Cognitive Psychology: study of mental processes

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Thinking is the manipulation of mental
representations How does language influence
these mental representations?
Cognitive Psychology study of mental processes
How information humans receive from their
environment is modified, made meaningful,
stored, retrieved, used and communicated to
others
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Types of Mental Representations

• Concept Schemas -
• categories of objects, events or ideas with
  common properties
• concrete or abstract

Prototype
Relate new information with previous knowledge
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Types of Mental Representations
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Types of Mental Representations
Mental Images - mental representations of visual
images
People, animals, places, things, creations - we
are able to keep a picture in memory
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Activity Who is married to whom?
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Types of Mental Representations
Developed with continued experience with an
environment and the use of kinesthesia
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Original Training
Test Apparatus
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Problem Solving what is standing between me and
what I want
Decision Making
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Reasoning - process through which people generate
and evaluate arguments and reach conclusions
Trial and Error
Algorithms formulas that will produce a correct
solution, if one exists
Logic set of statements or steps, if-then
statements
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Set old patterns of problem solving
persist functional fixedness use familiar
items in only one way
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Complete the Word Scramble Activity
List 1 List 2 LTEPA LTEPA
Flowers Tableware
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Basic Problems with Heuristic use availability
- most easily brought to mind must be
correct representativeness - fit into a previous
network or classification anchoring -
previous belief is difficult to change
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Some ways to overcome problem solving obstacles
Decomposition divide it up into smaller,
more manageable pieces
Work Backward find the outcome and work
backward through each necessary step to reach
that goal
Incubate let it sit overnight
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How to become a better problem solver
Organize old information into better chunks,
perhaps larger chunks which then allow you to
process more of the problem
Experience allows the perception of the problem
as whole (deeper understanding) rather then
separate portions
However, experience is not always best because of
anchoring and mental sets