Cognitive Psychology Exam 3

Explain possible advantages/disadvantages of using a heuristic to solve a problem vs using an algorithm.

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Why is it important for us to categorize things and make inferences in our daily lives?

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node

- a concept or one unit located within the network

heuristic

- a general rule that is typically accurate (theme 2)

algorithm

- a method that will always produce a solution to the problem, although the process can sometimes be inefficient (and unsophisticated) -exhaustive search

category

- a set of objects that belong together at least partially equivalent - more specific -ex: "fruit" represents certain category of fruit items -tells us something useful about their members

script

- a simple, well structured sequence of events in a specified order that are associated with a highly familiar activity -prototype of a series of events that share an underlying similarity

exhaustive search

- a type of algorithm - you tryout all possible answers using a specified system

graded structure

- all members of categories are not created equal -begins with the most representative or prototypical members, and it continues on through the category's nonprototypical members -bachelor example

Levels of categorization

- basic level names are more likely are more likely to produce the semantic priming effect

How can diagrams be useful for representing problems? What other methods are useful for representing problems? Think about which types of methods would be most appropriate for different types of problems

- can be useful for a large amount of information - other methods include symbols, matrices and visual images - ..

Distinguish between a category and a concept. Explain how they are connected.

- category: more specific -ex: car -concept: more broad -ex: vehicle -you use broad concept to create a category

episodic memory

- contains information about events that happen to us -emphasizes when, where, or how this event happened to you

Describe how family feud illustrates spreading of activation

- ex: "name a type of scope" -> microscope, telescope...

exemplar

- examples stored in memory

schema

- generalized, well integrated knowledge about a situation, an event, or person -we use this "generic" information to understand and remember new examples of the schema -guide recognition and understanding of new examples(this is just like what happened when...) - influence the way we understand a situation or an event -especially helpful when psychologists try to explain how people process complex situations and events - building blocks for representing our thoughts about people -top down and bottom up (5) -We have an enormous amount of information at our disposal, and we use this information efficiently and accurately (Theme 2) -When given a piece of information people can go beyond that information and actively retrieve additional related information (Theme 1)

superordinate- level categories

- higher level or more general categories -"furniture", "animal", "tool"

What cognitive skills might experts take advantage of more than non-experts when faced with problems?

- knowledge base, memory often use means-ends heuristics, parallel processing, monitoring the difficulty of the problem

semantic priming effect

- means that people respond faster to an item if it was preceded by an item with similar meaning -priming facilitates the responses to prototypes more than it facilitates the responses to nonprototypes -priming inhibits judgments for nonprototypes (Rosch color studies)

understanding the problem

- means that you have constructed a well organized mental , representation of the problem, based on both the information provided in the problem and your own experience -identifying and then attending to the most relevant information

basic- level categories

- moderately specific -"chair", "dog", "screwdriver" -prototype is NOT the same -basic-level category refers to category that is neither too general nor too specific; prototype is the best example of a category

family resemblance

- no single attribute shared by all examples of a concept - each example has at least one attribute in common with some other example of the concept - no single attribute serves as the necessary and sufficient criterion for membership in the category -the more prototypical the item, the larger number of attributes it shares with other items in the category (car vs elevator for "vehicle")

verbatim memory

- people usually have poor word for word recall -some professions requires active verbatim memory (actors)

Describe hill-climbing heuristic in your own words.

- pick the choice that seems to lead you to your goal

network models

- propose a network style organization of concepts in memory with numerous interconnections -the meaning of a concept depends on the concepts to which it is connected

problem isomorphs

- refers to a set of problems that have the same underlying structures and solutions, but different specific details -research clearly shows that people often fail to see the analogy between a problem they have solved and a new problem isomorph that has similar structural features (solving the same problem in a new setting) - ex: college application tracking and UPS tracking

boundary extension

- refers to our tendency to remember having viewed a greater portion of a scene than was actually shown - witnesses use this when reporting things outside of view -visual

inference

- refers to the logical interpretations and conclusions that were never part of the original stimulus material - balloon example

problem representation

- refers to the way you translate the elements of the problem into a different format - if you choose an appropriate representation, you are more likely to reach an effective solution to the problem

concept

- refers to your mental representations of a category -more broad/abstract -tend to code a concept in terms of the context in which we learned this information -concepts allow you to make numerous inferences when you encounter new examples from a category

Differentiate between semantic memory and episodic memory

- semantic: encyclopedic -episodic: experience/ memory

surface features

- specific objects and terms used in the question -people tend to only see surface features of a problem

schema therapy

- the clinician and the client work together in order to explore the client's core beliefs and create appropriate new, more helpful strategies - reason why u may be experiencing depression is because you have poor schemas for yourself; help you reshape that schema -schemas not popular during behaviorist era because they emphasize unseen processes

prototype-typicality

- the degree to which members of a category are representative of their category - most typical character

typicality effect

- when judging whether an item belongs to a particular category, typical items judged faster than atypical items

prototype approach

- you decide whether an item belongs to a category by comparing that item with a prototype -Eleanor Rosch

analogy approach

- you employ a solution to a similar, earlier problem to help you solve a new problem -creative breakthroughs - ex: bird-> airplane -first must peel away the irrelevant, superficial details in order to reach the core of the problem -problem isomorphs -surface features -structural features -failure to see analogies

How is attention and problem-solving interrelated when understanding problems

- you must pay attention to the problem in order to represent it, understand it and solve it

Neuschatz and coauthors (2002)

-"lecture schema" -instructed students to watch video of man giving lecture -likely to make schema consistent errors (not making errors such as thinking the lecturer danced in the middle of the video)

diagram

-Instructions for assembling objects -Hierarchical tree diagram- helpful in showing the relationship between categorized items -Graphs -can represent complicated information in a clear, concrete form

metacognition during problem solving

-Janet Metcalfe (1986) -peope's confidence builds gradually for noninsight problems, but shows a sudden leap in solving insight problems -"feeling-of-warmth" scale

abstraction

-a memory process that stores the meaning of a message but not the exact words -like an abstract in the beginning of an article

Distinguish between schemas and scripts. Explain how the two are connected.

-a script is a kind of schema and are often used interchangeably -script is a narrower term, referring to a sequence of events that unfold in a specified order

Bransford and Stein (1984)

-algebra story problems -distracting negative thoughts ("I hate these math word problems") -attention is important to problem solving -effective problem solvers read the description of a problem very carefully, paying particular attention to inconsistencies

functional fixedness

-assigns stable uses to an object and fail to think about the features of the object that might be useful in helping solve a problem -overactive top down processing -Duncker's candle problem -emergencies -cross-cultural studies theme 2: mistakes in cognitive processing can often be traced to a strategy that is basically very rational

implicit association test (IAT)

-based on the principle that people can mentally pair two related words together much more easily than they can pair two unrelated words -Nosek, Banaji, Greenwald (2002)

Which level category out of the 3 stated in the previous question is most likely to produce the semantic priming effect? Why?

-basic level names are more likely to produce the semantic priming effect -presented basic-level name ("apple") of the object followed by two pictures leads to faster judgements (slower judgements with superordinate names "fruit") --when u hear fruit u create a general representation rather than a specific representation

advantages of basic-level categories

-basic level names used to identify objects --people look at pictures, people prefer basic-level names, produce basic names faster than other levels --when people saw superordinate or subordinate terms, more likely to remember the basic-level version -basic level names are more likely to produce the semantic priming effect --presented basic-level name ("apple") of the object followed by two pictures leads to faster judgements (slower judgements with superordinate names "fruit") --when u hear fruit u create a general representationn rather than a specific representation -different levels of categorization activate different regions of the brain --PET Scans --superordinate term more likely than basic term to activate part of prefrontal cortex (toy vs doll)(part of cortex processes language and associative memory, must consult memory about category membership to to decide if picture of doll qualifies as toy) --subordinate terms more likely than basic terms to activate parietal region (ragdoll vs doll)(active when performing visual search)

expert's metacognitive skills

-better than novices at monitoring their own problem solving -better at judging the difficulty of the problem, allocating time, recovering from errors -underestimate the amount of time novices will require to solve a problem in the expert's area of specialization

prototype vs exemplar

-both approaches propose that you make decisions about category membership by comparing a new item against some stored representation of the category, but for exemplar the stored representation is a collection of numerous specific members of category, not typical member -for examplar, don;t need to perform any kind of abstraction process (don;t need to devise list of features or a prototype) which would force you to discard useful, specific data about individual cases -exemplar approach more suitable for categories with relatively few members (so as to not overwhelm semantic memory) -prototype approach may be more suitable for categories with numerous numbers -individual differences in representations may be substantial -both approaches may exist -prototypes left hemisphere, exemplar right hemisphere -different categories may require different strategies for category formation

Intraub and colleagues

-boundary extension -see a photo then draw replica of photo -participants consistently produced a sketch that extended the boundaries that extended the boundaries beyond the view presented in the original photo -we comprehend a photo by activating a perceptual schema -perceptual schema extends beyond the edges of the photograph and beyond the scope of our retinas

Conclusions about prototype approach

-can account for our ability to form concepts for groups that are loosely structured -can be applied to social relationships, inanimate objects, nonsocial categories problems: -need to acknowledge that concepts can be unstable and variable (e.g., prototype ratings can shift) (9/11) -we often do store specific information about individual examples of a category

matrix

-chart showing all possible combinations of items -most useful for complex, stable, categorical information

Give an example of the analogy approach. Explain how problem isomorphs could occur and why.

-city is like a body -see how cars go into city at beginning of the day, leave at the end of the day -when trying to figure out a problem with the flow of traffic, look the human heart to figure out a good way to fix it

expertise

-consistent exceptional performance on representative tasks for a particular area -knowledge base -memory skills of experts tend to be very specific -chess experts' memory is better only if the information fits a particular schema -people with expertise use top-down processing effectively when they solve problems; they take advantage of factors such as their knowledge, memory, and strategies -when experts encounter a problem in their area of expertise, they are more likely than novices to use means-ends heuristic effectively -experts faster and more accurate -use parallel processing --when solving anagrams, solve in less than 2 seconds bc they considered several possible solutions at the same time

constructive model of memory (constructive approach)

-created by Bransford and Franks -people integrate infromation from individual sentences in order to construct larger ideas -later, they believe they have already seen those complex sentences because they combined the various facts in memory -once sentences fused in memory, we cannot untangle them into their original components and recall those components verbatim -theme 1: active -theme 2: memory typically accurate, errors came from using strategies that are generally useful (combining information)

top down processing

-emphasizes our concepts, expectations, and memory, which we have acquired from past experience -both mental set and functional fixedness can interfere when we try to solve a problem; both of these factors rely too heavily on top-down processing. -if the problem requires insight, we must also overcome overactive top-down processing in order to approach the problem from an unfamiliar perspective.

bottom up processing

-emphasizes the information about the stimulus, as registered on our sensory receptors

Heit and Barsalou (1996)

-exemplar approach -provide first example that comes to mind of 7 basic-level categories -different group rates the typicality of each category and of each example with respect to "animal" -researchers try to create equation to predict typicality of the categories based on the exemplars in terms of frequency and typicality ratings -exemplar frequency and exemplar typicality did accurately predict which of the 7 categories were most typical for the superordinate category "animal" -less typical exemplars increase the correlation -when asked a question about a category, people don't just consider prototypes, they also include information about less typical examples of the category

Bransford and Franks (1971)

-false alarm -asked subjects to listen to sentences from several different stories -then given recognition test that included new items, many of which were combos of earlier sentences -people thought they had seen these new items before -false alarms unlikely for sentences violating the meaning of earlier sentences

exemplar approach

-first learn some specific examples of a concept (exemplars), then classify each new stimulus by deciding how closely it resembles those specific examples

Provide your own explanation for the exemplar approach with your own exemplars.

-for dog, think about the first one you owned -every other dog you see is being compared to the first one you owned, the more dogs u see are being compared to the other examples u already have in your head

Dunning and Sherman (1997)

-gender stereotypes explicit research -read sentences followed by recognition-memory test -"new" sentences consistent or inconsistent with gender stereotypes -more likely mistakenly "remember" a new sentence as "old" when it was consistent with a gender stereotype -because they know they are being measured, might pick up that they are being tested for stereotypes, change answer to not be sexist

Osterhout, Bersick, and McLaughlin (1997)

-gender stereotypes implicit memory research -using neuroscience techniques (ERP) -stereotype consistent sentences vs stereotype inconsistent sentences -change in ERPs for stereotype-inconsistent words but not for stereotype-consistent words

heuristic (for problem solving/ anagrams)

-general rule - looking for only pronounceable letter combos instead of trying every single combination (exhaustive search) -when using heuristic strategy, you would ignore some alternatives and explore only those alternatives that seem especially likely to produce a solution -heuristics do not always guarantee a correct solution -costs and benefits of using heuristics

What contribution did Gestalt psychologists make in the area of insight problems?

-gestalt psychologists emphasized organizational tendencies, especially in perception and in problem solving -parts of a problem may initially seem unrelated to one another, but a sudden flash of insight could make the parts instantly fit together into a solution

means-ends heuristic

-identify the "ends" you want and then figure out the "means" to reach them 1. first you divide the problem into a number of subproblems or smaller problems 2. then you try to reduce the difference between the initial state and the goal state for each of the sub problem -requires you to identify "ends" that you want and then figure out the "means" you will use to reach those ends -Researchers emphasize that this heuristic is one of the most effective and flexible problem-solving strategies

results of schema studies

-if info describes minor event and time is limited, people tend to remember information accurately when consistent with a schema -if information describes minor event and time is limited, people do not remember information that is inconsistent with schema -people seldom create a completely false memory for a lengthy event that did not occur -when information describes a major event that is inconsistent with standard schema, people are likely to remember the event

stereotype threat

-if you belong to a group that is hampered by a negative stereotype- and you think about your membership in that group- your performance may suffer -struggling with a popular stereotype may cause additional anxiety that may lead to less effective problem solving

To avoid the social desirability bias and assess participants' true stereotypes, which memory task might be more useful? implicit or explicit? Why?

-implicit

Differentiate between insight and non-insight problems.

-insight- "light bulb over head" -nonsight- gradual

semantic priming and lexical decision tasks

-lexical decision task: participants must judge as quickly as they can whether or not a string of letters is a word or not --doctor: yes --xxfere: not -priming makes this faster --show the word nurse before -mediated priming --"stripes" will prime lion

life script

-list of events that a person believes would be most important throughout his or her lifetime -people within a culture share similar life scripts -theme 3- students list far more positive events than negative

subordinate-level categories

-lower level or more specific categories -"desk chair", "collie", "Phillips screwdriver"

Greeno (1974)

-means-ends heuristic -hobbit and dwarf problem -organizing a sequence of moves to solve a subproblem -sometimes the solution requires temporarily increasing the distance to the goal

Bartlett (1932)

-memory integration -memory as the complex interaction between the participants' prior knowledge and the material presented; individual's unique interests and personal background often shape the contents of memory -"The War of the Ghosts" study- Native American story read and recalled by British students 15 minutes later -participants tended to omit material that did not make sense from the viewpoint of British students (ghost attacking someone, not feel the wound) -tended to make versions similar to British fairy tales -asked to recall story after several days -participants borrowed more heavily from their previous knowledge and included less information from the original story

What are some advantages the network models have over the exemplar and/or prototype approach?

-network- flexibility, can explain more phenomena, simply about how networks are connected together and that's how u make inferences -corporates brain's structure/neurons, physiologically -prototype works well when there are a lot of exemplars, have to use a lot of assumptions

Explain how overactive top-down processing could occur when solving problems.

-often seen in mental set and functional fixedness; we over use our past experience (top down) and ignore new ways to solve the problem

memory integration

-our background knowledge encourages us to take in new information in a schema-consistent fashion -as a result, people may remember this schema-consistent information, even though it was not part of the original stimulus material -more likely when there is a delay of a day or two before you are asked to recall the new material -Bartlett (1932)

pragmatic view of memory (pragmatic approach)

-people pay attention to the aspect of a message that is most relevant to their current goals -Murphy and Shapiro (1994)- speculated people likely to pay attention to sentence if words are part of a criticism or insult (these exact words DO matter if someone is insulting you) -actually store verbatim memory here, most of the time use mean based memory, every once in awhile situations occur where verbatim memory is needed

Murphy and Shapiro (1994)

-pragmatic approach -read letters from "Samantha" to cousin or boyfriend -bland vs sarcastic comments -recognition test on original, paraphrased, or irrelevant sentences -correct recognition was higher for sentences from the sarcastic condition than for sentences in bland condition -more false alarms for paraphrases of bland sentences than sarcastic sentences -more accurate verbatim memory for sarcastic version than for bland version

symbols

-problem solvers sometimes make mistakes when translating to symbols --reverse the role of two variables -may oversimplify sentence, misrepresent information -misremembering problems

network approach

-prototype and exemplar approach both emphasize whether an item belongs to a category -network approaches are more concerned about the interconnections among related items

characteristics of prototypes

-prototypes are supplied as examples of a category -prototypes are judged more quickly than nonprototypes after semantic priming -prototypes share attributes in a family resemblance category

semantic memory

-refers to our organized knowledge about the world - includes encyclopedic knowledge, conceptual knowledge - allows us to: code objects, make inferences, decide which objects are similar -does not specify how we acquired that information

Thinking

-requires you to go beyond the information you were given, so that you can reach a goal; that goal may be a solution, a belief, or a decision theme 1- active process

Shih and coauthors (1999)

-research with Asian American Females -compared the effects of 2 competing stereotype using 3 groups of Asian American Women -asians good at math, women bad at math 1 .ethnicity-emphasis condition- one group of participants were asked to indicate their ethnicity and then answer several questions about their ethnicity -then they took challenging math test -54% of questions answered correctly 2. control-group condition: a second group of participants did not answer any questions beforehand -simply took test -answered 49% correctly 3. gender emphasis condition: third group were asked to indicate their gender and answer several questions about their gender identity -took test -answered 43% correctly

Brewer and Treyens (1981)

-schemas -asked subjects to wait in a room, researcher said it was their office, left for 35 seconds -when came back, moved subject and asked them to remember things from room -subjects more likely to remember objects that went with office schema (wall, desk, chair) and not other things (wine bottle, picnic basket) -some people "remembered" schema consistent items that were not in room (books)

Davidson (1994)

-schemas -people are more likely to recall schema-inconsistent material when that material is especially vivid and surprising -asked subjects to read stories that described well known schemas like "going to the movies" -more likely to remember things such as kid running through movie instead of usher tearing movie ticket in half

initial state

-situation at the beginning of the problem -recognizing that a problem is in front of you

non insight problem

-solving problem gradually by using your memory, reasoning skills, and a routine set of strategies -benefits from top down processing

goal state

-solving/fixing the problem

How can gender stereotypes influence one's implicit memory? Think about other stereotypes and their influence on implicit memory as well

-stereotypes can affect our memory

prototype

-the best, most typical example of a category -can be an abstract, idealized example. may not exist

insight problem

-the problem initially seems impossible to solve, but then an alternative approach suddenly bursts into your consciousness -seems impossible until sudden solution appears -large working-memory capacity= solve insight problems faster -top-down processing may prevent you from solving insight problem -gestalt- parts of a problem may initially seem unrelated to one another, but a sudden flash of insight could make the parts instantly fit together into a solution -behaviorists- rejected insight

obstacles

-the restrictions that make it difficult to roceed from the initial state to the goal state

structural features

-the underlying core that they must understand in order to solve the problem correctly -common across problems -people tend to only see surface features of a problem

methods of representing the problem

-the way you translate the elements of the problem into different forms -symbols -matrixes -diagrams

Current status of schemas and memory abstraction

-two approaches, constructive and pragmatic, quite compatible -sometimes we integrate information into large schemas (constructive) -other times we know that specific words matter and pay close attention to precise wording

Nosek, Banaji, Greenwald (2002)

-using Implicit Association Test to assess gender stereotypes -told to respond quickly -stereotype-consistent pairings (male/math vs female/arts) -stereotype-inconsistent pairings (female/math vs male/arts) -students responded significantly faster to stereotype-consistent pairings -gender stereotypes are not innocent cognitive tendencies, they have the power to influence people's self image and sense of academic competence

situated cognition approach

-we make use of information in the immediate environment or situation -knowledge depends on the context that surrounds us

spreading activation

-when you hear the name of a concept, the node representing that concept is activated -activation expands or spreads from that node to other connected nodes

hill climbing heuristic

-when you reach a choice point, you consistently choose the alternative that seems to lead most directly toward your goal -useful when only the immediate next step can be seen -less direct alternative may have greater long-term benefits -encourages short-term goals, rather than long-term solutions -problem is that people must consistently choose the alternative that appears to lead most directly toward the goal, but in doing so they may fail to choose an indirect alternative which may have greater long-term benefits -does not guarantee that you'll end up on top of the hill

growth mindset

-you believe that you can cultivate your intelligence and other skills -you challenge yourself to perform better

fixed mindset

-you believe that you possess a certain amount of intelligence and other skills, and no amount of effort can help you perform better -you give up on trying to discover new ways to improve your abilities

mental set

-you keep trying the same solution you used in previous problems, even though you could solve the problem by using a different, easier method -water bucket example -overactive top-down processing

Suppose that a young child has just asked you whether a potato is a vegetable; you quickly answer "yes." Then the child asks whether eggplant is a vegetable, and you answer "yes" more slowly. You have just demonstrated a. the priming effect. b. the typicality effect. c. the feature-comparison effect. d. parallel distributed processing.

B

According to our discussion of "General Knowledge," an important point is that this knowledge a. allows us to go beyond the information that is specifically contained in the stimulus. b. is almost always implicit, rather than explicit. c. is usually available only to people with expertise in the specified area. d. is primarily constructed by combining information in our working memory.

d

Provide an example of a subordinate-level category and superordinate category for each basic- level word: guitar, tree, car

guitar -subordinate- acoustic guitar -superordinate- instrument tree -subordinate- apple tree -superordinate- plant car -subordinate- rari -superordinate- vehicle

background on schemas

identifying the script in advance -remember more information when script-identifier given before event compared to after

false alarm

occurs when people "remember" an item that was not originally presented -Brasford and Franks found that people were more likely to make these when a complex sentence was consistent with the original schema

What do the network models propose?

propose a network style organization of concepts in memory with numerous interconnections

What are some important characteristics of prototypes? How are prototypes affected by semantic priming?

prototypes judged more quickly after semantic priming

Problem solving

used when you want to reach a certain goal, but the solution is not immediately obvious and obstacles block your path -Initial state -Goal state -Obstacles Theme 1: active, not passive, Theme 4: interrelated processes

Differentiate between abstraction and verbatim memory. When might it be important to use each?

verbatim- memorizing words, useful for actors abstraction- taking the general context from a sentence, useful for studying?