|
 cognition | all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating |
| concept | a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people |
| prototype | a mental image or best example of a category |
| algorithm | a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier -- but also more error-prone -- use of heuristics |
| heuristic | a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms |
| insight | sudden realization of a problem's solution; the "aha moment" |
| confirmation bias | a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence |
| fixation | the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an impediment to problem solving |
| mental set | A tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, especially a way that has been successful in the past but may or may not be helpful in solving a new problem |
| functional fixedness | the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving |
| representativeness heuristic | judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead one to ignore other relevant information |
| availability heuristic | estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind, we presume such events are common |
| anchoring heuristic | a mental tendency to base estimates on previously presented information, even if that information has nothing to do with the case at hand |
| overconfidence | the tendency to be more confident than correct--to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs and judgments |
| framing | the way an issue is posed; how an issue is presented can significantly affect decisions and judgments |
| belief bias | the tendency for one's preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning, sometimes by making invalid conclusions seem valid, or valid conclusions seem invalid |
| belief perseverance | clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited |
| artificial intelligence (AI) | a subdiscipline of computer science that attempts to simulate human thinking |
| computer neural networks | Computer circuits that mimic the brain's interconnected neural cells, performing tasks such as learning to recognize visual patterns and smells |
| language | A system of communication through the use of speech, a collection of sounds understood by a group of people to have the same meaning. |
| phoneme | in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit |
| morpheme | in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix) |
| grammar | in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others |
| semantics | the set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language |
| syntax | the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language |
| babbling stage | beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language |
| one-word stage | the stage in speech development from about age 1 to 2 during which a child speaks mostly in single words. |
| two-word stage | beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two-word statements |
| telegraphic speech | early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegraph message--'go car'--using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting 'auxiliary' words |
| Noam Chomsky | theorist who believed that humans have an inborn or "native" propensity to develop language. (Native = Nature). |
| linguistic determinism | Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think. (a.k.a. linguistic relativity or the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) |
| Benjamin Lee Whorf | psychologist famous for describing linguistic determinism |
| convergent thinking | thinking that brings together information focussed on solving a problem (especially solving problems that have a single correct solution) |
| divergent thinking | a type of thinking that is associated with creativity - seeing lots of solutions to a problem |
| trial and error | approach to problem solving that involves randomly trying possible solutions and discarding those that fail to solve the problem |
| Dunning-Kruger Effect | a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes. Accounts for why low-skilled individuals are prone to greater overconfidence than are higher-skilled persons (in a particular area). |