Chapter 7 Key Terms Flashcards
Cognition
Mental activity involved in understanding, processing, and communicating information.
Thinking
Paying attention to information, mentally representing it, reasoning about it, and making decisions about it.
Algorithm
A systematic procedure for solving a problem that works invariably when it is correctly applied.
Heuristics
Rules of thumb that help us simplify and solve problems.
Means-end analysis
A heuristic device in which we try to solve a problem by evaluating the difference between the current situation and the goal.
Insight
In Gestalt psychology, a sudden perception of relationships among elements of the mentally represented elements of a problem that permits its solution.
Incubation
In problem solving, a process that may sometimes occur when e stand back from a frustrating problem for a while and the solution “suddenly” appears.
Functional fixedness
The tendency to view an object in terms of its name or familiar usage,
Representative heuristic
A decision-making heuristic in which people make judgments about samples according to the populations they appear to represent.
Availability heuristic
A decision-making heuristic in which our estimates of frequency or probability of events are based on how easy it is to find examples.
Language
The communication of information by means of symbols arranged according to rules of grammar.
Language acquisition device (LAD)
In psycho-linguistic theory, neural “prewiring” that facilitates the child’s learning of grammar.
Intelligence
A general mental capability that involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.
g
Spearman’s symbol for general intelligence, which he believed underlay more specific abilities.
Creativity
The ability to generate novel and useful solutions to problems.
