Cognition and Language

Question 1

Attention

Answer 1

the tendency to respond and remember some stimuli more than others

Question 2

attentive process

Answer 2

one that requires searching through the items in series

Question 3

bottom-up process

Answer 3

the peripheral stimuli control it. It is when something sudden and unexpected grabs your attention. we allow the stimulus itself to shape our perception, without any preconceived ideas

Question 4

change blindness

Answer 4

it is the failure to detect changes in parts of the scene

Question 5

choice blindness

Answer 5

a phenomenon as people act as if they don’t know what they had chosen

Question 6

cognition

Answer 6

thinking and using knowledge

Question 7

preattentive process

Answer 7

something that stands out immediately

Question 8

priming

Answer 8

It helps get a concept started. Reading or hearing one word makes it easier to think or recognise a related word. Seeing something makes it easier to recognise a related object. Priming a word helps you recognise it more easily than usual if it were flashed briefly on a screen or spoken very softly

Question 9

prototype

Answer 9

familiar or typical examples. many categories are best described by prototypes

Question 10

spreading activation

Answer 10

thinking about one of the concepts shown in this figure will activate, or prime, the concepts linked to it

Question 11

Stroop effect

Answer 11

the tendency to read the words instead of saying the colour of ink
People do better on think task if they blur their vision, say the colours in a different language, or manage to regard the colour words as meaningless

Question 12

top-down process

Answer 12

when you can deliberately decide to shift your attention. We use our background knowledge and expectations to interpret what we see.

Question 13

mental imagery

Answer 13

Mental images resemble vision in certain respects. The time required to answer questions about a rotating object depends on how far the object would actually rotate between one position and another.

Question 14

attention bottleneck

Answer 14

attention is limited and items compete for it

Question 15

distraction

Answer 15

Directing attention to one item means subtracting it from another. For example, talking on a cell phone distracts from attention to driving.

Question 16

algorithm

Answer 16

an explicit procedure for calculating an answer or testing every hypothesis

Question 17

availability heuristic

Answer 17

the tendency to assume if we easily think of examples of a category, then that category must be common. However, this heuristic leads us astray when uncommon events are highly memorable, and incorrectly attribute predictive values to things like hunches or dreams

Question 18

base-rate information

Answer 18

how common the two categories are. To decide whether something belongs in one category or another, you should consider the base-rate information

Question 19

confirmation bias

Answer 19

accepting a hypothesis and then looking for evidence to support it instead of considering other possibilities. This is how people often make mistakes

Question 20

critical thinking

Answer 20

the careful evaluation of evidence for and against any conclusion

Question 21

far transfer

Answer 21

benefit from practicing something less similar. it is more difficult

Question 22

framing effect

Answer 22

the tendency to answer a question differently when it is framed differently

Question 23

heuristics

Answer 23

strategies for simplifying a problem and generating a satisfactory guess. They provide quick guidance when you are willing or forced to accept some possibility or error, and they work well most of the time

Question 24

maximising

Answer 24

thoroughly considering all available choices to find the best one

Question 25

near transfer

Answer 25

benefit to a new skill based on practice of a similar skill. It is a robust phenomena and easy to demonstrate

Question 26

representativeness heuristic

Answer 26

the assumption that an item resembles members of a category is probably also in that category

Question 27

satisficing

Answer 27

searching only until you find something satisfactory

Question 28

sunk cost effect

Answer 28

the willingness to do something undesirable because of money or effort already spent

Question 29

system 1

Answer 29

quick, automatic processes. E.g: recognising familiar faces and routine actions. It saves time and effort, so we rely on it whenever we can

Question 30

system 2:

Answer 30

for mathematical calculations, evaluating evidence, and anything else that requires attention. It relies heavily on working memory and if your working memory is already loaded as you are trying to remember something else, you tend to fall back onto system 1

Question 31

expertise

Answer 31

Becoming an expert requires years of practice and effort, but a given amount of practice benefits some people more than others. Experts recognize and memorise familiar and meaningful patterns more rapidly than less experienced people do.

Question 32

what are other errors people may have

Answer 32

People tend to be overconfident about their judgments on difficult questions. They tend to look for evidence that confirms their hypothesis instead of evidence that might reject it. They answer the same question differently when it is framed differently. They sometimes take unpleasant actions to avoid admitting that previous actions were a waste of time or money.