Course: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology: An Experimental Science

Class exercise To reiterate: the evidence shows that people are far less likely to make the conjunction error when probed with the “how many” question than the corresponding “how probable” …

By now you will have probably realised that the representativeness bias has also been held responsible for the conjunction fallacy – remember Shelia our bank teller? According to some theorists, …

Here Rob introduces you to the notion of two modes of reasoning that seem to suggest the existence of two very different kinds of reasoning systems.

Basic introductory remarks Our intention this week is to collect some data on three versions of the Wason Card Selection task. There is probably little point in having you attempt …

The solution Let’s take each of the cards in turn… You should turn the A card over. Why? Well it has to have an even number on the other side …

In the video, Rob provides introductory remarks about this classic reasoning problem. Alert The solution is to the problem is provided next, but don’t progress until you have given yourself …

Solutions Question 1 Question 1 is a variant on what has come to be known as the Linda-the-bank-teller problem. To disguise this somewhat (because the actual problem is now quite …

Now is time to get more of a feeling for other sorts of thinking puzzles that cognitive psychologists have focused on in attempting to uncover how humans reason. The primary …

Up until now, we have been purely focused on logical reasoning and drawing valid conclusions from claims and evidence. As you might have gathered however, there is far more to …

Ok, let’s get to grips with thinking and consider our ability to reason in a rational way. Class Exercise We will begin by considering how people combine different bits of …

Valid vs. invalid arguments What the rules of logic do is set out what defines a valid vs. an invalid argument. But we need to tread very carefully here. Consider …

Some concrete examples Let’s take a claim: If there is a cat on the mat then there is a fish in the fish bowl. Let’s also take the evidence: There …

Reasoning logically What we are doing is exploring how readily people appreciate logical arguments and, hopefully, you will have been able to figure out that the fact that ‘I got …

This is our first class experiment The experiment provides first-hand experience of collecting data in a classic short-term verbal memory task. The study involves testing memory for lists of six …

Here Rob describes in very general terms the experiment we have planned for this week. More details follow in the next step. Next we provide detailed instructions about how to …