- Subject:
- Psychology
- Material Type:
- Module
- Level:
- Community College / Lower Division, College / Upper Division
- Provider:
- Ohio Open Ed Collaborative
- Tags:
- License:
- Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial
- Language:
- English
- Media Formats:
- Text/HTML
Education Standards
Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Memory and Cognition
A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
Astound Demonstrations
Brain Games- Functional Fixedness
Brains Vs. Bias (Video)
Categories and Concepts
Cognition: How Your Mind Can Amaze and Betray You (Video)
How I hacked online dating (Video)
Judgment and Decision Making
Promoting Psychological Science
The Science of Thinking (Video)
Thinking and Intelligence, OpenStax
Thinking, Language and Intelligence
Top Brain Teasers, Games and Illusions, for Teens and Adults of Any Age
Why Do Our Brains Love Fake News? (Video)
Why Facts Don't Convince People (and what you can do about it)
Thinking - Course Map and Recommended Resources
Overview
How to Use this Guide
This guide provides information and resources on introducing the topic of thinking and cognition. All resources are Open Access and can be downloaded or added to a Course Management System (LMS) via the hyperlinks.
Introduction
Thinking is one of the smaller topics that make up cognitive psychology (along with perception, attention, intelligence, and memory). Faculty may want to first introduce Cognitive Psychology and discus how thinking fits into all the other areas. This topic lends itself to several in-class activities to emphasize the different concepts. Faculty may also want to pair this section together with Intelligence and language development.
Learning Objectives
- Define cognition
- Understand concepts and prototypes
- Explain some of the problem-solving strategies
- Explain obstacles to problem solving
- Define functional fixedness
- Define confirmation bias
- Define hindsight bias
Cross Cutting Themes
Diversity
- Explain how the way we create concepts could lead to stereotypes and discrimination
- How has the combination of the availability heuristic and terroristic acts affected perceptions of different cultural and religious groups?
Ethics
- Do psychology students have an ethical obligation to share what they know about cognitive biases with friends and family?
- Discuss how some of the errors in thinking contribute to the beliefs of fake news
Variations in Human Functioning
- Share examples of experts using intuition appropriately.
- Discuss ways psychology students can help the public understand some of the errors in thinking
Application
- How has the combination of the availability heuristic and terroristic acts affected perceptions of different cultural and religious groups?
- Share examples of experts using intuition appropriately
- Discuss how cognition research is helping to build smart computer systems.
- Apply thinking principles to current political stories
Recommended Resources
Thinking and Intelligence, OpenStax Chapter 7
The Ohio OER has broken out thinking and intelligence as two separate topics, so this chapter could be used for either. This is the best of the chapters that cover aspects of thinking.
Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Memory and Cognition
University of Minnesota Library Chapter 8, which covers both thinking and memory. Faculty who use this chapter would have to focus on the sections that discuss aspects of thinking.
Categories and Concepts
This is the chapter on Categories and Concept by Gregory Murphy within the NOBA project
Judgment and Decision Making
This is the chapter on Judgement and Decision making by Max Bazerman within the NOBA project
Supplemental Resources
Cognition: How Your Mind Can Amaze and Betray You (Video)
Crash Course video #15 on thinking and aspects of thinking.
How I Hacked Online Dating (Video)
How do we solve problems? How can data help us to do this? Follow Amy Webb’s story of how she used algorithms to help her find her way to true love. Closed captioning available.
10 Problems with How We Think
Summary and examples of common cognitive biases.
The Science of Thinking (Video)
This is a nice 12 minute video that discusses some of the common mistakes that are made in thinking.
Brain Games - Functional Fixedness (Video)
Great example of Functional Fixedness from Brain Games
Why Do Our Brains Love Fake News? (Video)
Confirmation bias and fake news
Brains Vs. Bias (Video)
Crash Course video on different biases that are made in thinking
Class Activities
Thinking, Language and Intelligence
This resource is from Open Washington’s Module9: Thinking, Language, and Intelligence, and contains class discussion prompts, learning objectives and assignment ideas in a Google Docs folder
A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving
A problem solving test that can be done during the class time, with some discussion around the steps they took to solve the problem
Promoting Psychological Science
This is from an E-book from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, called Promoting Psychological Science: A Compendium of Laboratory Exercises for Teachers of High School Psychology. The Chapter on Cognition by Amy C. Fineburg & Suzanne C. Baker provide several in-class activities that could be used in this section.
Astound Demonstrations
A listing of classroom demonstrations from Tim Bender from Missouri State University. Although most of the demonstrations are for memory, there are some that can be used in this section.
Why Facts Don't Convince People (and what you can do about it)
A TEDed lesson on Why Facts Don't Convince People (and what you can do about it). Students can view the TED talk and then take quiz questions on the material they watched.
Top Brain Teasers, Games and Illusions, for Teens and Adults of Any Age
Description of brainteaser that can be done during class. Students are instructed to think about how they are thinking about solving the problems. They try to find patterns in how they go about their decision making.