Cognitive Psychology Exam 4

How can planning fallacies be avoided to maximize test preparation?

-start studying early

Familiarity and Availability

- judge more familiar examples to be more likely -population estimates -El Salvador vs Indonesia- study, El Salvador was being mentioned in the media a lot at the time bc of US relations, Indonesia was not mentioned much. Student's estimates for the populations of these two countries were similar, even though the population of Indo was 35x larger than El Salvador -diseases -media- violent events, police brutality, points of view

Baye's theorem

- judgements should be influenced by two factors: the base rate and the likelihood ratio

Why is it important to consider both the possible gains and losses when making big decisions?

- leads to less errors -sees various points of views -determines if gains outweighs the losses

Affirming the antecedent

- means the "if" is true - leads to a valid or correct conclusion - ex: "If this is an apple, then this is a fruit" -This is an apple, therefore this is a fruit

Describe the relationship between confirmation bias and affirming the antecedent and denying the consequent.

- much more likely to affirm the antecedent than deny the consequent because you want to confirm your belief instead of find a reason why its not true

likelihood ratio

- whether the description is more likely to apply to Population A or Population B

reasoning is influenced by two factors:

- whether the statements include negative terms - whether the statements are concrete or abstract

What important statistical evidence does the representative heuristic lead us to ignore?

-sample size -base rate

What is the general role of heuristics in decision making?

-simple, fast, easy to access

children's imagery

-spontaneous use of imagery does not develop until adolescence -even 6 year olds can be trained to use imagery

prospect theory

- Tversky and Kahneman (1981) - refers to people's tendency to think that possible gains are different from possible losses - when dealing with possible gains (lives saved) people tend to avoid risks - when dealing with possible losses (lives lost) people tend to seek risks

script

- a simple, well-structured sequence of events- in a specified order- that are associated with a highly familiar activity -children who are 3 years old can typically produce simple scripts to describe a recent experience

propositional calculus

- a system for categorizing the four kinds of reasoning used in analyzing propositions or statements ... 1. Affirming the antecedent 2. Affirming the consequent 3. Denying the antecedent 4. Denying the consequent

conditional reasoning task

- aka propositional reasoning task - describes the relationship between conditions - relies on working memory, especially the central-executive component - ex: if a child is allergic to peanuts, then eating peanuts produces a breathing problem. a child has a breathing problem. therefore, this child has eaten peanuts (conclusion not valid, something else couldve caused problem) - "if, then" statement - judge whether conclusion is valid or invalid

if I study for my exam, then I will get a good grade." Which type of deductive reasoning is this? Identify the antecedent and the consequent

- conditional task reasoning - "if I study for my exam": antecedent -"then I will get a good grade": consequent

Kahneman and Tversky

- decision making - proposed that a small number of heuristics guide human decision making - the same strategies that normally guide us toward the correct decision may sometimes lead us astray

framing effect

- demonstrates that the outcome of your decision can be influenced by two factors: 1. background context of the choice - ex: concert ticket:.... -Problem 1 (lost ticket): only 46% of people said they would buy another ticket -Problem 2 (lost $20): 88% said they would buy ticket 2. the way in which a question is worded or framed -ex: disease program:... -Problem 1 ("saving" lives): people "risk averse"- preferred certainty of saving 200 lives (AVOID RISKS) -Problem 2 ("lost" lives): people "risk taking"- preferred 2/3rds chance people died instead of guaranteed death of 400 (SEEK RISKS)

Dual- process theory

- distinguishes between two types of cognitive processing: type 1 and type 2 processing

Heuristic

- general strategies that typically produce a correct solution - general strategy that usually work well -theme2 -when we need to make a decision, e often use a heuristic that is simple, fast, and easy to access

base rate

- how often the item occurs in the population - focus on whether a description is representative of a member of each category

Let's say that you can't decide between moving to California or New York after college. How can creating a pros/cons list reduce confirmation bias during big decision making?

- if you want to go to one, think of reasons why you shouldn't go there in order to think more broadly about it and to have a better opinion on it

Thinking

- involves a goal such as a solution, belief or a decision -requires you to go beyond the information and you were given -often perform "smart mistakes" during thinking tasks

Type 2 processing

- is relatively slow and controlled - requires forced attention and is typically more accurate - focused attention and working memory ex: used when we think of exceptions to a rule, realize that we made a stereotyped response, and when we acknowledge that out Type 1 response may have been incorrect

Decision making

- must access available information and choose among two or more alternatives - much more ambiguous than deductive reasoning (some info may be missing or contradictory) - do not have clear cut rules that tell us how tell how to proceed from the information to the conclusion - consequences of that decision won't be immediately apparent - may need to take additional factors into account - more common in real life - heuristics - interdisciplinary field -the research on decision making examines concrete, realistic scenarios, rather than the kind of abstract situations used in research on deductive reasoning

small sample fallacy

- people assume that a small sample will be representative of the population from which it is selected - leads us to make incorrect decisions - a large sample is statistically more likely to reflect the true proportions in a population, while a small sample will often reveal an extreme proportion -ex: A small hospital has 15 babies born each day. A large hospital has 45 babies born each day. Which is more likely (or are they equally likely) to report more than 60% baby boys on a given day? -deviations from a population proportion are more likely in small sample sizes (extreme proportion of 60% boys more likely in small sample)

Confirmation bias

- people would rather try to confirm or support a hypothesis than try to disprove it

Recency and Availability

- recall more recent items more accurately -judge recent items to be more likely than they really are

MacLeod and Campbell (1992)

- recency and availability - when people were encouraged to recall pleasant events from their past, they later judge pleasant events to be more likely in their future - when people were encouraged to recall unpleasant events, they later judged unpleasant events to be more likely - psychotherapists might encourage depressed clients to envision a more hopeful future by having them recall and focus on previous pleasant events

antecedent

- refers to the first proposition or statement - contains the "if" part of the sentene

consequent

- refers to the proposition that comes second - contains the "then" part of the sentence

Belief-bias effect

- role of background knowledge -occurs in reasoning when people make judgements based on prior beliefs and general knowledge, rather than on the rules of logic. - people make errors when the logic of reasoning problems conflicts with their background knowledge. - ex: if a feather is thrown at a window, the window will break. A feather is thrown at a window. therefore the window will break (valid) - theme 5: top down processing ; our prior experiences help us understand the world - flexible thinkers are more likely to solve the reasoning problems correctly without being distracted by the belief-bias effect (in contrast, people with low IQ usually demonstrate belief-bias effect)

Representative

- sample is representative if it is similar in important characteristics to the population from which it was selected . - coincidences - randomness -THHTHT: equal number of heads and tails -- if a sample was selected by a random process, then that sample must look random in order for people to say it looks representative

social cognition approach

- stereotypes are the result of normal cognitive processes; motivational factors are less relevant

variations on Wason Selection Task

- subtle wording changes -clear, detailed instructions in conditional reasoning strategies -real world situations easier to understand than abstract (given concrete situations, easier and more accurate) -understand situations with relatable consequences

Denying the antecedent

- the fallacy: means that you say that the "of" part of the sentence is false -leads to an invalid conclusion -ex: "If this is an apple, then this is a fruit" - This is not an apple, therefore it is not a fruit

conjunction rule

- the probability of the conjunction of two events cannot be larger the probability of either of its constituent events

conjunction fallacy

- they judge the probability of the conjunction of two events to be greater than the probability of either constituent event. -Tversky and Kahneman- "Linda", bank teller, feminist problem -rank statements in terms of probability -traced the conjunction fallacy to the representativeness heuristic -judge representativeness instead of statistical probability -research shows that college students with high SAT scores are actually more likely than other students to demonstrate this conjunction fallacy

representative heuristic

- we judge that a sample is likely if it is similar to the population from which this sample was selected - we believe that random- looking outcomes are more likely than orderly outcomes - in reality, a random process occasionally produces an outcome that looks nonrandom -this heuristic is so persuasive that people often ignore statistical information that they should consider (sample size and base rate)

Interaction of type one and type 2 processing

- we use type 2 processing when we realize we made a stereotyped response (incorrect response) in type 1 processing - people may initially use type 1 processing which is quick and generally correct, but sometimes we must pause and shift to type 2 which is more effortful analytic approach. - type 2 requires focused attention and working memory so that people can realize that their initial conclusion would not necessarily be correct - theme 4: emphasizes that our cognitive processes are interrelated

base rate fallacy

- when we emphasize representativeness - paying too little attention to important information about base rate - people rely on representativeness when they are asked to judge category membership -- we focus on whether a description is representative of members of each category ex: description of student made him sound not caring, very analytical, intelligent but reserved- when asked what his major was people were more likely to guess "computer science" or "engineering" --if they were looking at base rate, they would select programs that have a relatively high enrollment (base rate) like "humanities and education" or "social science and social work" ---even when the study included the base rate of enrollment of each program, people ignored that and still went with computer science or engineering

conjugate reinforcement technique

-Carolyin Rovee-Collier and colleagues: designed a nonverbal measure to assess infant memory -a mobile hangs above a young infant's crib; a ribbon connects the infant's ankle and the mobile, so that the infant's kicks will make the mobile move -baseline- spontaneous kicking before being attached to mobile -acquisition phase- 9 minutes to discover their kicks activate mobile -long term memory tested by number of kicks produced in immediate retention test (24 hrs apart) and number of kicks produced following the delay -older infants press lever to move train -context effects even stronger for infants (cribs lined with different fabric)

Differentiate between conditional reasoning and syllogism. Think of examples for each

-Conditional reasoning can be valid or invalid, while syllogism can be valid, invalid, or indeterminate -conditional is relationship between two conditions and their validity, while syllogism has two statements we must assume to be true and then third statement that we have to figure out its validity

children's eyewitness testimony

-Leichtman and Ceci (1995) --preschoolers' eyewitness testimony of Sam Stone's visit --4 groups: stereotype, suggestion, stereotype+suggestion, control --children interviewed 10 weeks after Sam Stone's visit- asked if they had seen him tear up a book or spill chocolate milk on a teddy bear -accurate if children receive no misleading information before/after event -younger children affected by misleading information more than older children -age, stereotyping, misleading suggestions -social factors -reluctance to say "I dont know" -change statements under cross-examination

Research on the Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic

-Multiplication study --if the first number was large, the estimates were higher than if the first number was small --single-digit numbers anchored the estimates far too low -anchor may restrict the search for relevant information in memory

The standard wason selection task

-Peter Wason (1968) - confirmation bias - "if a card has a vowel on one side, then is has an even number on the other side" - decide which card(s) you would need to turn over to find out whether this rule is valid or invalid - A, F, 2, 9 -solution- turn over the A (affirm the antecedent) and turn over 9 (deny the consequent) -people are likely to affirm the antecedent and reluctant to deny the consequent by searching for counterexamples -most people avoided F because the initial statement says nothing about consonants -most people select 2 to flip over even though the initial statement says nothing about whats on the back of even cards because they think they can switch around the two parts of the rule -people who are given a choice would rather know what something IS than what it IS NOT

The likelihood of an event coming to mind is influenced by (Availability heuristic):

-actual frequencies (it is often accurate) -salience/familiarity (e.g. the media) -recency (recent events are over-represented)

"If he is a golden retriever, then he is a dog." Try to create a propositional calculus for the previous statement where you: affirm the antecedent, affirm the consequent, deny the antecedent, and deny the consequent. Think about which are valid and which are invalid.

-affirm antecedent: He is a golden retriever, therefore he is a dog (valid) -affirm consequent: He is a dog, therefore he is a golden retriever (invalid) -deny antecedent: He is not a golden retreiver, therefore he is not a dog (invalid) -deny consequent: He is not a dog, therefore he is not a golden retriever (valid)

Crystal-ball technique

-asks decision makers to imagine that a completely accurate crystal ball has determined that their favored hypothesis is actually incorrect; the decision makers must therefore search for alternative explanations for the outcome -must find reasonable evidence to support alternative explanations

children's organizational strategies

-categorizing and grouping -young children typically less likely to spontaneously group similar items together to aid memorization -Moely and colleagues (1969) --pictures from four categories --younger children did not rearrange pictures

Foley, Ratner, colleagues

-children's source monitoring -performing vs imagining how it would feel -performing vs watching another person perform a task -when imagining it, often reported they had actually done it (this group made the most source-monitoring errors)

Griggs and Cox (1982)

-confirmation bias -tested college students in FL using variation of Wason selection task -focused on drinking age (was 19 back then) -"If a person is drinking beer, then the person must be over 19 years of age" -each participant instructed to turn over 2 out of 4 cards to test whether people were lying about their age -found that 73% of students made correct selections, in contrast to 0% of students who tried the standard, abstract form of the selection task -people are especially likely to choose the correct answer when the wording of the selection implies some kind of social contract to prevent people from cheating

syllogism

-consist of two statements that we must assume to be true, plus a conclusion - refer to quantities: all, none, some - judge whether valid, invalid, indeterminatge - ex: some psychology majors are friendly people. some friendly people are concerned about poverty. therefore, some psychology majors are concerned about poverty (indeterminate) - if you used Type 1, you would say valid

What is the current perspective of heuristics on decision making?

-decision-making heuristics generally serve us well in the real world. -We can become more effective decision makers by realizing the limitations of these important strategies.

lifespan approach to development

-emphasizes that developmental changes continue beyond young adulthood; we continue to change and adapt throughout our entire lives

children's long term memory

-excellent recognition, but poor recall -Myers and Perlmutter (1978)- object recognition and recall --to examine recognition: shown 18 objects, then presented 36 objects with 18 old objects and 18 new, told to recognize old objects --recognition: 2 year olds-80%; 4 year olds-90% --to examine recall: showed children 9 items, then told to recall them --recall: 2 year olds-20%; 4 year olds-40%

Let's say that you get a 100% on exam 3. When you see your exam grade, you exclaim to your classmates, "I knew I was going to get a 100% on the exam!" Explain how you are expressing hindsight bias in this situation. What are possible explanations for the hindsight bias?

-hindsight bias because you did not you were going to get 100 prior to taking the exam -gloating to your classmates

Carli (1999)

-hindsight bias research -participants read story- half of them read story where girl is raped at the end, other half read story where girl marries man -after reading, participants completed true/false memory test -included questions about things that weren't mentioned in story but had to do with the story's ending (barbara met many men at parties vs barbara always wanted a family) -each group recalled items that were consistent with ending they had read -explains victim blaming

Difference between representative and availability heuristics

-if the problem is based on a judgement about similarity, you are dealing with the representativeness heuristic -if the problem requires you to remember examples, you are dealing with the availability heuristic

default heuristic

-if there is a standard option- which happens if people do nothing- then people will choose it -organ donors in US vs France

Chapman and Chapman (1967)

-illusory correlation -data showed students formed an illusory correlation between people's reported sexual orientation and their responses to an inkblot test - they would not look at all four cells in the matrix of possibilities, only at the cell that confirmed their belief

children's memory strategies

-intentional, goal-oriented activities that we use to improve our memories -unaware of effectiveness of memory strategies -limitations in working memory -utilization deficiency strategies: -rehearsal -organizational strategies -imagery

Type 1 processing

-is fast and automatic -requires little recognition of facial expression and automatic stereotyping ex: used during depth perception, recognition of facial expression, automatic stereotyping

massed learning

-learning all the material at once

Denying the consequent

-means that the "then" part of the sentence is false - correct conclusion -ex: "If this is an apple, then this is a fruit" - This is not a fruit, therefore this is not an apple

Overconfidence

-means that your confidence judgements are higher than they should be, based on your actual performance on the task -examples: illusory correlation (people confident 2 variables related) and anchoring/adjustment (people confident in estimation abilities)

children's rehearsal

-not particularly effective, but useuful for keeping items in working memory -4-5 year olds- no spontaneous use -7 year olds use this- often silently rehearsing several words together -can benefit if prompted

general studies on overconfidence

-occurs in variety of situations -own decisions vs statistically observable measurements -future performance -variety of personal skills -researchers and their theories

hindsight bias

-occurs when an event has happened, and we say that the event had been inevitable, we had actually "known it all along" -explanations: (not exactly clear) --anchoring and adjustment- told that a particular outcome happened (100% certain), people use this 100% value as the anchor in estimating the likelihood that they would have predicted the answer, and then they do not adjust their certainty downward as much as they should --misremembering past events -ex: "I knew Trump was going to win the whole time"

Sangrigoli and De Schonen (2004)

-own-ethnicity bias (other-race effect) -photos of white and asain women's faces shown to white 3-month-old babies -habituation- present one photo frequently until looking time decreased -testing: present pair of photos (familiar/unfamiliar) -looking time for unfamiliar white woman longer than familiar white woman -no difference for familiar/unfamiliar asian women

Difficulties with abstract reasoning problems

-people are more accurate when they solve reasoning problems that use concrete examples rather than abstract, theoretical examples -people's accuracy typically increases when they use diagrams to make the problem more concrete. however we often make errors on reasoning if tasks if our everyday knowledge overrides the principles of logic

Girgerenzer and colleagues

-people are not perfectly rational decision makers (especially under time pressure), but people can do relatively well when they are given a fair chance -ecological rationality -default heuristic

illusory correlation

-people believe that two variables are statistically related, even though there is no real evidence for this relationship -stereotypes

reasons for overconfidence

-people often unaware that their knowledge is based on very tenuous and uncertain assumptions and on information from unreliable or inappropriate sources -examples confirming our hypothesis are readily available, whereas we resist searching for counterexamples -people have difficulty recalling other possible hypotheses, and decision making depends on memory. if you cannot recall the competing hypothesis, you will be overly confident about hypothesis you have endorsed (theme 4) -even if people manage to recall other possible hypotheses, they do not treat them seriously -groupthink- can occur when a cohesive group is so concerned about reaching unanimous decision that they ignore potential problems, and overconfident that their decision will have favorable outcome -researchers do not educate public about overconfidence

planning fallacy

-people typically underestimate the amount of time or money required to complete a project; they also estimate that the task will be relatively easy to complete -student project study -process simulation vs control --optimistic scenario --anchoring and adjustment

confidence interval

-range within which we expect a number to fall a certain percentage of the time -estimated confidence intervals tend to be too narrow -anchor may be erroneous and adjustments too small -people don't really understand confidence intervals

hindsight

-refers to our judgements about events that already happened in the past

autobiographical memory

-refers to your memory for experiences and information that are related to yourself -increasingly describes previous experiences after age 2 --most children's language skills grow rapidly as they approach the age of 2, and these skills help them remember their personal experiences more accurately - theme 4: connection between language and memory -childhood amnesia --not having well-organized sense of who they are --difficulty encoding and retrieving

applications in medicine (confirmation bias)

-studied people who seek medical advice for insomnia -when people believe they have insomnia, they overestimate how long it takes them to fall asleep and underestimate the amount of sleep they get -searching for confirming evidence

Kisilevsky and coauthors (2003)

-tested infants about one or two weeks before they were born -distinction between a mother and stranger's voice -infant's heart race changed more when they listened to their mother's voice rather than the stranger's voice reading a poem -research on visual recognition shows that 3 day old infants can distinguish their mother from a stranger

Affirming the consequent

-the fallacy: means that you say that the "then" part of the sentence is true - this kind of reasoning leads to an invalid conclusion -causes the largest number of errors -ex: "If this is an apple, then this is a fruit" -This is a fruit, therefore this is an apple

anchor

-the first aproximation in the anchoring effect

source monitoring

-the process of trying to identify the origin of a particular memory -children younger than about 7 years of age typically have more difficulty than adults in distinguishing between reality and pure fantasy (trouble distinguishing between something they saw in real life opposed to something from a storybook/video) -Foley, Ratner, and colleagues

availability heuristic

-the tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances of it come to mind -true frequency "contaminated" by various factors (recency, familiarity) -availability- given general category and must recall specific examples, then make decisions based on whether the examples come easily to mind --deals with remembering examples

Difficulties with linguistic negative information

-theme 3 -trouble with conditional reasoning tasks when sentences contains words such as no or not - research shows people take longer to evaluate these problems -people more likely to make errors on these problems, such as when trying to translate either initial or conclusion statements into more accessible, linguistically positive forms - working memory strain

ecological rationality

-used to describe how people create a wide variety of heuristics to help themselves make useful, adaptive decisions in the real world -ex: Brazilian children can accurately solve complex math problems while selling candy on streets, but not in a classroom

Why is the belief-bias effect and confirmation bias considered examples of top-down processing?

-using past knowledge and experience to make a decision

overconfidence in political decision making

-war decisions -failure to think systematically about the risks involved -each side tends to overestimate its own chances of success -politicians overconfident that their data are accurate -tactical decision making under stress -crystal ball technique

anchoring and adjustment heuristic (anchoring effect)

-when making an estimate, we begin with a first approximation (anchor) and then we make adjustments to that number on the basis of additional information -people rely too heavily on the anchor and their adjustments are too small -applications: --making judgements about other people --courtroom sentences- judge with experience of 15 years, prosecutor introduced as computer science student (so not taken seriously), prosecutor demanded sentence of 12 months, judge said 28 months; prosecutor demanded sentence of 34 months, judges recommended sentence of 36 months

spaced memory

-when practice is distributed over time -better for learning and memory - distributed practice is better for infants and adults -(context also affects learning and memory across the life span)

deductive reasoning

-you begin with some specific premises that are true and you need to judge whether those premises allow you to draw a particular conclusion, based on the principles of logic -provides you with all the information you need to draw a conclusion - either true or false -must use the rules of formal logic in order to draw conclusions -requires general knowledge and language skills, uses mental imagery

my side bias

describes the overconfidence that your own view is correct in a confrontational situation

children's working memory

memory span: -2 year old: 2 numbers -9 year old: 6 numbers -11 or 12 year olds: matches college students under ideal conditions -children as young as 4 have same 3 important components of working memory as adults: central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad -children's working memory skills are correlated with their performance in school

propositions

statements