Thinking Flashcards
Concepts
How one represents the relationship between two things
Cognitive psychology
The study of thinking, processing, and reasoning.
Hypotheses
Ideas used to test relationships and then to form concepts.
Mental set
The preconceived notion of how to look at a problem.
Schema
And organized bunch of knowledge gathered from prior experiences that includes ideas about specific events or objects and the attributes that accompany them.
Scripts
Ideas about the way events typically unfold
Prototypes
The representative or usual type of an object or event
Insight
Having a new perspective on an old problem
Convergent thinking
A type of thinking used to find the one solution to a problem
Divergent thinking
A type of thinking used when there are more than one possible solutions to a problem
Functional fixedness
The idea that people develop closed minds about the functions of certain objects. from this, they cannot think of creative uses or think divergently
Problem space
The sum total of possible moves that one can make in order to solve the problem
Algorithm
Problem solving strategies that consider every possible solution and eventually hit on the correct solution
Heuristic
Problem-solving strategy that uses rules of thumb or shortcuts based on what has worked in the past.
Metacognition
Refers to the process of thinking about our own thinking
Mediation
The intervening mental process that occurs between stimulus and response
Deductive reasoning
Leads to a specific conclusion that must follow from the information given
Inductive reasoning
Leads to general rules that are inferred from specifics
Atmosphere effect
When a conclusion is influenced by the way information is phrased.
Semantic effect
Believing in conclusions because of what you know or think to be correct rather than what logically follows from the information given
Confirmation bias
Remembering and using information that confirms what you already think
Decision makeing
Working on solving a problem until an acceptable solution is found
Intelligence
Frequently debated definition. Most people tend to agree that intelligence is the capacity to use knowledge to improve achievement in the environment
Reaction time
Frequently used to measure cognitive processes. Also called latency
Stroop effect
Decrease speed of naming the color of ink used to print words when the color of ink and the word itself are of different colors
Bottom up processing
Recognizing an item or pattern from data or details
Top down processing
Recognizing an item or pattern from larger concepts
Automatic processing
When a task is effortlessly done because the task is subsumed under a larger organizational process
