are no people who speak or use sign language, they

invent a sign language themselves

Research in neuroeconomics has found that the function of the _________________ may be to deal with the cognitive demands of a given task, while the _________________ is responsible for handling emotional goals such as resenting an unfair outcome.

prefrontal cortex; insula

Within the realm of conversational speech, knowledge refers to the

previously understood information that we bring into the conversation.

Imagine that your friend James has just taken up the habit of smoking cigars because he thinks it makes him look cool. You are concerned about the detrimental effects of smoking on his health, and you raise that concern to him. James gets a bit annoyed with your criticism and says, "My grandfather smoked cigars, and he lived to be 100!" You might point out that a major problem with his argument involves

sample size

Stereotypes are reinforced by all of the following EXCEPT

the falsification principle.

Lexical ambiguity studies show that people access ambiguous words based on

the meaning dominance of each definition of the word.

Failing to consider the law of large numbers most likely results in errors concerning

the representative heuristic

In an experiment that combined both physiological and behavioral approaches to the study of decision making, prefrontal cortex activity was recorded while participants accepted or rejected proposals to split a sum of money ($10). Prefrontal cortex activation was

the same for accepted and rejected offers.

Insight refers to

the sudden realization of a problem's solution

Consider the following syllogism: All cats are birds. All birds have wings. All cats have wings.

valid

The best description of the purpose of think-aloud protocols is that they are used to determine

what information a person is attending to while solving a problem

Explain the utility approach to decisions.

Expected utility theory- based on the assumption that people are basically rational, so if they have all of the relevant information, they will make a decision that results in the maximum expected utility. Utility refers to outcomes that achieve a person's goals.

Describe the differences between the way experts and nonexperts go about solving problems. In your answer, highlight the advantages and disadvantages to being an expert in a field.

Experts solve problems in their field faster and with a higher success rate that novices. They organize knowledge better and spend more time analyzing a problem. Disadvantages are that they are likely less open minded about new solutions

Which of the following statements would most likely invoke the operation of a permission schema?

If I get an A on my cognitive psychology exam, I can go out with my friends on Saturday night.

Give an example of a garden-path sentence. Explain the syntax-first and interactionist approaches to parsing such sentences.

Parsing is grouping words into appropriate phrases. Garden path sentence is a sentence that is difficult to parse like "the old man the boats" Syntax first approach says that grammatical structure of a sentence determines parsing, and the interactionist approach says that semantics and syntax both influence processing

1. Define the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and describe the experiments on color perception that support it.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis says that language determines how we think, and this can vary between cultures. In another study on color, British participants had eight names for colors shown while New Guinean participants only used five

Which of the following terms best describes the concept of entrainment?

Similarity

From the perspective of the listener, as a person speaks, each sentence often is characterized by ________ until the sentence is completed.

ambiguity

Describe the interactionist approach to parsing, and the methods and results of eye movement research that support it.

The interactionist approach states that semantics, syntax, and other factors operate simultaneously to determine parsing. The interactionist approach is supported by (a) the way words with different meanings affect the interpretation of a sentence (b) eye movement studies in the visual world paradigm (c) predictions based on a person's knowledge of the environment, and (d) predictions based on a person's knowledge of language constructions.

From a thinking perspective, when faced with making a decision, the suggestion to "Go with your gut" would emphasize ________, while the suggestion "Take your time" would place emphasis on ________.

Type 1; System 2

Which of the following provides the best example of functional fixedness?

Using a juice glass as a container for orange juice

Mia has lived in New York City all her life. She has noticed that people from upper Manhattan walk really fast, but people from lower Manhattan tend to walk slowly. Mia's observations are likely influenced from a judgment error based on her using

an illusory correlation.

Consider the following sentences: "Captain Ahab wanted to kill the whale. He cursed at it." These two sentences taken together provide an example of a(n)

anaphoric inference

Ali works for Citrus Squeeze, a company that makes orange juice. Sales of their calcium-enhanced OJ have been poor, and the product was cancelled. His factory still had three cases of cartons, and Ali was told he could take them if he wanted them. With the cartons, Ali made several birdfeeders for his backyard and also planted tree seedlings in some of them; he used the remaining ones to build a "fort" for his four-year-old son. Ali's use of the cartons represents

divergent thinking.

Tanenhaus and coworkers' eye movement study presented participants with different pictures for interpreting the sentence, "Put the apple on the towel in the box." Their results showed the importance of ____________________ in how we understand sentences in real-life situations.

environmental context

Josiah is trying to decide whether to take a new job in a new city. He is worried that if he takes the job and fails, he will suffer from intense anxiety and depression. This is an example of

expected emotion

The process of analogical encoding is focused on ________.

finding similarity

In its discussion of expertise and problem solving, your text identifies the kind of scientists who are most likely to make revolutionary discoveries in their fields. This particular discussion suggests that _________________ may be more important than _________________ in creative thinking.

flexibility; experience

Lilo can't wait for school to start. This year is the first time she gets to take a foreign language class, and she is taking Japanese. Dr. Nabuto is a professor interested in studying how people learn additional languages later in life, and he is including Lilo's class in his research. Dr. Nabuto is most likely studying

language acquisition.

When the "abstract" version of the Wason four-card problem is compared to a "concrete" version of the problem (in which beer, soda, and ages are substituted for the letters and numbers),

performance is better for the concrete task

One of Chomsky's most persuasive arguments for refuting Skinner's theory of language acquisition was his observation that children

produce sentences they have never heard

The circle problem, in which the task is to determine the length of a line inside a circle, was proposed to illustrate

representation and restructuring.

In the context of language, another term for "heuristics" is ________.

rules

Newell and Simon were early pioneers in designing computer programs that could solve problems. Their research program was based on the idea that problem solving is a process that involves

search.

The word frequency effect refers to the fact that we respond more

slowly to low-frequency words than high-frequency words.

When the front part of a sentence can be interpreted more than one way, but the end of the sentence clarifies which meaning is correct, we say that the sentence is an example of

speech segmentation

Sanfey and coworkers' "ultimatum game" experiment revealed that people tended to make the _________________ decision of ____.

irrational; accepting only high offers

The validity of a syllogism depends on

its form.

Define inference as it applies to text processing. Write a sample narrative paragraph that includes examples of anaphoric inference, instrument inference, and causal inference. Identify and describe each occurrence.

Inference is when the reader creates information during reading that is not explicitly stated Anaphoric is connecting objects/people, instrumental is tools or methods, and causal is cause and effect linking events in previous clause to present. Ex: John flew to Hawaii yesterday. On his way there, the ride got a little bumpy. The passengers felt very nervous.

Compare and contrast insight vs. non-insight problems, including a description of the kinds of problems representing each type. What is the evidence that insight does occur, and how does insight influence problem solving behavior?

Insight: using creative approaches to reach a solution - requires cognitive flexibility Ex: 1. triangle problem 2. cheap necklace problem 3. verbal insight problem non insight: solved gradually rather than involuntarily and appears suddenly like in insight problems - suggests that for non-insight problems we have an awareness of incremental success as we get closer to the solution, each step of the way Ex:

How lexical ambiguity can be studied using priming lexical decision task. Give an example of a passage with an ambiguous word

Lexical ambiguity happens when words have more than one meaning. Priming means we respond faster when stimulus in primed and given context. For example, the men waited by the bank is unbiased and we don't understand which bank meaning it is. Strong bias for dominant meaning and priming happens when we say "The men decided to open a checking account at the bank" and weak bias for subordinate meaning is when we say "The fisherman waited by the bank"

Which set of stimuli would be the best selection for having people perform a lexical decision task?

Words "pizza, history" and nonwords "pibble, girk"

Explain the evidence from neuropsychology and brain imaging studies showing how the prefrontal cortex is involved in problem solving and reasoning.

fMRI test shows that the insula is activated during problem solving and reasoning, which is the emotional center. The prefrontal cortex is also activated and in charge of decision making and cognitive demands. Participants monitored while doing an ultimatum game where they either accept or reject a sum of money. When they rejected, their insula was more active. Prefrontal cortex was slightly more active when rejecting

People tend to overestimate

what negative feelings will occur following a decision more so than positive feelings.