 | Term | Definition |
| |
cognition |
mental activites associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating |
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concept |
mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people |
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prototype |
mental image or best example of a category |
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algorithm |
a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem |
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heuristic |
simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier and more error-prone |
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insight |
suddent and often novel realization of the solution to a problem |
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confirmation bias |
tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions |
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fixation |
inability to see a problem from a new perspective |
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mental set |
tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past |
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functional fixedness |
tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions |
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representativeness heuristic |
judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes |
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availibility heuristic |
estimating the likelihood of events based on their availibility in memory |
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overconfidence |
tendency to be more confident than correct- to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs and judgments |
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framing |
the way an issue is posed |
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belief bias |
tendency for one's preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning |
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belief perseverance |
clinging to one's initial conceptions after the bias on which they were formed has been discredited |
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language |
our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning |
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phoneme |
in a language, the smallest distinctive unit |
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morpheme |
in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; like a prefix |
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grammar |
in a language, a system of rules tha enable us to communicate with and understand others |
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semantics |
set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language |
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syntax |
rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language |
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babbling stage |
beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds |
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one-word stage |
stage in speech development, from age 1 to 2, during which a child mostly speaks single words |
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two-word stage |
beginning at 2, stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two-word statements |
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telegraphic speech |
early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram "go car" |
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linguistic determinism |
Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think |
