Cognition

· What is?

· Thinking process

· Variety of Topics

§ Attention

§ Representation

§ Problem Solving

§ Language

Attention

· What is?

· Closely related to perception

· The way you input information

· How?

· Focus on certain information and ignore others.

But,

· Somehow some information cannot be ignored.

· E.g., Stroop effect (color chart where the word red is in blue)

· Some information is processed at preattentive level

· Automatic processing

Also,

· Once you pat attention to something, it becomes difficult to pay attention

· Antinational blink (Monitoring power plant, didn’t see red light)

· E.g.,

· 1,2,3,4,2,5,6,7,8,9,10

Representation

· What does information look like in the system?

· Many suggestions

· Influential – Associative network model

· Concepts are represented at nodes

· Nodes are linked together

· Distance between nodes – strength association

· Retrieval is faster when the distance is short

· E.g., priming effect (present word that is related)

§ Is this a word or non-word? “NURSE”

§ Judgment is faster when related prime is presented

· Doctor – NURSE

· Bread – NURSE

Why?

· Spread of activation

· Once a concept is activated – activation spreads

· By the time they see NURESE, the concepts is already activated

· Support the associative network model

Is it the only way?

· We also use mental imagery

· Does it really exist

· Maybe

So,

· We have two types of representation

Problem Solving

· How do we solve problem?

· He go through strategies

· Encoding – Understand the problem

· Generating hypotheses\

· How do we solve problem?

· We go through stages

· 1. Encoding – Understand the problem

· 2. Generate

· 3. Test Hypothesis

· 4. Check Result

· 5. Form conclusion

Encoding

· You nee to understand the problem

· Difference between good and poor problem solvers

· Good – Spend more time understanding the problem

Generate hypothesis

· Strategies

§ Algorithm

§ Heuristic

§ Analogy

Algorithm

· Systematic

· E.g., consider every possible combination

· Guarantee correct solution

· But, time consuming

· Computers are good at this

Heuristic

· Quicker

· But, error prone

· “Rule of thumb”

§ If – then

Analogy

· Borrow a solution from a similar problem

· We don’t seem to be good at this

Some are…

· Very good at solving problems

· They are creative

· Why?

· They have a creative thinking style

§ Convergent – conventional thinker (1+1=2)

§ Divergent – creative thinker (can find connection when there doesn’t seem to be one)

Remote association test

· 1. Food, catcher, hot (dog)

· 2. Hearted, feet , bitter (cold)

· 3. Dark, shot, sun (glasses)

· 4. Tug, gravy, show (boat)

· 5. Arm, coal, peach (pit)

· 6. Type, ghost, story (writer)

Difficulty in Problem Solving

· Overconfidence

§ We are more confident about our own solution than other people’s solutions

§ “My guess is better than yours!”

· Functional fixedness

§ Often we can only think of conventional way

§ (Box matches and tacks problem)

· Representative ness heuristic

§ Biased by representative information

§ E.g.,

§ 300 lawyers and 3 accountants (Party)

§ I was talking to a person who was really good at math.

§ Lawyer? Accountant?

· Availability heuristic

§ Biased by what is available

§ E.g.,

§ Should I go to CMU or MSU?

§ A friend of mine told me CMU is a good school

· Framing effect

§ Wording makes a difference

· 25% fat free ice cream

· 75% fat ice cream

Language

· Most significant cognitive achievement

· Only humans possess language

· Component

§ Phoneme – basic unit of sound

§ Morpheme – basic unit of meaning

§ Syntax- rule of creating a sentence

Syntax

· (Reading in textbook)