Individual Thinking
What you must understand
This domain concerns how people process information, solve problems and make judgements - and how these processes systematically fail. You need to understand the information-processing model (encoding, storage, retrieval; sensory, short-term/working and long-term memory) and the distinction between automatic and controlled processing. Know the working memory components and the concepts of attention, chunking and schema-driven reconstruction of memory. Study problem solving: algorithms versus heuristics, means–ends analysis, and the obstacles of functional fixedness and mental set. Understand reasoning (deductive versus inductive) and the biases that shape judgement, including confirmation bias, availability heuristic, representativeness heuristic, anchoring and framing effects. Know decision-making models and the dual-process distinction between fast, intuitive and slow, deliberate thinking. Be able to describe intelligence testing concepts (reliability, validity, standardisation) and the nature of bias in testing.
Traps in questions
Students often treat heuristics as errors; they are efficient shortcuts that usually work and sometimes produce bias. Availability is about ease of recall, representativeness is about similarity to a prototype - questions deliberately swap them. Do not say a test is valid because it is reliable; reliability is necessary but not sufficient. Another trap is describing memory as a video recording: it is reconstructive and vulnerable to schema and misinformation effects. Deductive reasoning moves from general to specific and is judged by validity, not truth of premises; inductive reasoning generalises from specific cases and is judged by strength.
Rule of thumb
Name the process (attention, encoding, retrieval, heuristic, reasoning type) before naming the error, and state what evidence would distinguish the two competing explanations.
Worked example: After seeing several news reports of shark attacks, a person overestimates the risk of swimming. This is the availability heuristic - ease of recall inflates perceived frequency.