The Psychology of Thinking (3130B)

Psych 3130B 2024

Dr. John Paul Minda
Lecture 1.1
 Today’s Plan
• Introduction

• Review the course outline & format of the course

• Introductory material
Dr. Minda

• Psychology Department

• Western Institute for

Neuroscience

• Brain and Mind Centre

• Undergraduate Chair

• https://mindalab.com/
TA: Chelsea McKenzie

• Psychology Department

• Western Institute for

Neuroscience

• Brain and Mind Centre

Course Communication Hierarchies

Dr.
Meeting
Minda
Chelsea
Email
McKenzie
OWL Forum Classmates
 Class Communication Grid
What communication medium is sufficient to addressing your question/situation?

OWL Email Meeting

Classmates

Chelsea

Dr. Minda

Who is sufficient to addressing your question/situation?

Emails and Office Hours
My Hometown: Pittsburgh, PA
My (actual) hometown: Saltsburg, PA
Bachelor’s Degree (1992): Hiram College, Hiram, OH
Master’s Degree (1995): Bucknell University
PhD (2000): University at Buffalo
Postdoc (2003): Beckman Institute UIUC
Department of
Psychology at Western
(since 2003)
 WIRB

https://mindalab.com/
https://forms.office.com/r/hMmV6eigEd
 Schedule
Time Session
9:30 – 10:45 Lecture 1
10:45 – 11:00 Break
11:00 – 12:20 Lecture 2
3:00 – 4:00 Office Hours

Note, this is a different zoom link

 Course Operation
OWL Site https://owl.uwo.ca/portal/site/18fee241-
7416-41e3-bb0a-328ac8df893f
Lecture notes are available on OWL before class as PowerPoint.

Use them to:

• Follow along in class

• Take notes (right in the ppt file, in OneNote, or on paper)
• Review
• Share
• Or make up for missed class
 What is Thinking
• Mental activity that involves working with mental
representations, planning and executing behaviours, and
the coordination of cognitive resources

• Basic visual perception, memory consolidation, and

coordination of sensory motor activity are sophisticated
mental activities but are not considered to be thinking.
Different Kinds of Thinking

Solving a physics problem

vs catching a fly ball
Different Kinds of Thinking
 Theoretical Approaches
• Gestalt Approach

• Cognitive Approach

• Dual Process Approach

 Gestalt Approach
• The mind is not a “blank slate” but is designed to process
information and deal with representations.

• Processed information and representations are the objects of

study in the psychology of thinking.

• Productive thinking and reproductive thinking (Wertheimer,

1959).

• Productive thinking is solving a problem with an insight.

• Reproductive thinking in problem-solving refers to problem-

solving by remembered examples and remembered rules.
 Cognitive Approach
• A Study of Thinking by Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin
(1956)

• This book helped to usher in the modern era of

information-processing accounts of thinking.

• Thinking can be studied experimentally.

 Mental Representations
A stable state of activation within a
cognitive/neural system that
corresponds to an event, object, or
idea.

My mental representation of cats

consists of memories and images of
my own cat, knowledge about where
cats come from, and feelings of
affection, and likely, these are all
activated when I think of cats.
 Mental Representations
Thinking is the process of manipulating internal
representations.

Cognitive accounts of thinking emphasize symbolic

processing.
 Dual Process Account
System 1 System 2
• Faster • Slower

• Intuitive • Reason Based

• Evolutionarily primitive • Evolutionarily recent

brain structures brain structures

• Present in non-human • Present in humans

species
 Challenges to Thinking
• Multitasking

• Smartphones and laptops

• Incomplete evidence

• A student is struggling to solve an algebra problem for

their homework. If they remember the correct
algorithm or the correct example, the solution should
eventually come. However, if they remember the
wrong algorithm, the problem will be much more
difficult to solve.