 | Term | Definition |
| |
cognition |
the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating |
| |
concept |
a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people |
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prototype |
a mental image or best example of a category |
| |
algorithm |
a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem |
| |
heuristic |
a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently |
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insight |
a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problems |
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confirmation bias |
a tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions |
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fixation |
the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an impediment to problem solving |
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functional fixedness |
the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving |
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representative heuristic |
judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent particular prototypes |
| |
availability heuristic |
estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory |
| |
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 |
| |
belief perseverance |
clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis 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 |
| |
babbling stage |
beginning by 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 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words |
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two-word stage |
beginning about age 2, the 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'--using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting 'auxiliary' words |
| |
linguistic determinism |
Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think |
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intelligence |
the mental abilities needed to select, adapt to, and shape environments |
| |
mental age |
a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet |
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Stanford-Binet |
the widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet's original intelligence test |
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intelligence quotient |
defined originally as the ratio of mental age to the chronological age multiplied by 100 |
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factor analysis |
a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie one's total score |
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general intelligence |
a general intelligence factor that Spearman and others believed underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test |
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savant syndrome |
a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill |
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emotional intelligence |
the ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions |
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creativity |
the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas |
| |
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale |
the WAIS is the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests |
| |
aptitude test |
a test designed to predict a person's future performance |
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achievement test |
a test designed to assess what a person has learned |
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standardization |
defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested "standardization group" |
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normal curve |
the symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes |
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reliability |
the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting |
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validity |
the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to |
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content validity |
the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest |
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criterion |
the behavior that a test is designed to assessed |
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predictive validity |
the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict |
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heritability |
the proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes |
| |
stereotype threat |
a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype |
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