Thought, Language, and Intelligence

Question 1

What is cognition?

Answer 1

All of the mental activities associated with thinking, including, knowing, remembering, solving problems, making judgements etc.

Question 2

What is cognitive psychology?

Answer 2

The scientific study of mental activities and how they operate.

Question 3

What are mental representations?

Answer 3

An internal mental symbol that stands for some object, event, or state of affairs in the world.

Question 4

What are concepts?

Answer 4

A mental category that groups similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

Question 5

What is a prototype?

Answer 5

A best example or average member of a concept that incorporates most of the features most commonly associated with it.

Question 6

What are subordinate concepts?

Answer 6

Concepts that are more specific within basic-level concepts.

Question 7

What are superordinate concepts?

Answer 7

Concepts that encompass basic-level concepts.

Question 8

What are algorithms?

Answer 8

A step-by-step procedure for solving problems that guarantees a solution.

Question 9

What is insight?

Answer 9

A sudden conscious change in a person’s understanding of some situation or problem.

Question 10

Define mental set.

Answer 10

A mental framework for how to solve a problem based on prior experience with similar problems.

Question 11

What is functional fixedness?

Answer 11

An obstacle to problem solving that involves focusing on an object’s typical functions, thus failing to recognize atypical functions that could help solve a problem.

Question 12

What is restructuring?

Answer 12

The process of organizing one’s understanding of a problem to facilitate a solution.

Question 13

What is bounded rationality?

Answer 13

The idea that rational decision making is constrained by limitations in people’s cognitive abilities, available information, and time.

Question 14

What is dual-processing theory?

Answer 14

The proposal that people have two types of thinking that they can use to make judgements and decisions: one that is slower, more effortful, and leads to more thoughtful and rational outcomes, and one that is fast, fairly effortless, and leads to decent outcomes most of the time.

Question 15

What is the controlled system and the automatic system?

Answer 15

The controlled system is slow and more effortful and leads to more thoughtful and rational outcomes. The automatic system is fast and fairly effortless and leads to decent outcomes most of the time.

Question 16

What are heuristics?

Answer 16

A mental shortcut that allows people to efficiently solve problems and make judgements and decisions.

Question 17

What is representative heuristic?

Answer 17

A mental shortcut for judging the likelihood of something based on how will it represents some category.

Question 18

What is the availability heuristic?

Answer 18

A mental shortcut for deciding how frequent or probable something is based on how easily examples come to mind.

Question 19

What is the affect heuristic?

Answer 19

A mental shortcut for making judgements and decisions that involves relying on affect-the good-for-me or bad-for-me feelings we associate with various objects and events in the world.

Question 20

What is the confirmation bias?

Answer 20

The tendency to look for and weigh evidence that confirms preexisting beliefs more strongly than evidence that is inconsistent with those beliefs.

Question 21

What is belief perseverance?

Answer 21

The tendency for people to resist changing their beliefs, even when faced with disconfirming evidence.

Question 22

What is framing?

Answer 22

The particular way that an issue, decision, or set of options is described. Framing can change decisions by shifting the decision maker’s reference point.

Question 23

Describe loss aversion.

Answer 23

The tendency to make choices, including riskier ones, that minimize losses.

Question 24

What is overconfidence bias?

Answer 24

The tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one’s knowledge and judgements.

Question 25

What is hindsight bias?

Answer 25

The tendency, once some outcome is known, to overestimate the likelihood that one would have predicted that outcome in advance.

Question 26

What are phonemes?

Answer 26

The smallest unit of language, such as the individual sounds that make up speech.

Question 27

What are morphemes?

Answer 27

The smallest unit of language that carries bits of meaning. Morphemes include words and also word parts like prefixes and suffixes that change a word’s meaning.

Question 28

What are pragmatics?

Answer 28

Rules that govern the practical aspects of language use, such as taking turns, using intonation and gestures, and talking to different types of people.

Question 29

What is the linguistic determinism hypothesis?

Answer 29

Benjamin Whorf’s proposal that different languages impose different ways of understanding the world that can shape our thinking.