Chapter 10- Thinking and Language Flashcards
Concepts
A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas or people.
Cognition
Mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
Prototypes
A mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to the prototype provides a quick and easy method for including items in a category ( as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin).
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 judgements and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error prone than algorithms.
Insight
A sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contrasts with strategy-based solutions.
Confirmation Bias
A tendency to search for information that confirms ones preconceptions.
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, often in a way that has been successful in the past.
Functional Fixedness
The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving.
Representative Heuristic
Judging the liking of 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 liking of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily it mind (perhaps because of vividness), we presume such events as common.
Overconfidence
The tendency to be more confident than correct- to overestimate the accuracy of ones beliefs and judgements.
Framing
The way an issue is pose; how an issue is framed significantly affect decisions and judgements.
Belief Bias
The tendency for ones pre existing beliefs to distort logical reasoning, sometimes by making invalid conclusions seem valid, or valid conclusions seem invalid.
Belief Perseverance
Clinging it ones initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.
Language
Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.
Phoneme
In 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. Also the study of meaning.
Syntax
The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language.
Babbling stage
The stage beginning at 4 months. The stage of speech development in which the infants spontaneously utter various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.
One-word stage
The stage in which speech development, from about ages one to two, during which a child speaks mostly in single words.
