Food for Thought: Cognitive Science, Evolutionary Psychology, Decision Making Study Guide , Study notes of School management&administration

Download Food for Thought: Cognitive Science, Evolutionary Psychology, Decision Making Study Guide and more Study notes School management&administration in PDF only on Docsity! H205 Food for Thought – Midterm study guide Papers read, and things to think about: 1. Intro to thinking about food:  How much do people think about food each day, and how can we tell? (including our class discussions on this)  Are people aware of how many food decisions they make? What implications does their awareness or lack of awareness have? 2. Intro to cognitive science—Thagard Thagard, P. (2007). Cognitive Science. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2007 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2007/entries/cognitive-science/>.  What are the main fields of cognitive science, and what methods do they use?  What fields of cognitive science have we talked about in class so far? 3. Evolutionary psychology and food—Buss chapter Buss, D.M. (2004). Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. (Chapter 3: Combating the hostile forces of nature: Human survival problems)  What are some of the important recurrent adaptive problems that our ancestors faced, shaping the evolution of the human mind?  Describe the hunting hypothesis and the gathering hypothesis for the evolution of human behavior, and what their implications are for male/female differences in behavior today. 4. Evolved sex differences in food memory (farmer’s market study)—New et al. New, J., Krasnow, M.M., Truxaw, D., & Gaulin, S.J.C. (2007). Spatial adaptations for plant foraging: women excel and calories count. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,274(1626), 2679-2684. Also Krasnow, Gaulin et al. on gathering navigation theory lab study  Compare New et al.’s method for testing sex differences in spatial abilities with those of Silverman & Eals (described in the Buss chapter and in class). What do New et al.’s results tell us about male/female differences and similarities in spatial foraging?  What did Gaulin’s new lab studies on gathering navigation theory allow him to improve on from the farmer’s market study? 5. Patch leaving/area-restricted search/foraging in animals—Wilke chapter Excerpts from Chapter 4 of: Wilke, A. (2006). Evolved responses to an uncertain world. Doctoral dissertation. Free University of Berlin. Retrieved on October 4, 2006, from the Free University of Berlin Website: http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/2006/14/indexe.html  How can animals (including humans) find a new food patch, and then restrict their foraging search to a particular resource patch? (from class discussions)  When should they switch to a new patch? What kind of heuristics could they use to tell? How do people search in external patches, and in internal ones in memory?  Compare ant and male-human foraging strategies, and indicate when they would do similar and different things. (from class discussions) 6. Intro to memory, and false food memories—Bernstein et al. Bernstein, D.M., Laney, C., Morris, E.K., & Loftus, E.F. (2005). False memories about food can lead to food avoidance. Social Cognition, 23(1), 11-34.  How does memory work, and when is it domain-specific?  How is forgetting matched to the demands from the environment? In what ways might this account for how we remember and forget what we’ve eaten?  What makes false memories likely to work (be implantable) vs. not work? How does this compare to conditioned taste aversion? (from class discussion)  How can false memories be used for beneficial ends?  Why do any memories fade away over time—that is, why do we forget? Are different memories forgotten at different rates? (from class discussion) 7. Language and food; semantic structures (Michela paper on children’s semantic structures)  What is linguistic relativity? In what ways can it be applied to our understandings of food categories and perception?  What is the role of labels and names in the categorization and perception of food?  What are some of the challenges in cross-culturally and cross-linguistically communicating about food?  What kinds of semantic structures do people have in their memory about food, and how can we get at them experimentally?  Why can it be useful to know what semantic structures people use? 8. Memories for sequences, in pain vs. food (from class)  How did Kahneman say that memories for pain are constructed?  How do memories for food get put together in contrast? Why? What evidence is there for this? 9. Decision making about meals—Todd paper on evolved decision heuristics Todd, P.M. (2000). The ecological rationality of mechanisms evolved to make up minds. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(6), 940-956.  What are some decision heuristics, and why would people ever use them?  What is the recognition heuristic? How do rats and people use this heuristic? (from class discussion)  Describe the two decision mechanisms compared in the study on making meal choices (discussed in class), and how they represent different beliefs about how people can/should make decisions. 10. Social group influences on decision making—Ariely & Levav Ariely, D., & Levav, J. (2000). Sequential variety-seeking in group settings: Taking the road less traveled and less enjoyed. Journal of Consumer Research, 27(3), 279-290.