You are a psychology assistant in a consultancy which specialises in training and education. You have been tasked with writing a report that will inform the design of a one-day workshop in critical thinking to be delivered to 17- to 18-year-old students at a local college.

The college principal who commissioned the report is concerned about students' ability to understand their own cognitive errors in their everyday life. Specifically, the college wishes to:

• educate its students about some of the main cognitive biases and heuristics that help explain individuals' sense-making and their decision-making processes
• highlight the importance of developing critical-thinking skills so as to make well-informed and rational decisions.

A casino has recently opened near the college and it is marketing gambling to students. This has prompted the college principal to consider whether the workshop could also cover some material that would help students understand about the cognitive errors that may lead them to believe that they will win life-changing amounts of money by gambling.

The proposed workshop should aim to equip students with an awareness of some of the main cognitive processes that can lead to biased reasoning, poor judgements and erroneous decision-making.

This means you will need to provide a report showing how psychological theories might be used to explain errors appropriate to this scenario and offer some evaluation and outline which of these could be included in a critical-thinking workshop appropriate to 17- to 18-year-olds.