Studies of Thinking in Cognitive Psychology

Psychologist Dr. Doping talks about specificity of human thought, ways of solving syllogisms.

The study of thinking in cognitive psychology began in the logic of the informational approach: in fact, thinking, as well as other processes, was interpreted as a process of information processing and its transformation in the course of solving problems. And the very first studies were associated with the first attempt to construct a model of artificial intelligence. They occupy Herbert Simon and Allen Newell, said in fact, in 1956, of the first thinking model, which has proved a theorem in formal logic called "Logic theorist."

What principles were behind this study? If we say that a computer is similar to the brain, let them work differently, if the brain realizes the thinking and the computer implements specific programs and the two processes are similar to each other and lead to the same results, then, in fact, we have the right, We believed these researchers to consider the program, a crucial problem (eg, proving logical theorems), as a theory of thought or theory of human behavior in the course of solving problems. Therefore, Newell and Simon studied in parallel protocols solving the problem of the people and their protocols work computer programs, which, strictly speaking, there were two major aspects: it is the language of knowledge representation and transformation rules. It works in Newell and Simon appears important to further the idea of the psychology of thinking heuristics. Not just the algorithm as the exhaustive search of all possible solutions, and the rules or principles of the search space reduction, which leads to unwarranted finding results, but significantly reduce the number of samples. After the first successes, "The logic of theoretical," which really proved the theorem about the same as proving studied students, Newell and Simon have started a new ambitious goal - to build a universal solver of problems, expanding the scope of its models on the problem chess, Crypto-arithmetic task - task type "The wolf, goat and cabbage." But in the end, these developments was abandoned for lack of versatility. And in general, it became clear that perhaps the case in those tasks, which are computer programs, and the people who are chosen as subjects (usually were university students, meet the challenges of certain rules learned before them) and, perhaps, in fact, people did not think so, as it should from these studies.

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And in fact, from here start two opposite lines. On the one hand, developments in the field of artificial intelligence, where developers have not been very interesting, it seems there is what makes their computer, that really makes a person. And the bet was placed more on the performance of your computer, than the approach to human thinking. And on the other hand, radically alternative line tried to answer the question, and how did people think. When they began to deal in this area, we realized that a man thinks is fundamentally wrong, like a computer. Here, one of the first signs became a researcher Peter Ueycon, which is very interested in the problem, and why scientists, when looking for ways to test his theory, for some reason, looking for confirmation rather than refutation. Why put forward a hypothesis, we are selective with respect to the information that our hypothesis is confirmed, and blind to everything else.

Ueyson conducted a series of studies, which showed that the tendency to confirmation - one of the most persistent and powerful features of the human mind. For example, he played with his subjects in such a simple game. He told them: "I'll call you a series of three numbers and you guess the law, which in this series is," he said, "2, 4, 6", and people had to make their own versions of a number, following the same laws, to which he answered them, "yes" or "no." And then people started immediately confirm their hypothesis. For example, thinking that law - is to increase each time by 2, they said, "3, 5, 7", received the answer is "yes." Thinking that the law - it even numbers, increasing by 2, responded: "8, 10, 12," received the answer is "yes." This could go on indefinitely, because in fact Ueyson conceived law "any ascending series." And any number of immediately descending test could give a hint. But they fingered, fingered and fingered, not trying to test alternatives. Similar data has shown experiment with the famous goal with four cards, through which Ueyson mainly in psychology and known. The subjects were asked to look at the four cards on which were written the letters A and K, numbers 4 and 7, and check the rule: if on one side of the card vowel, then on the other side is an even number. We had to turn the minimum number of cards to test this rule. Research has shown that even in universities problem is solved by less than a quarter of people, but the problem is the same: the tendency to confirmation. I offer at your leisure to try to solve it.

Very similar findings in the study of syllogisms were obtained Ueysona colleague, Philip Johnson-Laird, author of the theory of mental models, which was interesting, and which, strictly speaking, people rely when deciding syllogisms, when making inferences based on assumptions. For example, we have such a premise: "Some Russian - idealists," "All the Bolsheviks are Russians." Can we correct conclusion that all the Bolsheviks - the idealists? It turns out that most of the subjects said: "Yes, of course." Why? Because it seems to be true. That is, in fact, when a person decides to syllogism, it relies more on the credibility of output than on logical rigor. Another important phenomenon that opened Johnson-Laird, was called "the effect of the atmosphere." It turned out that if the premises set forth in the affirmative, positive, people tend to make or confirm a positive conclusion, and if there is at least one negative statement, people tend to make a negative conclusion. For example, the output of our syllogism that some Bolsheviks are not idealists, most people will be rejected as invalid just because of negative assumptions we did not. And it's usually the likelihood and effect of the atmosphere, in fact, exhaustive, as it turned out, to explain the decision and the conclusions of syllogisms ordinary people.

But perhaps the most well-known study, the most striking and, in the end, awarded the Nobel Prize in economics, have been carried out by American researchers Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the 70-80 years of the twentieth century. It Kahneman in 2002 received the Nobel Prize in economics, Tversky did not live up to it. Nevertheless, they spent together, these studies have created the famous "prospect theory" that explains the mechanism of problem solving, reasoning and decision-making person. What did they find? They found that when a person makes some output, estimates the probability of an event or some selects one of several alternatives, it is a little bit based on the actual figures contained in this problem, but in a very high degree based on the method of delivery problems on the context, in which it is presented, and in addition, we identified a couple of heuristics that underlie the mistakes that people make, first of all, a way of presenting information and context. Tversky Kahneman formulated with the right frame within which to solve the problem, the choice is made. For example, if we say that the fare on the subway will rise from 30 to 35 rubles, we are very indignant, it will cause a storm of calls. If we say that again we consume daily lunch will rise from 300 to 305 rubles, that we almost do not notice, although the absolute difference, the absolute loss in both cases is the same. A method of presenting information can affect at least strongly. Tversky Kahneman conducted a famous study, conventionally referred to as "Asian epidemic disease", where subjects were given a fairly complex situation descriptions. If we ultimately simplify what was happening, then people say that we are waiting for the epidemic Asian disease, an estimated 600 people die, and one half of the subjects said: "This is a program that will save 200 people. Take the "People for the most part responded:" Take. " And another said: "This is a program, but 400 people still die. We take? "People tend to prefer a different program, with more intricate details, avoiding the loss of the subjective.

And in fact, much the same way they work heuristics are described with Tversky Kahneman - is the availability heuristic representativeness heuristic and associated with the way we search and use available information. Availability heuristic is that we are taking a decision, making the inference, making judgments about the likelihood, based on the information that we have at this point in time, and often are not looking for another. It is on this heuristic keeps the myth of divorces among the stars. Why? Because we can easily come up with an example. We are much more difficult to come up and find an example or examples of a sufficient number of divorces among ordinary people, but in fact they are no less frequent.

And as to the representativeness heuristic, it is that we, when we select the information to make a choice some or make some assessment, look, if our hypothesis is similar to the information that is available, whether it is representative . There Tversky Kahneman spent with another famous experiment, giving his description of the subjects girls named Linda, about which it was told that she studied at the University of philosophy, when studied, participated in demonstrations against nuclear weapons, fighting for animal rights and so on. And then asked to rate how likely Linda statement about: the fact that it a bank teller, or that it is a cashier and an active feminist. And the subjects were selected, of course, the second option for the most part. Why? Because Linda is representative of the feminists. Although actually belong to the same category, one group is always more likely than belonging to the two groups at the same time. This error disjunction - one of the brightest errors of human thought, which also studied the Tversky and Kahneman, then summarizing it in a unified theory that applied to the economy and brought Kahneman the Nobel Prize.