Psychology Module 25- Thinking

Dr. Zane has been studying monkeys' ability to classify photographs of cats and dogs. After the monkeys became competent at this task, Dr. Zane found that specific frontal lobe neurons fired in response to new catlike or doglike images. This suggests that the monkeys:

can form concepts.

As cognitive psychologists define it, a concept is a(n):

category

Because he mistakenly believes that older workers are not as motivated to work as hard as younger workers, a factory foreman is especially vigilant for signs of laziness among his senior employees. When he sees a younger employee slacking off, he usually assumes that he is taking a well-deserved break. His supervision strategy BEST illustrates:

confirmation bias.

Narrowing available problem solutions to the single best solution illustrates:

convergent thinking.

To solve a problem, people often make use of simple thinking strategies. These strategies will allow them to make judgments and solve problems efficiently by following a(n) _____.

heuristic

Joanne will not go out at night because she hears from her local news station about the large number of muggings and robberies that occur in her city. However, crime in Joanne's city has actually gone down in the past few years. Joanne's example illustrates:

the availability heuristic.

A few days before flying to San Francisco, Jim watched a documentary about the 1906 earthquake that devastated the city. Even though the chance of getting caught in an earthquake while in San Francisco was relatively minor, Jim decided to cancel his trip. This best illustrates:

the availability heuristic.

Mary Ellen is a registered Republican. She believes that her positions on political issues are correct because she often finds similar viewpoints expressed in conservative media. Mary Ellen is demonstrating:

confirmation bias.

A(n) _____ refers to an inability to view a problem from a new perspective.

fixation

When attempting to persuade others, it is better to focus on the positive rather than the negative. This is a characteristic of:

framing

Glenn has a cockatiel that he has trained to discriminate between pictures of dogs and cats. He shows the cockatiel a picture of a dog and the bird pecks at a dog symbol on the cage. Glenn shows him a picture of a cat and the bird pecks at a cat symbol. The bird is showing:

that it can form concepts.

An algorithm is:

a rule that guarantees a problem's solution.

Isaac Newton stated that he was able to solve difficult scientific problems by thinking about them all the time. This BEST demonstrates:

intrinsic motivation.

An effortless, immediate, and automatic thought or feeling is known as:

intuition.

Jessica believes she can complete a term paper, start to finish, in two days and begins the paper two days before its due date. Unfortunately, once she begins she realizes it will more likely take four or five days to complete. Her failure to accurately determine how long the assignment would take BEST illustrates:

overconfidence

Makayla is taking a child development class and has been assigned a class project of her choice. She has chosen to analyze child drawings. She collected child drawings from a nearby elementary school from a total of 50 children in the third grade. Now she is in the process of analyzing the drawings and preparing her presentation. She has completely lost track of time. She meant to work on this for only an hour but when she looks at the clock three hours have passed. She is completely interested in the project and finds it challenging to analyze them. Makayla is demonstrating:

intrinsic motivation.

Arnold had difficulty recognizing that bullfighting was a sport because it failed to resemble his _____ of a sport.

prototype

People more quickly recognize that a dog is a mammal than that a whale is a mammal because a dog more closely resembles their _____ of a mammal.

prototype