chapter 12 Deductive Reasoning and Decision Making

1.How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?

At first it was how we perceive objects we see, sounds we hear, on the next chapter after that, we looked at how cognitive tasks attention and consciousness in relation to cognitive processes. This chapter extends to another part of cognitive process with bounded ability of our cognitive process in limited memory called Working memory. This chapter emphasizes about long-term memory opposite to working memory, when I learned about short-term memory that is a temporary storage for what my brain is working on current events but in case of long-term memory, it composes the experiences, events and information that we have stored over life time. Memory strategies builds on the concept I have learned so far, once I know what working-memory and long-term memory are, then this two chapters help me better utilize these memories with the idea of metacognition and metamemory in mind. Memory strategy relies on perception, attention, and consciousness and in the end metamemory and metacognition; if we organize how we learn what materials we remember in what circumstances then our memory improves and ultimately store information in the long-term memory. Mental imagery and Cognitive Maps also aids to our memory strategy or how we learn if we can picture or visualize an object or item that is not physically present. This chapter also indicates how mental image is stored either in analog-code or propositional code. Memory strategy can be productive if we know how we store information or how we draw mental images of items we need to remember. Chapter 8 talks about how general knowledge relates to our cognitive process. Chapter 7 explains mental imagery and cognitive maps on how we code and visualize images of information, general knowledge influences how our cognitive system processes information taken from the outside world. The section uses two major concepts to explain general knowledge Semantic memory and Schemas. Chapter 11 basically will utilize all the concepts I have learned so far. That is when we know how our working memory and long-term memory works and with a knowledge of metamemory and metacognition and create strategy how we could recall new materials then the real challenge comes on how do we use all of the above to solve a problem and be creative. Chapter 12 talks about Deductive Reasoning and Decision making; both require high level cognitive skills that utilize the skills I learned in the past readings starting with top-down and bottom up processing, working memory, long-term memory, metamemory, Heuristics to solve problems; to help us analyze, reason, and decide on problems we face at school, work, and daily lives.

2.What am I still not clear on in this week’s reading?

In Abstract reasoning problems, in the previous chapters we studied how to place concepts and new materials in the long term memory, but in some abstract reasoning problems we have to fight not to use prior information accompanied by examples and imagery about the item how do I teach this to children or how do I help students to ignore what you know before when you try to reason abstract problems? When I think about it we accumulate new information to help us solve a problem or to make a decision, I wonder if there are specific techniques to block prior knowledge attached with examples.

3.Under what conditions would I apply this material to may own teaching/work?

Decision making is what we do everyday either in working or studying. At work I can apply the decision making in finding the need for student assistant training. I would start with a questionnaire with staff and faculty in several aspects of the decision making; what applications are used frequently on public machines, how effective are student assistants in assisting students with information as well as software applications. I would try to use effective sampling method to select sample size that would represent the population fairly.