Cognition8-10% of AP Exam

This includes: thinking(cognitive processes), problem solving, creativity, language, memory

Information drawn from a variety of sources. No one textbook had all of the information suggested by College

Board Acorn book. Thus, I used a number of sources as well as research on specific topics.

References: Weiten, Wayne, Psychology: Themes and Variations, 7th ed.

Myers, David, Myers’ Psychology for AP*, Ciccarelli, Saundra K. and White, J. Nolan, AP* Edition Psychology

From Sherlock Holmes from A Study in Scarlett by Arthur Conan Doyle

Mr. Watson-Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said Stamford, introducing us.

“How are you?” he said, cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”

“How on earth did you know that?” I asked, in astonishment.

When asked, Holmes explained his reasoning as follows:

I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thought ran so swiftly through my mind that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of the intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, “Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then.

He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan. The whole train of thought did not occupy a second.

Admittedly, even the fictional Sherlock Holmes has remarkable powers of deductive reasoning, even ordinary people display the power to sort through a vast array of perceptual inputs and deduce what they see in the real world.

Reference: Weiten, Wayne, Psychology: Themes and Variations, 7th ed.

A bit of background

The earliest studies by E. B. Titchener (Wundt’s student) relied on introspection to unlock to secrets of the mind.

By the beginning of the 20th century, psychologist actively discouraged the study of mental processes due to behaviorism as the predominate view.

John B. Watson

John B. Watson

Topic was ignored for many years due to John B. Watson’s claim that thinking was sub-vocal speech (1925)

Not worthy of study

Do Not Try This at Home!

Scott Smith provides evidence against this claim by having himself paralyzed by curare

What happened?

By, the 1950s, there was a “cognitive revolution” in which psychologist such as Herbert Simon argue that behaviorist exclusive focus on overt responses was doomed to yield an incomplete understanding of human functioning.

What is cognition (cognitive process)?

Cognition- all mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering and communicating

Mental manipulations

Thinking may be referred to as cognition

What do cognitive psychologist study?

Logical and illogical ways we create concepts, solve problems, make decisions and form judgment

Thinking- mental processing

Directed thought

Problem solving

Understanding

Decision making

Non-directed thought

Comprised of images

Mental imagery

Daydreaming

Effortful vs. Automatic Processing

Effortful Processing- encoding that requires attention and conscious effort

Rehearsal can boost effortful processing

Often produces durable and accessible memories

AP content learning is effortful

Automatic Processing- unconscious encoding of incidental information such as space, time and frequency and of well-learned information, such as word meanings

What you ate for dinner yesterday is automatic processing

Try this

.citamotua emoceb nac gnissecorp luftroffE

With practice (rehearsal), this task can become more automatic rather than effortful.

Deep vs. Shallow Processing

Shallow processing

maintenance rehearsal

Involves simple repetition of the presented materials

Not effective encoding

Examples-

Draw a penny (may not “work” anymore due to so many new pennies.

What color is the top stripe of the American Flag?

The bottom stripe?

How many of each color?

In what hand does the Statue of Liberty hold her torch?

The White House is on the back of a $20. What is on the back of a $10? A $5? A $1?

Answers

Examples-

Draw a penny (may not “work” anymore due to so many new pennies.

What color is the top stripe of the American Flag?

The bottom stripe?

How many of each color?

In what hand does the Statue of Liberty hold her torch?

The White House is on the back of a $20. What is on the back of a $10? A $5? A $1?

There are many “new” pennies now and this activity is difficult to “prove.”

RED

RED

7 red and 6 white

RIGHT

$10 Treasury Dept., $5 Lincoln Memorial, $1 The word ONE

Just FYI

Deep vs. shallow processing

Deep processing

Elaborative rehearsal

Coding by forming associations between new information and information already stored

Makes information meaningful

Focus vs. Divided Attention

Focus or selective attention-

The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus

An example is the “cocktail party effect”

Focus vs. Divided Attention

Divided attention- attempt to focus attention on more than one task, sensory input or bit of information

Not exactly “multitasking”

To think about the countless things we must each day, we need to

simplify. How?

Concepts- Ideas that represent a class or category of objects, events or activities

Recall:

Piaget Scheme Assimilation Accommodatio

n

Conceptual Categories

A list of properties/features, which are not necessary or sufficient, but which characterize the prototype, which is the idealization of the category

An organization in terms of similarity to an idealized member

Reference: Cognitive Linguistics, Croft & Cruse

Concept Categories Formal Concepts

Concepts that are defined by specific rules or features

Example: What is a square?

Two-dimensional figure with four equal sides and four angles adding up to 360 degrees

Other examples: acid, limestone, rectangles, double-blind experiment, conditioned stimulus

Natural Concepts

Concepts people form as a result of their experience in the real world

Example: What is a vehicle? Car, boat, raft,, truck, bobsled

Natural concepts a a bot more “fuzzy.” Is a whale a fish or a mammal?

Hierarchical Organization of

Conceptual Categories Superordinate Level-the most general

form of concept (vehicle, fruit, animal, utensil)

Basic Level Categories-an example of a type of concept around which other similar concepts are organized (dog, car, pear, knife, table)

Subordinate Level- the most specific category of a concept such as a very specific example (German Shepard, Honda, Bradford pear, steak, card table)

Not all thinking is in the form of concepts

Mental Imagery-representations that stand for objects or events and have a picture-like quality

Try this: Tell me as fast as you can how many windows are in the place you live? Shout it out when you have determined a number.

.

Try This:

Tell me as fast as you can how many windows are in the place you live? Shout it out!

Usually you will find that the first people to shout out an answer have fewer windows in their homes than those who take longer.

You might notice that people will look up, as if looking at an image that only they can see.

If asked, they will say that to determine the number of windows was determined by a “walk through” of their home.

Reference: Ciccarelli, Saundra and White, J. Nolan, AP Edition Psychology, 2nd Ed.

Prototypes

An example of a concept that closely matches the defining characteristics of a concept

Apple

Problem Solving

Test Your Wits?

Test Your Wits: Your have two minutes to read each question, decide on your answer quickly and

record your answers in lower case letters.

1. What goes up a chimney down, but won’t go down a chimney up?

2. What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries?

3. What was the highest mountain in the world before Mt. Everest was discovered?

4. What grows down when it grows up?

5. A farmer had 4 haystacks in one field and twice as many in each of his other 2 fields. If he put the stacks from all 3 fields together, how many haystacks would he have?

6. First discovered in ancient times, what invention allowed people to see through solid walls?

7. A man carefully pointed his car due east and then drove for 2 miles. He was then 2 miles west of where he started. Why?

8. What can you put in a stainless steel box that will make it light?

9. What common word is pronounced incorrectly by a majority of Yale and Harvard graduates?

10. What goes around the world but stays in the corner?

Test Your Wits: We will work in groups of 3 or four for an additional two minutes. Write your

group answers in CAPITAL letters.

1. What goes up a chimney down, but won’t go down a chimney up?

2. What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries?

3. What was the highest mountain in the world before Mt. Everest was discovered?

4. What grows down when it grows up?

5. A farmer had 4 haystacks in one field and twice as many in each of his other 2 fields. If he put the stacks from all 3 fields together, how many haystacks would he have?

6. First discovered in ancient times, what invention allowed people to see through solid walls?

7. A man carefully pointed his car due east and then drove for 2 miles. He was then 2 miles west of where he started. Why?

8. What can you put in a stainless steel box that will make it light?

9. What common word is pronounced incorrectly by a majority of Yale and Harvard graduates?

10. What goes around the world but stays in the corner?

Did you work better with a partner or by yourself?

1. umbrella

2. towel/mop/sponge

3. Mt. Everest

4. duck/goose

5. One

6. Windows

7. Drive in Reverse

8. A flashlight or hole

9. “incorrectly”

10. a postage stamp

Problem Solving

Definition – the goal directed process initiated in the presence of some obstacles and the absence of an evident solution

Steps in Problem Solving

Preparation

Define the problem Gather information Consider solutions Assess how the problem is

structured

Production

Random search (Trial and Error Method)

Algorithms (any method that guarantees a solution; step-by-step procedure)

Heuristics (mental shortcuts: requires some knowledge and experience to draw upon; “rule of thumb”)

Incubation

Optional stage of “sleeping on it.”

Evaluation

Did the solution satisfy the demands of the problem?

Insight

A sudden change in perception that results in a solution to a problem

Wolfgang Kohler

Sultan

Problems or Hindrances

Confirmation Bias

Mental Set

fixation Functional Fixedness

Misuse of heuristics –

availability and representativeness Overconfidence

Belief perseverance

Confirmation Bias

A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

Public Park FRQ

Mental Set/ fixation

Examples Definition-

A tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past

Fixation- the inability to see the problem from a new perspective, by employing a different mental set

Functional Fixedness

Definition

The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; as impediment to problem solving

Examples

Heuristics (a strategy for problem solving)

Availability heuristics- based on the estimated probability of an event based on the ease in which relevant instances that come to mind (this is based on YOUR experience)

Examples

Representative heuristics- based on the estimated probability of an event on how similar it is to the prototype of that event (this is based on how similar it is to a TYPICAL experience)

Examples

Overconfidence

Examples Definition-

The tendency to be more confident than correct-to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments

Belief Perseverance

Definition-

Clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

Examples

FRQ 2013 John and editorial

Improving Skills

Avoid pitfalls (recall hindrances)

Adapt strategies to new situations

Seek out experts

Practice!!!

The Vegas Victim(not OJ, Just an image)

Creative Thinking

Michael WertheimerSet and Information Processing

From Favorite Activities for the Teaching of Psychology, Benjamin, L. (ed.) #34

Instruct student to get out a piece of paper and a writing instrument.

Have students listen to the narrative and take notes as appropriate.

At the conclusion of the reading, students will take a brief “quiz” with 5 questions.

Listen to this Assume that you are the engineer of a

passenger train. At the first station, 20 passengers get on. At the next station, 5 passengers get off and 15 get on. At the next station, 10 passengers get off and 12 get on. At the next station, 7 get off and 10 get on. At the next station, 5 passengers get off and 5 get on. At the final station, 8 passengers get off and 3 get on.

Ask students to number their papers

from 1-5. 1. How old is the engineer of the train?

2. How many stations were there?

3. How many passengers are left on the train?

4. How many people have gotten off the train since the first station?

5. . How many passengers have gotten on the train anywhere along its route?

How did you do?

5. 65

4. 35

3. 30

2. 6

1. ???

Creative Thinking

Defined as a final outcome, product or solutions which is both novel (original) and useful.

Examples include paintings, poetry, problem solving, scientific discovery, etc.

Creative Thinking

In one minute, think of as many uses as you can for a brick.

Creative Thinking

In one minute, think of as many uses as you can for a fork.

Creative Thinking

In one minute, think of as many uses as you can for a straw.

Measuring Creativity

To measure, must compare people of similar age, education and profession

Measuring Creativity

Divergent Production- the purpose is to come up with as many answers or solutions as possible to a particular problem (sometimes in a specific amount of time)

Example

Divergent Production

In a one minute period, how many pictures of real objects can you make using a circle?

Divergent Production

Many words begin with the letter L and end with the letter N. In one minute, list as many words as possible that have the form

L________N

(You may have as many L s and N s as you choose.)

L -----------N

Convergent Production

Convergent Production- person uses information given to arrive at one single answer

Example:

Problem solving activities

Measuring Creativity

Remote Associates Test (RAT) developed by Mednick and Mednick measures one’s creativity by his/her ability to see relationships between ideas which are remote from each other

Example: See examples

RAT

For each set of words, try to think of a fourth word that is related to all three words.

For example: paint doll cat

The answer is house. House paint, dollhouse and house cat.

Get it?

RAT Man hot sure

Stick hair ball

Blue cake cottage

Man wheel high

Motion poke down

Wood liquor luck

House village golf

Plan show walker

RAT answers

Man hot sure

Stick hair ball

Blue cake cottage

Man wheel high

Motion poke down

Wood liquor luck

House village golf

Plan show walker

Fire

Pin

Cheese

Chair

Slow

Hard

Green

Floor

To enhance creativity

Brainstorm

Analogies

Avoid evaluation

Cultural blocks

Toy Box

Ideas for Problem Solving Practice

Student “Problem Solving Worksheet” provided

On to Intelligence/Testing