PSYC 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Deductive Reasoning, Behavioural Genetics, Scientific Method

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Jens C Pruessner

Document Summary

Thinking is manipulation of mental representations; adaptive. cogsci is study of thought, based on ideas that brain represents info, thinking: mental manipulation of reps. we use reps to understand objects we encounter. Cog: mental activity that includes thinking, understandings that result. Thinking = 2 types of rep: analogical: mental reps that have some physical characteristics of objects; e. g. images, maps, clocks. Symbolic: abstract mental reps that do not correspond to physical features: mental maps combine reps: shortcuts used unconsciously to organize, represent info. Concepts are symbolic reps: categorization: grouping things based on shared properties, reducing knowledge to hold in memory, efficient. Model allows for flexibility in representation; may be different reasons behind choosing prototypes: exemplar model: way of thinking about concepts, all members of category are examples, together they form concept and determine category membership. Through experience, people form fuzzy representation of concept because there is no single representation of any concept.