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Thinking and Memory. Intro to Psychology Purificato . Think about this…. We all have pennies somewhere in our houses, pockets, or in your piggy bank. Think for a second which way is Abe Lincoln facing? HMMMM no cheating. Is that what you were thinking?. Can you remember when?.
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Thinking and Memory Intro to Psychology Purificato
Think about this….. We all have pennies somewhere in our houses, pockets, or in your piggy bank. Think for a second which way is Abe Lincoln facing? HMMMM no cheating
Can you remember when? Think back to when you were a child….. No really lets try this… Close your eyes…. And try to remember….everyone has certain childhood memories. What do you remember? Lets take a minute and write down our earliest memory.. Whatever it may be…
Why?? Why can we remember some things from 10 years ago but we cant remember what we had for breakfast or last nights dinner?? The mind works in mysterious ways? Lets take a look…
What Exactly is thought? We rarely notice our thinking. It’s like background music, always there but never obvious. In Psychology, thought or thought processes are called cognition or cognitive processes, the mental processing of information including memorizing, reasoning, problem solving, conceptualizing, and imagining.
Processing Information Your mind goes through 4 basic steps when processing information: • Stimulus information from our senses reaches the brain ( you see Michael Jackson moon-walking for the first time) • The meaning of this information is analyzed ( your brain thinks wow those are some cool dance moves) • Different possible responses are generated. (your brain tries to figure out how he’s doing that dance) • A response is executed and monitored for feedback. (you throw off your shoes and try it on the kitchen floor)
So, thinking is a process that involves the analyzing of information. But what is information? For starters, consider that thinking is always about something or things. When I am thinking I am thinking about something or some object, a car, a person, an event and so on.
Thinking involves the processing of mental or thought symbols. Thought symbols are mental representations of objects in our world. Ok so if I say sit back and picture a Pink Rose in your head.
So now that you have this rose on your mind if I cut open your skull I would see the Rose in your head right? All I would see is your brain. The image is what we call symbolic representation. An image of a rose in your mind.. A corresponding symbolic representation of that rose in your mind as you think about it.
Conceptualizing A concept is a thought or idea that represents a set of related ideas. “Romance” is a concept. “Relationship” is a concept. “politics” is a concept. “weather” is a concept. When objects share characteristics, they represent the same concept. Some concepts are well defined, others are not.
Check it out…. Consider the following words. Tail, Fur , Teeth, Four Legs What do these words describe? Take a second and write down what these words describe…
It could be a rat a bear or a cat.. The truth is you cant really tell from these four words.
Now consider this list of words. Tail, Fur , Teeth, Four Legs, bark What is being described now? .
It has to be a dog, because bears, rats and cats don’t bark. “Bark” is the concept’s defining feature
The 4 Basic mechanisms of thinking… Input: Sensory information coming in from our world or from within our own minds. Memory: System necessary for storage of knowledge. Information about the world is stored in our minds and memory. Operations: Rules that determine how the information in the memory system is utilized (reasoning, problem solving, and logical analysis). Take math as an example: Is I have 100 numbers stored in my memory and am confronted with a mathematical problem, these operation determine how I solve the problem. Output: Action “programs” that involve telling the rest of the mind and body what to do after the thinking operations have been carried out.