Chapter 10 Flashcards
Mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, communicating, and remembering
Cognition
Study mental activities including logical and sometimes illogical ways in which we create concepts, solve problems, make decisions, and form judgements
Cognitive Psychologists
Mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, or people
Concepts
A mental image or best example of category or best example of a category
Prototype
An attempt to find an appropriate way of a attaining a goal when it’s not readily available
Problem solving
Thomas Edison and lightbulb filaments
Trial and Error
Step by step procedures that guarantee a solution
Algorithms
A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently usually speedier but also more error prone
Heuristics
A sudden and often novel realization of the solution of a problem. Provides a sense of satisfaction. (Aha moments)
Insight
A tendency to search for information that confirms ones preconceptions
Conformation bias
The inability to see a problem from perspective; an impediment to a problem solving.
Fixation
The inability to solve a problem, because it is viewed only in terms of usual function (activity)
Functional fixedness
A tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past.
Mental Set
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.
(Ex. People thinking I am a gymnast because I’m small when I’m not into sports)
Representative Heuristic
**Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (maybe due to vividness), we presume such events are common.
(Overestimate likelihood of winning bc we are reminded of the noisy winning/celebration)
Availability heuristic
The tendency to be more confident than correct - to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs and judgement.
Overconfidence
**The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can be significantly affect decisions and judgements. (Ex. 10% will die in this surgical procedure vs. 90% live)
Framing
**The tendency for ones preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning, sometimes by making invalid conclusions seem valid or vs. versa.
(Ex. Santa - not logical. Or still thinking a bad relationship is healthy.)
Belief Bias
**Clinging to ones initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited. (Ex. Still believing in Santa even when you saw your parents putting the gifts out. Or after Bf cheats you still think they love you.)
Belief perseverance
The ability to think in novel ways and come up with unique solutions to problems
Creativity
Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning
Language
In a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit
Phoneme
In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or part if a word. (Ex. Prefix)
Morpheme
In a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others
Grammar
The set of rules by which we derives meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language- study of meaning
Semantics
The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language.
Syntax
Beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds unrelated to household language
Babbling stage
The stage in speech development, from about age 1-2 during which a child speaks mostly in single words
One word stage
Beginning about age 2 the stage of speech development during which a child speaks mostly two word statements
Two word stage
Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram - “go car” - using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting auxiliary words
Telegraph speech
Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think
Linguistic determinism
His had a theory that humans are biologically predisposed to acquire language
Noam Chomsky
