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Related Concept Videos

Purposive Learning01:22

Purposive Learning

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E. C. Tolman emphasized the purposiveness of behavior — the idea that much of our behavior is goal-directed. For instance, employees who aim for a promotion work diligently to meet their targets. Tolman argued that when classical conditioning and operant conditioning occur, the organism acquires certain expectations. In classical conditioning, a child might fear a dog because they expect it to bite. In operant conditioning, a person might consistently work overtime because they expect a...
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Cognitive Learning01:21

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Cognitive learning is based on purposive behavior, incidental learning, and insight learning.
E. C. Tolman's theory of purposive behavior emphasizes that much behavior is goal-directed. He argued that to understand behavior, we must look at the entire sequence of actions leading to a goal. For instance, high school students study hard, not just due to past reinforcement but also to achieve the goal of getting into a good college.
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Hindsight bias leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t. In other words, you knew all along that things would turn out the way they did. Can you relate this to the phrase "Hindsight is 20/20" now? 
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Inductive reasoning is a form of logical thinking that uses related observations to arrive at a general conclusion. It is uncertain and operates in degrees to which the conclusions are credible. As such, inductive arguments can be weak or strong, rather than valid or invalid, and conclusions can be used to formulate testable, falsifiable hypotheses.
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Correspondent inference theory, proposed by Jones and Davis in 1965, seeks to explain how individuals infer stable personality traits from observed behaviors. It suggests that people attribute actions to underlying dispositions rather than external circumstances, particularly when the behavior appears intentional and socially significant.Voluntary Behavior and Dispositional AttributionAccording to this theory, individuals are more likely to attribute behavior to personal traits when it appears...
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Fundamental Attribution Error01:14

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According to some social psychologists, people tend to overemphasize internal factors as explanations—or attributions—for the behavior of other people. They tend to assume that the behavior of another person is a trait of that person, and to underestimate the power of the situation on the behavior of others. They tend to fail to recognize when the behavior of another is due to situational variables, and thus to the person’s state. This erroneous assumption is...
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Explanatory Preferences Shape Learning and Inference.

Tania Lombrozo1

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences
|August 28, 2016
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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

People prefer simple, broad explanations, influencing how they learn and make inferences. Understanding these cognitive preferences is key to grasping learning and reasoning processes.

Keywords:
abductionbreadthexplanationinferencelearningsimplicity

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Psychology
  • Artificial Intelligence

Background:

  • Explanations are fundamental to human learning and hypothesis evaluation.
  • Existing research indicates systematic intuitions about explanation quality.
  • Explanatory preferences significantly impact cognitive processes.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of explanations in learning and inference.
  • To identify systematic preferences for certain types of explanations.
  • To understand how these preferences shape cognitive outcomes.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of existing literature on explanation-based learning and inference.
  • Review of studies on intuitive judgments of explanation quality in children and adults.

Main Results:

  • Individuals systematically favor explanations that are both simple and broad.
  • These preferences influence the learning process by guiding pattern seeking.
  • Hypothesis evaluation is biased towards those supporting simple, broad explanations.

Conclusions:

  • Understanding intuitive explanatory preferences is crucial for cognitive science.
  • Explanation-based processes are shaped by a systematic bias towards simplicity and breadth.
  • This research highlights the importance of explanation in everyday cognition, learning, and inference.