Foundational Perspectives: Cognition Lecture 10

Foundational Perspectives: Cognition - Lecture 10: Judgement and Reasoning

• The lecture covered Judgement & Reasoning, specifically making judgements and deductive reasoning.
• Judgement is the process of forming an opinion or conclusion.
• Decisions are the process of choosing between alternatives.
• Reasoning is drawing conclusions based on evidence.
• Inductive Reasoning: A type of reasoning based on observation, used in reaching conclusions from evidence (e.g., all the dogs I have seen are black, therefore all dogs are black). It's important to note that inductive conclusions are probable, not definite. Factors influencing strength are representativeness of observations, number of observations, and quality of evidence.
• Heuristics are 'rules of thumb' useful for problem-solving, but not foolproof. Availability and representativeness heuristics were discussed as commonly used examples.
• Availability heuristic states that more easily remembered events are judged as more probable than less memorable ones.
• Representativeness heuristic suggests that judgments are based on how much one event resembles another. The 'base rate' (the relative proportion of different classes) is often overlooked in this case.
• Illusory correlations are when a correlation appears to exist but either is not present or is far weaker than assumed (for example, a girl winning a lottery after using a specific coin).
• Stereotypes are oversimplified generalizations about groups of people frequently focusing on negative attributes. These are often linked to the availability heuristic, with the related bias of biased assimilation (bending new experiences to fit within existing stereotypes).
• Illusory causation refers to an overestimated relationship between a cue and outcome when the cue occurs frequently (e.g., a person believing that using echinacea tea frequently helps prevent colds).
• Myside bias is when people evaluate evidence leaning towards their own opinions and attitudes.
• Confirmation bias is selectively looking for information that supports one's hypothesis and failing to consider opposing evidence.
• Deductive Reasoning: Determining whether a conclusion logically follows from premises (statements) as in syllogisms (two premises followed by a conclusion).
• Mental Model: A specific situation represented in a person's mind to help assess the validity of syllogisms (the validity of premises and conclusions).
• Conditional syllogisms: involve "if-then" statements. Both Modus Ponens (valid) and Modus Tollens (valid) were presented.
• The Wason four-card problem is an example of a conditional syllogism used to illustrate how people often struggle with falsification principles.
• The belief bias is the tendency to think a syllogism is valid if its conclusion is believable.
• The instructor covered examples related to likelihood tasks, heuristics (availability and representativeness), and the verification of information for understanding and verifying syllogisms.
• The study also included the importance of considering base rates, and an example demonstrating how the base rate can be neglected by individuals in judgment tasks. Relevant tasks included ranking statements of likelihood, estimating probabilities, and selecting which cards to check when validating a rule.

Additional Topics

• Week 1: Unit orientation & data collection
• Week 2: Learning & Critical Thinking & introduction to A1
• Week 3: Attention
• Week 4: Short-term & working memory & Assessment 2 Part 1
• Week 5: Long-term memory & Assessment 2 Part 2 (A1 Due)
• Week 6: Everyday memory
• Week 7: Break week
• Week 8: Conceptual Knowledge
• Week 9: Language & Reading
• Week 10: Problem Solving & Creativity
• Week 11: Judgement & Reasoning (tutorial)
• Week 12: Decision making
• Week 13: Review & Reflection