Chapter 9 Module (Thinking and Language) Flashcards
Cognition
All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
Metacognition
Cognition about our cognition.
Keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes.
Concept
A group of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.
Gives information with very little cognitive effort.
Prototype
A mental image, or bet example of what is in the concept.
The closer something is to the prototype, the faster we recognize it as the concept.
Cognitive Strategies for Problem Solving
Trial + Error
Algorithms
Heuristics
Insight
Algorithms
Step by step procedures that garuntee a solution.
ex. searching every single aisle at the grocery store
Heuristics
Mental shortcuts, simpler thinking strategies that are less time consuming.
ex. Searching in the produce section at the grocery store.
Insight
Abrupt true-seeming and satisfying solution.
Sudden burst in the right temporal lobe.
Cognitive Blocks to Problem Solving
Confirmation Bias
Fixation
Mental Set
Confirmation Bias
Eagerly seeking evidence for our ideas and against others.
Fixation
The inability to come to a fresh perspective; getting stuck in one way of thinking.
Mental Set
A type of fixation.
Using the mindset of what has worked for us in the past.
Intuition
An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought.
The opposite of explicit, conscious reasoning.
Representativeness Heuristic
Judging the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent or match particular prototypes.
Leads us to ignore other relevant information.
Availability Heuristic
Judging the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory.
If instances come readily to mind (vividness), we presume such events are common.
Overconfidence
The tendency to be more confident than correct - to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.
Belief Perseverence
Clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.
Mixed evidence will be interpreted as belief proving - motivated reasoning.
Framing
The way an issue is posed.
Significantly affects decisions and judgments.
Using Intuition
1) Recognition born of experience (implicit knowledge)
2) Usually adaptive
3) Widely used
Creativity
The ability to produce ideas that are both novel and valuable.
Convergent Thinking
Narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.
Single correct answer.
5 Components of Creativity (Sternberg)
1) Expertise
2) Imaginative thinking skills
3) A venturesome, determined personality
4) Intrinsic motivation
5) A creative environment
6) Develop your expertise
7) Allow time for incubation
8) Set aside time for the mind to roam freely
9) Experience other cultures and ways of thinking
Divergent Thinking
Ability to consider many different options and to think in novel ways.
Language
Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.
Phenome
Smallest distinctive sound units in a language.
ex. bat has 3 - b - a - t,
ex. that has 3 - th - a - t
Morphemes
Smallest lanuage units that carry meaning.
Ex. words, prefixes, and suffixes
Grammar
A language’s set of rules that enable people to communicate.
Guide semantics and syntax.
Semantics
Meaning from sounds.
Syntax
Ordering of words into sentences.
Universal Grammar
The beleif that humans have a built-in predisposition to learn grammar rules.
We are not born with a built-in specific language or specific set of grammatical rules.
ex. children usually learn nouns first
Receptive Language
The ablity to understand what is said to and about them.
Productive Language
The ability to produce words.
Stages of Speech Development in Babies
1) Babbling - 4 months
2) Babbling resembles houshold language - 10 months
3) One-word stage - 1 year
4) Two-words stage - 2 years (telegraphic speech)
5) Rapid development into complete sentences - 2 years +
Telegraphic Speech
The early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram (using mostly nouns and verbs).
Exemplifying syntactical ordering.
ex. go car
Critical Period
After age 7 - those who have not been exposed to any language lose their ability to master any language.
Learning a new language as an adult - accent of our native langugage and imperfect grammar.
Aphasia
Impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impaired speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (imparied understanding).
Broca’s Area
A frontal lobe brain area - usually in the left hemisphere - that helps control language expression by directing the muscle mvoements involved in speech.
Damage - can’t speak, can sing and understand
Wernicke’s Area
A brain area, usually in the left temporal lobe, involved in language comprehension and expression.
Damage - can’t understand, can only speak meaningless entences.
Linguistic Determinism
Widely believed to be too extreme.
Whorf
Hypothesis that language determines the way we think.
Linguistic Relativism
The idea that language influences the way we think.
Bilingualism Effect on Thought
Different senses of self in different languages.
Expression of different emotions and concepts in different languages.
Enhanced social skills by being able to shift to understand another’s perspective.
Impose Constraints
The tendency to believe there are more constraints then there actually are.
Conjunction Fallacy
Impossible for more specific case to be more probable than the more general case.
Metaphor
Using language from one domain to talk about another (non-literally).
Can be used as a framing tactic.
