PSYC 9 Flashcards
All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
Cognition
A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, and people.
Concept
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 robin).
Prototype
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.
Algorithm
A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error prone than algorithms.
Heuristic
A sudden realization of a problem’s solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions.
Insight
A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.
Confirmation Bias
A tendency to approach problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past.
Mental Set
An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.
Intuition
Estimating 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.
Availability Heuristic
The tendency to be more confident than correct - to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.
Overconfidence
Clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.
Belief Perseverance
The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments.
Framing
The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.
Creativity
Narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.
Convergent Thinking
Expands the number of possible problem solutions (creative thinking that diverges in different directions).
Divergent Thinking
Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.
Language
In a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.
Phoneme
In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix).
Morpheme
In a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. In a given language, semantics is the set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is the set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences.
Grammar
Beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.
Babbling Stage
The stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words.
One-Word Stage
Beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements.
Two-Word Stage
Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram - “go car” - using mostly nouns and verbs.
Telegraphic Speech
Impairment of language, usually caused by left-hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or toe Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding).
Aphasia
Controls language expression - an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.
Broca’s Area
Controls language reception - a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe.
Wernicke’s Area
Whorl’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think.
Linguistic Determinism
Mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.
Intelligence
A general intelligence factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence task.
General Intelligence (g.)
A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.
Savant Syndrome
The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.
Emotional Intelligence
A method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores.
Intelligence Test
A test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.
Aptitude Test
A test designed to assess what a person has learned.
Achievement Test
A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance. Thus, a child how does as well as an average 8-year-old is said to have a mental age of 8.
Mental Age
The widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet’s original intelligence test.
Stanford-Binet
Defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 (thus, IQ = ma/ca x 100). On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100.
Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
The WAIS is the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests.
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group.
Standardization
The bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes.
Normal Curve
The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, or on retesting.
Reliability
The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to. (See also content validity and predictive validity.)
Validity
The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest
Content 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.)
Predictive Validity
Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.
Crystallized Intelligence
Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood.
Fluid Intelligence
A condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence test score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life. (Formerly referred to as mental retardation.)
Intellectual Disability
A condition of mild to severe intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21.
Down Syndrome
The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied.
Heritability
A self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on negative stereotype.
Stereotype Threat
