Exam 3 Vocabulary Flashcards
Vocabulary from Chapters 9, 10, and 12.
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 mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.
prototype
a mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a crow).
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—a mental shortcut—that o en allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than an algorithm.
insight
a sudden realization of a problem’s solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions.
confirmation bias
a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.
fixation
in cognition, the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an obstacle to problem solving.
intuition
an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.
representativeness heuristic
judging the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead 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 (perhaps because of their 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 perseverance
the persistence of one’s initial conceptions even a er the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.
framing
the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments.
nudge
framing choices in a way that encourages people to make beneficial decisions.
creativity
the ability to produce new and valuable ideas.
convergent thinking
narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.
divergent thinking
expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions.
language
our spoken, written, or signed words, and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.
phoneme
in a 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 is the language’s set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is its set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences.
babbling stage
the stage in speech development, beginning around 4 months, during which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds that are not all related to the household language.
one-word stage
the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words.
two-word stage
the stage in speech development, beginning about age 2, during which a child speaks mostly in two-word sentences.
telegraphic speech
the early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram—“go car”—using mostly nouns and verbs.
aphasia
impairment of language, usually caused by le hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding).
Broca’s area
a frontal lobe brain area, usually in the le hemisphere, that helps control language expression by directing the muscle movements involved in speech.
Wernicke’s area
a brain area, usually in the le temporal lobe, involved in language comprehension and expression.
linguistic determinism
Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think.
linguistic relativism
the idea that language influences the way we think.
intelligence
the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.
general intelligence (g)
according to Spearman and others, underlies all mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.
fluid intelligence (Gf)
our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease with age, especially during late adulthood.
crystallized intelligence (Gc)
our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.
Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory
the theory that our intelligence is based on g as well as specific abilities, bridged by Gf and Gc.
savant syndrom
a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.
emotional intelligence
the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.
intelligence test
a method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores.
achievement test
a test designed to assess what a person has learned.
aptitude test
a test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.
mental age
a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the level of performance typically associated with children of a certain chronological age. Thus, a child who does as well as an average 8-year-old is said to have a mental age of 8.
Stanford-Binet
the widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet’s original intelligence test.
intelligence quotient (IQ)
defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 (thus, IQ = ma / ca × 100). On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100.
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
the WAIS and its companion versions for children are the most widely used intelligence tests; they contain verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests.
standardization
defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group.
normal curve
a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data; most scores fall near the mean (about 68 percent fall within one standard deviation of it) and fewer and fewer near the extremes. (Also called a normal distribution.)
reliability
the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternative forms of the test, or on retesting.
validity
the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to. (See also predictive validity.)
predictive validity
the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior. (Also called criterion-related validity.)
