Language & Cognition Knowledge Organizer

Here’s a knowledge organizer I’ve created of the most essential concepts for language & cognition in an introductory psychology course. These knowledge organizers are designed to help you identify the most important factual knowledge you need to have in order to engage in the more challenging activities of discussing, writing about, and applying the concepts. If you find these useful … Read More

Benefits of Heuristics

In this video I end the unit on cognition with the reminder that heuristics are not just about making errors in decision-making. Most of the time heuristics work well and they serve as useful tools for making sense of the world and being able to make decisions with limited information. In some cases they can even make less information more … Read More

The Representativeness Heuristic

In this video I describe another heuristic identified by the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. The representativeness heuristic is a shortcut that we use when attempting to estimate the odds of something being true, such as whether an interview profile came from a lawyer or an engineer. Rather than using relevant base rate information, participants showed a tendency … Read More

The Availability Heuristic

In this video I provide an introduction to behavioral economics and the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman by describing a heuristic we use when attempting to assess the frequency of events. The availability heuristic is a shortcut that estimates frequency based on how available an event is to us, or how readily we can bring examples to mind. … Read More

Problem Solving: Algorithms vs. Heuristics

In this video I explain the difference between an algorithm and a heuristic and provide an example demonstrating why we tend to use heuristics when solving problems. While algorithms provide step-by-step procedures that can guarantee solutions, heuristics are faster and provide shortcuts for getting to solutions, though this has the potential to cause errors. In the next few videos we’ll … Read More

What is the Availability Heuristic?

In their first study of the availability heuristic, Tversky and Kahneman asked participants to estimate whether English had more words that started with the letter K or more words that had K as the third letter. What do you think? If you’re like most participants in their study, you might guess that there are more words that start with k … Read More

Language, Thought, & Cognition Resources

On this page you’ll find a number of resources for understanding the key concepts of linguistics, cognition, and thought, including language acquisition, problem-solving, and decision-making. If I’ve missed a good resource, please share it in the comments section! General Resources Language & Cognition Key Terms Language Acquisition Pinterest Page Decision-Making Pinterest Page OpenStax Cognition & Language Chapter Master Introductory Psychology … Read More