Thinking, Language & Intelligence Flashcards
Mental images
Mental representation of a previously stored sensory experience (includes all senses… Ie. visualizing a train and hearing its whistle)
Cognition
Mental activities involved in acquiring, storing, retrieving, and using knowledge
Concept
Mental representation of a group or category that shares similar characteristics (ie. ocean… Pacific, atlantic, etc.)
Prototype
Representation of the “best” or “typical” example of a category (ex. Baseball is a prototype for sports)
Algorithm
A set if steps that, if followed correctly, will solve the problem
Heuristic
Strategies or simple rules used in problem solving/decision-making that don’t guarantee a solution but offer a likely shortcut to it
Mental set
Persisting in using problem-solving strategies that have worked in the past rather than trying new ones
Functional fixedness
Tendency to think of an object functioning in only its usual way
Confirmation bias
Tendency to seek out and pay attention only to information that confirms pre-existing beliefs while ignoring/discounting contradictory evidence
Availability heuristic
Judging the likelihood/probability of events based on how readily available other instances are in our mind (ie. believing there’s a high probability of a terrorist attack right after 9/11 happens)
Representative heuristic
Estimating the probability of something based on how well the circumstances match our previous prototype (ie. assuming that because someone is really tall, they’re probably a basketball player)
Creativity
The ability to produce valued outcomes in a novel way
Divergent thinking
Thinking that produces many alternatives or ideas… A major element of creativity
Convergent thinking
Narrowing down a list of alternatives to converge on a single correct answer
Phoneme
Smallest basic unit of speech or sound (ex. Hissing to pronounce s)
Morpheme
Smallest meaningful units of language, formed by a combination of phonemes
(Ex. Small words, prefixes & suffixes)
Grammar
Rules that specify how phonemes, words and phrases should be combined to express thoughts
Syntax
Grammatical rules that specify how words and phrases should be arranged in a sentence to convey meaning
Semantics
Meaning, or the study of meaning, derived from words and word combos
Cooing
Vowel-like sounds infants make around 2-3 months old
Babbling
Vowel/consonant combos at around 4-6 months
Overextension
Overly broad use of a word to include objects that don’t fit into the words meaning (calling all men daddy)
Telegraphic speech
2-3 word sentences of young children that contain only the most necessary words
Over generalize
Applying the basic rules of grammar even to cases that are exceptions to the rule (mans instead of men)
