COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY: THINKING (COGNITION)

Last week, my comrade has done a review on memory right? Today I will continue the World of Minds team’s journey for our psychology class. So, basically the topic that I’m gonna share is directly associated to our last week’s entry.

Cognitive Psychology: Thinking and Intelligence

Basically that is our topic for this week. But, for this time entry I’ll just touch on the thinking part or we call as cognition in psychological term.

In our everyday life, we always do this action (thinking) and talking about it as well. But, do we really know what is actually thinking means.

 

This guy seems serious while he is thinking. That is the overview for the definition of thinking (cognition) that I have learned. Cognition or thinking is a process that occur in our brain when we try to organize and understand information before we communicate it to others. In thinking process, there are two elements involved which are mental images and concepts. 

Mental images are the representation of objects or events by our mental and have a picture-like quality. For example, if you ask your friend to sketch a map of their neighborhood, the outcome will be different for different person. A mental map can best be explained as a visual display, inside a person's head, showing where a person has traveled. A mental map shows what the person knows about the location of a place. Every human has his or her own mental map. The longer the path that they have traveled, the more time that they will take to complete the map.

The pictures above show two different mental map by two different person. The way they imagine their map is totally different from one another.

Now, let us move to concepts. Concepts are ideas that represent a class or category of objects, events, or activities. There are 6 type of concepts that I have learned and I am glad to share them with you guys. 

•   . Superordinate concept: it is the most general form of concept such as “vehicle” or “food”.

     

•  Basic level type: an example of a type of concept around which other similar concepts are organized, such as “motorcycle” and “car”, “fish” and “prawn”. It is like the components that are in the same superordinate concept.

•  Subordinate concept: the most specific category of a concept, such as one’s pet dog or a pear in one’s hand. It narrows the division of each elements in their concepts respectively.  In the figure below the superordinate concept is vehicle. The other concepts, water vehicle, land vehicle, air vehicle are subordinate concepts relative to vehicle

• Formal concepts: concepts that are defined by specific rules or features. For example, to be a square, a polygon must consist of 4 edges. That is its specific rules, so we can't say that a polygon with edges more or less than 4 is a square.

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• Natural concepts: concepts people form as a result of their experiences in the real world. We are all aware that even though a wheelchair has wheels, it is not a vehicle. It is the knowledge that we gain from our experiences.

• Prototype: an example of a concept that closely matches the defining characteristics of a concept.

         As we have look around the concepts and also the mental images, now let us move on to the problem-solving part. In thinking process, we also involve problem-solving in our routine. Problem solving is a process of cognition that occurs when a goal must be reached by thinking and behaving in certain ways.

There are some ways that we use in solving problems and I’ll definitely bring you to learn all of it.

• Trial and error (mechanical solution) – problem-solving method in which one possible solution after another is tried until a successful one is found. Look at the cute baby below. He tries to fit in the block into the holes one by one until he gets the correct one.

• Algorithms - very specific, step-by-step procedures for solving certain types of problems. We usually use this method in calculation subject like calculus. In calculus we solve the problem by listing the step by step of the answer needed.

• Heuristic - an educated guess based on prior experiences that helps narrow down the possible solutions for a problem. Also known as a “rule of thumb.” The biggest example for this solution is when we use the search engine like Google to help us narrow down the information that we need by just guessing the suitable keywords.

• Insight - sudden perception of a solution to a problem. Sometimes, when we face a problem, our mind tend to reorganize the problem while we are thinking about something else.

To solve the problems, we have problem solving. But, unfortunately we also have the barriers which are functional fixedness, mental set and confirmation bias.

Functional fixedness

A block to problem solving that comes from thinking about objects in terms of only their typical functions.

If the boy doesn’t know how to use the plier as the pendulum, then he must have functional fixedness.

Mental set

The tendency for people to persist in using problem-solving patterns that have worked for them in the past.

The people are influenced with the event in the past and keep saying that the people who wears turban is a terrorist. This is the example of mental set that becomes a barriers for this problem to be solved.

Confirmation bias

The tendency to search for evidence that fits one’s beliefs while ignoring any evidence that does not fit those beliefs.

The lawyer is having confirmation bias because he decided that the woman is guilty, so it is useless for her to defend herself because the lawyer will ignore the information from her side.

Now, I am done with the cognition part. For the next entry, I will share with you about intelligence. Just wait and see ya!