Ch. 9 Thinking and Language

Question 1

cognition

Answer 1

all mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Question 2

metacognition

Answer 2

cognition about our cognition; keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes

Question 3

concept

Answer 3

mental grouping of similar objects, ideas, or people

Question 4

prototype

Answer 4

mental image or best example of a category

Question 5

algorithm

Answer 5

methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem

Question 6

heuristic

Answer 6

simple thinking strategy - mental shortcut - that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently

Question 7

insight

Answer 7

sudden realization of a problem’s solutions

Question 8

confirmation bias

Answer 8

tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

Question 9

fixation

Answer 9

in cognition, inability to see a problem from a new perspective

Question 10

mental set

Answer 10

tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past

Question 11

intuition

Answer 11

effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasonign

Question 12

representativeness heuristic

Answer 12

judging the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes

Question 13

availability heuristic

Answer 13

judging the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory

Question 14

overconfidence

Answer 14

tendency to be more confident than correct - overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgements

Question 15

belief perserverance

Answer 15

clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

Question 16

framing

Answer 16

way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgements

Question 17

nudge

Answer 17

framing choices in a way that encourages people to make beneficial decisions

Question 18

creativity

Answer 18

ability to produce new and valuable ideas

Question 19

convergent thinking

Answer 19

narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution

Question 20

divergent thinking

Answer 20

expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions

Question 21

language

Answer 21

our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning

Question 22

phoneme

Answer 22

in a language, smallest distinctive sound unit

Question 23

morpheme

Answer 23

in a language, smallest unit that carries meaning

Question 24

grammer

Answer 24

system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others

Question 25

babbling stage

Answer 25

stage in speech development, beginning around 4 months, during which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds that are not all related to the household language

Question 26

one-word stage

Answer 26

stage in speech development, from about 1 to 2, during which child speaks mostly in single words

Question 27

two-word stage

Answer 27

beginning at about 2, during which a child speaks mostly in 2 word sentences

Question 28

aphasia

Answer 28

impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage to either Broca’s area or to Wernicke’s area

Question 29

Broca’s area

Answer 29

frontal lobe of brain area, usually in left hemisphere, helps control language expression by directing the muscle movements involved in speech

Question 30

Wernicke’s area

Answer 30

brain area, usually in left temporal lobe, involved in language comprehension and expression

Question 31

linguistic determinism

Answer 31

Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think

Question 32

linguistic relativism

Answer 32

idea that language influences the way we think