thinking, reasoning and decision making Flashcards
Distinguish between inductive and deductive reasoning
Inductive reasoning- making judgments, hypothesis testing, rule inductions, predictions
Deductive reasoning- solving logical problems that have right answers, reasoning by mental models rather than abstract and general operations.
Distinguish between problem solving, decision making and creative thinking
Problem-solving- working out how to get from A to B, numerous solutions
Judgements and decision making- choosing among options
Creative thinking- daydreaming, imagining
What is the general dual process theory/system of reasoning, problem solving and decision making?
System 1- intuitive, automatic, largely unconscious, quick and approximate- adaptive and mostly effective but only approx, some biases and may lead to error if applied to inappropriate domain
System 2- slow, sequential, effortful but rational logical reasoning system- allocates attention to effortful mental activities that demand it, constrained by limited working memory capacity and other basic limitations of cognitive machinery.
Because system 2 (logical) is so effortful, it can get depleted. If people are cognitively busy, system 1 has more influence on behaviour and people are more likely to follow temptations.
Why may we make the wrong decision during reasoning?
difficulty attending to relevant information when there is other salient info available, limited working memory capacity. Properties of retrieval from LT memory, difficulties in shifting mental ‘set’ or perspective
What is the availability heuristic?
when we judge as more probable/frequent events of which more examples are readily ‘available’ because it is generally easier to retrieve from memory examples of events or objects that are more frequent
What is the illusory correlation?
A pattern people believe they perceive- like one thing causing another- correlations/covariations are seen between events whilst they are only related by conincidence or not at all
How can we detect if a relationship is real or illusory?
we need to set up a contingency table- probabilities of A,B,C and D
What is the neglect of base rate and how can it lead to representativeness bias?
We tend to ignore an important source of info- our knowledge of base rates (overall frequency of particular classes of event). If someone/thing has features representative of being an A, we tend to think that they have the standard properties of X. biases lead us to attribute prototypical properties even when we have other info
How are sequential events linked to representativeness?
We have difficulty ignoring the representativeness (available to our memory) of the sequence and focusing on what we know about the probabilities of individual events e.g. HHHHHHHHHH is just as likely to occur as THHTHTHHTTH
What is Wason’s 246 experiment and how does it relate to conservatism and confirmation bias in inductive reasoning?
Ppts told a sequence is generated by a rule that we have to try and guess by trying out other sequences. Ppt then declares further sequence and declare their reasoning for this e.g. even numbers ascending by 2.
Ppts did not usually get the rule (any 3 numbers ascending) as they tended to offer over specific hypotheses- people are reluctant to abandon their hypotheses (conservative) and tend to seek confirmatory rather than disconfirmatory evidence- same in science- researchers want to prove their theory rather than disproving it.
What is ‘the problem space’?
If the problem has a solution, there is at least one path through the state space between the start and goal states. Problem solver must mover themselves through intermediate states on a path approaching the goal etc without knowing in advance what the optimal path is
What is a means end analysis?
pick a general means for reaching the goal- if that means is not yet available, create the sub goal of achieving that means until one generates a sub goal that can be satisfied. Requires maintenance of a ‘goal stack’ in WM e.g. intermediate steps.
What are design limitations intrinsic to the cognitive machinery?
Properties of memory retrieval, limited working memory, difficulty in attending to relevant info, difficulty in shifting cognitive set and effortfulness of sequential reasoning: lead to reliance on heuristics (approx rules of thumb) and result in intrinsic biases when we apply these heuristics
What is Wason’s ‘IF, THEN’ 4 card problem?
Conditional propositions- ‘all cards have a letter on one side and a number on the other, which two cards have to be turned over to check if following rule is true? If a card has a vowel on one side then it has an odd number on the other side? Cards are A, B, 1 and 2 and most people choose A and 2.
How does Wason’s 4 card problem relate to mental models?
Given a set of premises, we imagine one or more possible concrete worlds in which the premises are true- mental models. We then generate a conclusion or determine whether a conclusion offered is valid by examining mental models. Errors can arise though if we fail to generate all the possible mental models for the premises.
If we construct only the first mental model and find it matches the conclusion we think the inference is valid but it isn’t because the second model also describes a state of affairs consistent with the premises in which the conclusion is false.
We can imagine concrete scenarios to assist reasoning but our ability to do this is limited by the representational capacity of working memory and we may fail to consider all the possible scenarios if more available instances are easier to access.
