Psych 105 Midterm Questions Perfectly Answered!!

Thinking Definition - Answer-any mental activity or processing of information, including learning, remembering, perceiving, communicating, believing, and deciding What is cognitive economy? - Answer-The use of heuristics to reduce mental effort while still getting things right most of the time What are heuristics? - Answer-Mental shortcuts, drawn from inferences, to increase thinking efficiency Can fast and frugal thinking be better than exhaustive analysis? - Answer-Yes What is cognitive bias? - Answer-systematic error in thinking What is a representative heuristic? - Answer-Judging the probability of an event based on how prevalent the event has been in past experience, takes into account base rate information (how common a characteristic is in general society) What is an example of a representative heuristic? - Answer-Stereotyping What is an availability heuristic? - Answer-heuristic that involves estimating the likelihood of an occurrence based on the ease with which it comes to our mind What is hindsight bias? - Answer-the tendency to overestimate one's ability to have predicted an event once the outcome is known What is confirmation bias? - Answer-a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence What is top-down processing? - Answer-filling in gaps of missing information by using our experiences and background knowledge to create a whole pictureWhat are concepts? - Answer-knowledge and ideas about objects, actions, and characteristics that share core properties What are schemas? - Answer-concepts stored in memory about how objects, actions, and characteristics relate to each other, helps to mentally organize events that share core features like going to a restaurant Decision making Definition - Answer-the process of a making choice among a set of alternatives What does "paralysis by analysis" refer to? - Answer-when it comes to making decisions based on emotional preferences (ex. artistic choices) or complex emotionally laden decisions, too much thinking can be bad, can be overwhelmed by too much information What is framing? - Answer-The way a question is formulated can influence a person's decision What is neuroeconomics? - Answer-the study of brain mechanisms at work during economic decision making Problem solving definition - Answer-generating a cognitive strategy to accomplish a goal what are four approaches to problem solving? - Answer-1. Heuristics 2. Algorithms 3. Breaking the problem into manageable subproblems 4. Reasoning using related examples What are algorithms? - Answer-Set-by-step, learned procedure What is the salience of surface similarities, how is it an obstacle to effective problem-solving? - AnswerRefers to how attention grabbing something is, it focuses attention solely on the superficial properties of a problemWhat are mental sets? Is it a problem solving hinderance or advantage? - Answer-Being stuck in a specific problem solving strategy which results in trouble generating alternatives (ex. picking an essay topic that wasn't already suggested) What is functional fixedness? - Answer-difficulty conceptualizing that an object typically used for one purpose can be used for another Explain the computer analogy as a model of the mind, why is it inaccurate? - Answer-thinking is like running data through a computer program, the brain's algorithms are like preprogrammed abilities - inaccurate because computers can't take context into account or draw inferences, computer don't explore or interact with the world around them Language definition - Answer-system of communication that combines symbols in a. rule based way to create meaning What does it mean to say language is arbitrary? - Answer-Words and sounds bear no resemblance to their meaning What is the embodiment model of the mind? - Answer-knowledge is organized and accessed in a. manner that simulates our actual experiences What are the four features of language? - Answer-1. Phonemes 2. Morphemes 3. Syntax 4. Extralinguistic Information What are phonemes? - Answer-Categories of sound produced by the vocal apparatus, influenced by elements of the vocal tract (lips, tongue, teeth) What are morphemes? - Answer-the smallest meaningful units of language, created by stringing phonemes together - can be words or certain syllables - convey information about semantics - includes sounds that modify the meaning of words they're tacked ontoAre the suffixes -ish or -er (as in warmish or warmer) phonemes or morphemes? - Answer-Morphemes because they can change the meaning of a word What is syntax? - Answer-set of rules of a language by which sentence are constructed, includes word order, sentence structure, and morphological markers What are morphological markers, give an example - Answer-change the meaning of a word - adding an s for plural - ing for an ongoing action - ed for past tense