Psych Chapter 10: Thinking And Language

Front 1

the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Back 1

cognition

Front 2

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

Back 2

concept

Front 3

a mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to the prototype provides a quick and easy method for including items in a category (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin)

Back 3

prototype

Front 4

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

Back 4

algorithm

Front 5

a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms

Back 5

heuristic

Front 6

a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contrasts with strategy-based solutions

Back 6

insight

Front 7

a tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions

Back 7

confirmation bias

Front 8

the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an impediment to problem solving

Back 8

fixation

Front 9

a tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past

Back 9

mental set

Front 10

the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving

Back 10

functional fixedness

Front 11

judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead one to ignore other relevant information

Back 11

representativeness heuristic

Front 12

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

Back 12

availability heuristic

Front 13

the tendency to be more confident than correct--to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs and judgements

Back 13

overconfidence

Front 14

the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgements

Back 14

framing

Front 15

the tendency for one's preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning, sometimes by making invalid conclusions seem valid, or valid conclusions seem invalid

Back 15

belief bias

Front 16

clinging to one's initial conceptions after the bias on which they were formed has been discredited

Back 16

belief perseverance

Front 17

our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning

Back 17

language

Front 18

in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit

Back 18

phoneme

Front 19

in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix)

Back 19

morpheme

Front 20

in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others

Back 20

grammar

Front 21

the set of rules by which we derive meaning for morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language; also, the study of meaning

Back 21

semantics

Front 22

the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language

Back 22

syntax

Front 23

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

Back 23

babbling stage

Front 24

the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words

Back 24

one-word stage

Front 25

beginning at about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two-word statements

Back 25

two-word stage

Front 26

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram--"go car"--using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting auxiliary words

Back 26

telegraphic speech

Front 27

Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think

Back 27

linguistic determination