Cognitive Psychology Worksheet

1. When trying to solve a problem, you might have been instructed to "stop thinking about it and come back to it later." Based on what you have learned this week about impasses, do you think this is good advice? Why or why not?

2. Consider the following choice. I will give you a free $5 bill, no strings attached. Optionally, I will allow you to flip a coin: heads you win $10, tails you win nothing. Do you want the $5, or do you want to flip the coin? What does expected value theory tell you that you should do? Does this accurately represent your feeling about the decision?

3. Do well-defined and ill-defined processes make use of the same cognitive processes? How might psychologists go about trying to answer this question?

4. Compare and contrast the generate-and-test, the means-ends analysis, and the reasoning-by-analogy approaches to problem solving.

5. Describe the similarities and differences between inductive and deductive reasoning.

6. Distinguish between formal and everyday reasoning. How might the former be relevant to the latter?

7. Discuss the reasons why cognitive psychologist need to know about stable individual and/or gender differences in cognition.

8. Contrast the classical view of intelligence with Gardner’s view.

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10. What does it mean to assert that a particular cognitive capacity or skill is culturally relative or culturally universal? How do the assertions differ?