Cognition

1
Cognition

• Joey Watson

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VII. Cognition

• Memory
• Language
• Thinking
• Problem Solving and Creativity

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Memory

• 3 storage units
• Sensory
• perception to memory iconic (visual) tenths of
  second or echoic (auditory) few seconds
• Short
• Few seconds to a minute
• 7 items - 2
• Maintenance rehearsal- keep something in short
  term memory long enough to be used
• Elaborative rehearsal- organizing and
  understanding info to remember it
• Long
• Permanent retention
• Episodic memory- events experienced
• Semantic memory- facts figures and general
  knowledge
• Procedural memory- skills and habits

4
Language

• Sound to communicate ideas
• Phonemes- smallest units of speech sounds
  distinct from one another
• Morphemes- smallest semantically meaningful parts
  of language
• Syntax- rules used for arrangement of morphemes
  into meaningful sentences
• Prosody- tone and inflection added meaning
  without changing words

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Language

• Stages
• Cooing-gt Babbling-gt holophrases (one word for
  broad category of things)-gt telegraphic speech
  (two or three word sentences)-gt speech
• Noam Chomsky transformational grammar-
  differentiates between surface structure of
  language and deep structure of language

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Thinking

• Many different types, sometimes overlap
• Autistic thinking- applies to daydreaming and
  fantasizing
• Directed thinking- drawing inferences, problem
  solving
• Reasoning- drawing conclusions from evidence
• Deductive reasoning- drawing logical conclusions
  from general statements
• Inductive Reasoning- drawing general inferences
  from specific observations

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Problem Solving and Creativity

• Divergent thinking- brainstorming
• Convergent thinking- narrowing to 1 choice
• Heuristics- intuitive rules of thumb
• Algorithms- systematic mechanical approaches to
  guarantee eventual answer to problem
• Insight- sudden understanding of potential
  strategy to solve problem

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Problem Solving and Creativity

• Wolfgang Kohler- had a chimp in cage with 2
  sticks, outside cage were bananas, both too short
  to reach bananas so combined sticks into 1 to
  reach bananas insight
• Mental set- framed set of mind to approach
  problem functional fixedness- tendency to assume
  item is only useful for task it is designed for
• Confirmation bias- search for info that supports
  particular view
• Creativity process of producing something novel
  yet worthwhile elusive nature