Chapter 8: Thinking, Reasoning, and Learning Flashcards
Any mental activity or processing of information, including learning, remembering, perceiving, communicating, believing and deciding
Thinking
Systematic errors in thinking
Cognitive bias
Heuristic that involves judging the probability of an event by its superficial similarity to a prototype
Representative heuristic
How common a characteristic or behavior is in the general population
Base rate
Heuristic that involves estimating the likelihood of an occurrence based on the ease with which it comes to our minds
Availability heuristic
Our tendency to overestimate how well we could have predicted something after it has already occurred
Hindsight bias
Our knowledge and ideas about a set of objects, actions, and characteristics that share core properties
Concept
The process of selecting among a set of possible alternatives
Decision making
Difficulty conceptualizing that an object typically used for one purpose can be used for another
Functional fixedness
Largely arbitrary system of communication that combines symbols in rule-based ways to create meaning
Language
Category or sounds our vocal apparatus produces
Phoneme
Smallest meaningful unit of speech
Morpheme
Grammatical rules that govern how words are composed into meaningful strings
Syntax
Elements of communication that aren’t part of the content of language but are critical to interpreting its meaning
Extralinguistic information
Meaning derived from words and sentence
Semantics
Language variation used by a group of people who share geographic proximity or ethnic background
Dialect
Intentional vocalization that lacks specific meaning
Babbling
Early period of language development when children use single-word phrases to convey an entire thought
One-word stage
System of signs invented by children who are deaf and born of hearing parents and therefore receive no language input
Homesign
Language developed by members of a deaf community that uses visual rather than auditory communication
Sign language
Proficient and fluent at speaking and comprehending two distinct languages
Bilingual
Awareness of how language is structured and used
Metalinguistic
Allowing an infinite number of unique sentences to be created by combining words in novel ways
Generative
Account of language acquisition that suggests children are born with some basic knowledge of how language works
Nativist
Hypothetical organ in the brain in which nativists believe knowledge of syntax resides
Language acquisition device
Account of language acquisition that proposes that children infer what words and sentences mean from context and social interactions
Social pragmatics
View that kA thought is represented verbally and that, as a result, our language defines our thinking
Linguistic determinism
View that characteristics of language shape our thought processes
Linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis)
Reading strategy that involves identifying common words based on their appearance without having to sound them out
Whole word recognition
Reading strategy that involves sounding out words by drawing correspondences between printed sounds and letters
Phonetic decomposition
