Thinking and Deciding (0HV60) lecture notes

0HV60 – Thinking and deciding lecture notes

Contents
Lecture 1 – Cognition and technology...................................................................................................4
Introduction to the course.................................................................................................................4
Introduction to Cognitive Psychology (chapter 1 - Cognition, Matlin)...............................................4
Lecture 2 – Perception: recognizing visual and auditory stimuli (chapter 2,3 - Cognition, Matlin)........6
Lecture 3 – Attention and consciousness (Chapter 3 – Cognition, Matlin)............................................8
Attention and consciousness.............................................................................................................8
Selective attention.............................................................................................................................8
Eye movements.................................................................................................................................9
Neuroscience research on attention..................................................................................................9
Attentional-resource theories (divided attention).............................................................................9
Lecture 4 – Working memory (chapter 4) and long-term memory (chapter 5 – Cognition, Matlin)....10
Traditional model of memory (bit of pre-knowledge).....................................................................10
Working memory.............................................................................................................................10
Long-term memory: encoding and retrieval....................................................................................11
Encoding information..................................................................................................................12
Information retrieval...................................................................................................................12
Lecture 5 – Rationality, judgment & decision-making (Part 1 – Thinking fast and slow, Kahneman). .14
Introduction.....................................................................................................................................14
Decision-making..............................................................................................................................14
Good decision-making.....................................................................................................................15
Lecture 6 – Heuristics and biases (Chapter 10-16 – Thinking fast and slow part 2, Kahneman)..........17
The law of small numbers (Chapter 10, Kahneman)........................................................................17
Anchoring and adjustment (Chapter 11, Kahneman).......................................................................18
Availability (Chapter 12 & 13, Kahneman).......................................................................................18
Representativeness (chapter 14-16, Kahneman).............................................................................19
Causes of trump stats (chapter 16)..................................................................................................19
Lecture 7 - Memory strategies and mental imagery (Chapter 6-7 – Cognition, Matlin)......................20
Memory strategies (chapter 6)........................................................................................................20
Rehearsal and practice:................................................................................................................20
Mnemonics: tricks to remember more........................................................................................20
Prospective memory....................................................................................................................20
Metacognition.............................................................................................................................21
Mental imagery (chapter 7).............................................................................................................21

, Auditory imagery.........................................................................................................................22
Cognitive maps............................................................................................................................22
Lecture 8 – Regression towards the mean and overconfidence (Chapter 17-18 + 19-22 + 24 –
Thinking fast and slow, Kahneman).....................................................................................................23
Regression towards the mean (Part 2: chapter 17-18)....................................................................23
Taming intuitive predictions (chapter 18)....................................................................................23
Overconfidence (Part 3: 19-22 + 24)................................................................................................24
Illusions of understanding (chapter 19).......................................................................................24
Illusions of validity (chapter 20)...................................................................................................24
Intuitions versus formulas (chapter 21).......................................................................................24
Expert intuition (chapter 22)........................................................................................................25
Overconfidence (chapter 24).......................................................................................................25
Lecture 9 – Knowledge representation (Chapter 8 – Cognition, Matlin)..............................................26
Category membership models.........................................................................................................26
Relational models............................................................................................................................27
Network models..........................................................................................................................27
Parallel distributed models..........................................................................................................28
Schemas...........................................................................................................................................29
Lecture 10 – Comprehending and producing language (chapter 9 & 10 – Cognition, Matlin).............30
Understanding language (chapter 9)...............................................................................................30
Language......................................................................................................................................30
Sentence comprehension............................................................................................................31
Reading processes.......................................................................................................................32
Producing language (chapter 10).....................................................................................................32
Writing.........................................................................................................................................33
Bilingualism..................................................................................................................................33
Lecture 11 – Prospect theory and framing (Chapter 25, 26, 29-31, 34 – Thinking fast and slow,
Kahneman)..........................................................................................................................................34
Prospect theory: decision-making under risk and uncertainty (chapter 25, 26, 29)........................34
Gambling paradigm (chapter 25).................................................................................................34
Prospect theory (chapter 29).......................................................................................................35
Perceptions of probabilities (chapter 30, 31)...................................................................................36
Narrow and broad framing (chapter 31)......................................................................................36
Prospect theory and framing (chapter 34).......................................................................................36
Lecture 12 – Problem solving (chapter 11) and deductive reasoning (chapter 12 – Cognition, Matlin)
.............................................................................................................................................................36

, Problem solving (chapter 11)...........................................................................................................36
Deductive reasoning (chapter 12)....................................................................................................39
Lecture 13 – Choices, description invariance and defaults/ nudges (chapter 27, 28, 32, 34 – Thinking
fast and slow, Kahneman)....................................................................................................................40
Description invariance.....................................................................................................................40
Defaults (chapter 34).......................................................................................................................42
Lecture 14 – Procedure invariance (chapter 33) and Future events (chapter 33-35 – Thinking fast and
slow, Kahneman).................................................................................................................................43
Procedure invariance.......................................................................................................................43
Preference reversals (violations of procedure invariance)...........................................................43
Compatibility................................................................................................................................44
Evaluability...................................................................................................................................44
Future events...................................................................................................................................45
Temporal aspects of decision making: time discounting (not in the books)................................45
Temporal and experiential decisions...........................................................................................45
Lecture 15 – Decision strategies and recommender systems..............................................................47
Decisions and preference elicitation................................................................................................47
Rational choice theory and MAUT...............................................................................................47
Decision tasks..............................................................................................................................47
Context effects: adding options and justifications.......................................................................49
Cognitive processes.....................................................................................................................49
How are strategies used in real-life applications?.......................................................................50
Decision aids: a simple energy recommender system using MAUT (by Martijn himself).............50
Lab on connectionism..........................................................................................................................51

,Lecture 1 – Cognition and technology
Introduction to the course
Course logistics

- Topics:
o Cognitive psychology
o Decision making
o Technology
- Organization
o Lectures (4 hours a week)
 Canvas conferences
 Some additional videos will be provided on Canvas
o Workshops/ debates on Tuesday
 Every other week a lab takes place
 The other weeks a debate takes place. The 4 debates (on Tuesdays) count
for 15% of the total mark
 Also include PRV reflection and PRV Writing
 Submit discussion point on the Saturday before (individual)
 Submit summary the Monday after (with the group)
 Summaries will be reviewed for PRV Reflection
o Weekly quizzes
 During lectures, count for 15% as well
 7 MC quizzes
 Always at 9.45 on Tuesdays
 6 best ones count
o Final exam
 50% online MC exam
 Material
o Cognition (9th edition) by Matlin and Farmer, accounting for
the cognition part of the course
 Note: 8th edition is fine as well
o Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman, accounting for
the decision making part of the course
 20% final assignment at last lecture week
 Also includes PRV Writing
 Minimum mark = 5.0

Applications

- Understanding cognition and decision making enables:
o Making systems that do not require extensive learning, but support the cognitive
system as it is
o Create recommendation systems
o Create systems to overcome handicaps or produce new skill abilities



Introduction to Cognitive Psychology (chapter 1 - Cognition, Matlin)
Cognition: mental activity, containing many processes such as

, - Perception
- Attention
- Memory
- Knowledge
- Language
- Reasoning
- Problem solving
- Decision-making

These different processes are discussed in the different chapters of Cognition and lectures of this
course.

Cognitive psychology: cognitive approach of research

- Different from behaviorism and psychodynamics

History of cognitive psychology:

- Plato: dualist
o Mind and brain are not the same
o Advocated rationalism: gaining knowledge through good thinking
o Nativism: nature of the mind to gain knowledge and remember
- Aristotle: empiricism
o Rejected dualism
o Advocated empiricism (observations and researched)
o Nurture view: the mind ‘grows’ into learning (not by nature)
- Wilhelm Wundt: structuralism
o Only physiological psychology could be studied
o Using introspection
o Higher order processes  not possible to be studied scientifically
- Ebbinghaus:
o Thought you could study higher order processes
o Studied his own mind
- Calkins
o Discovered recency effect
o Thought mind should be researched in real life instead of in controlled atmospheres
- William James: functionalism
o Agreed with Calkins on the real life approach
o Aimed to understand functional relationships
o Rejected introspection
- Behaviorism (end 19th century, in USA)
o Watson: father of behaviorism
o Skinner: radical behaviorism
 Operant conditioning
o Influenced by functionalism
o Studying association between stimulus and responses
o Influenced by Darwin’s view
o Rejecting introspection
o Explains learning of simple behaviors

, - Gestalt psychology (end 19th century, in Europe)
o Whole is not the same as the sum of parts
o Top-down processing is thought to play a big role
- Cognitive psychology (after WWII)
o Lead to by both Gestalt theory and behaviorism, and computer science
o Linguistics (Chomsky) and memory research shows learning is more than
behaviorism
o Developmental psychology emerged: learning by children (Piaget)

Current issues of cognitive psychology:

- Artificial Intelligence
o Pure AI/ Strong AI: self-learning, non-humanlike computations
o Weak AI: computer simulation/ modelling, acts like human beings
- Computer metaphor
o Human mind can be seen as a processor
o Information-processing approach
 Computational processing
 Series of stages of processing
o Information processing model (Atkinson and Shiffrin)
 Helped to understand cognition, but does not explain everything
o Connectionist approach: parallel distributed processing approach
 Connectionism
 Neural networks
 Based on parallel processing  lead to AI and Deep Learning
o Cognitive neuroscience
 Different techniques are applied to measure the brain
 Can be invasive or non-invasive
 Different temporal and spatial resolutions for each method, and
different costs  trade-offs

Lecture 2 – Perception: recognizing visual and auditory
stimuli (chapter 2,3 - Cognition, Matlin)
Note: in this course (as opposed to the 0HV20 course) perception is mainly treated as input for our
system considering cognition

Recognition is very good: even possible if stimuli is only presented partly or very short. This is
enabled by iconic memory.

Visual perception:

- Brain regions that enable recognition:
o Primary visual cortex (for objects)
o Inferior temporal cortex (for faces)
- Influences of visual perception:
o Gestalt psychology
o Top-down vs bottom-up processing
- Theories of visual object recognition
o Template-matching theory

,  View: stimulus is compared to the template until a match is found
 Problems: inflexible, only works for known, isolated objects
o Feature-analysis theory
 View: stimulus is recognized based on its distinctive features; objects are
decomposed into features which can be detected
 Supported by Gibson’s research
 Problems: doesn’t account for the relationship between objects, and doesn’t
explain recognition of complex objects
o Recognition-by-components theory
 View: stimulus is recognized based on its decomposed 3D shapes
 Geons: simple 3D shapes]
 Evaluated from feature-analysis theory
 Problems: similar to feature-analysis
o Top-down processing
 View: top-down processing enables recognition when stimuli are incomplete
or ambiguous, or only presented very briefly
 Crucial for perception
 Explains:
 Inattentional blindness
 Change blindness

Special cases of perception:

- Face perception
o Different from object perception
o More holistic/ Gestalt based  recognized as a whole
o Neuroscience evidence:
 Prosopagnosia: face blindness  people cannot recognize faces
 Visual agnosia: object blind  cannot recognize any object, except faces
 These agnosia types are separate, suggesting the separate recognition of
faces and objects
o Face perception is merely accurate for familiar faces, quite inaccurate for unfamiliar
faces
- Speech perception
o Well developed
o Speech consists of phonemes
 Phoneme boundaries overlap within words
 Word boundaries overlap
o Top-down processing and context is crucial for speech recognition
 Speech segmentation: the boundary of words can be recognized due to
context
 Phonemic restoration: if a phoneme misses, the correct phoneme is filled in
when in context
o Visual cues dominate over the auditory system
 McGurk effect
o Speech perception requires top-down and bottom-up processes
o Difficult to establish whether speech perception is as separate as face perception