Psychology Chapter 9

Front 1

Cognition

Back 1

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

Front 2

Concept

Back 2

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

Front 3

Prototype

Back 3

A mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to this provides a quick and easy method for including items in a category

Front 4

Algorithm

Back 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

Front 5

Heuristic

Back 5

A simple thinking strategy that often allows is to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms

Front 6

Insight

Back 6

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

Front 7

Conformation Bias

Back 7

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

Front 8

Fixation

Back 8

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

Front 9

Functional Fixedness

Back 9

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

Front 10

Availability Heuristic

Back 10

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

Front 11

Availability Heuristic

Back 11

Estimating the likelihood of events based of their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind, we presume such events are common

Front 12

Overconfidence

Back 12

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

Front 13

Framing

Back 13

The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments

Front 14

Belief Perseverance

Back 14

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

Front 15

Language

Back 15

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

Front 16

Babbling Stage

Back 16

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

Front 17

One-Word Stage

Back 17

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

Front 18

Two-Word Stage

Back 18

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

Front 19

Telegraphic Speech

Back 19

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

Front 20

Linguistic Determinism

Back 20

Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think

Front 21

Intelligence

Back 21

The ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations

Front 22

General Intelligence (g)

Back 22

A general intelligence factor that , according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test

Front 23

Savant Syndrome

Back 23

A condition in which a person otherwise limited in metal ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing

Front 24

Creativity

Back 24

The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas

Front 25

Emotional Intelligence

Back 25

The ability to perceive, understand, manage and use emotions

Front 26

Intelligence Test

Back 26

A method for assessing an individual's mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores

Front 27

Mental Age

Back 27

A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet, the chronological age that most typically correspondents to a given performance. Thus, a child who does as well as the average 8 year old is said to have a mental age of 8

Front 28

Stanford-Binet

Back 28

The widely used American revision of Binet's original intelligence test

Front 29

Intelligence Quotient

Back 29

Defined originally as the ratio of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100. On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100

Front 30

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale

Back 30

The WAIS is the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance sub tests

Front 31

Aptitude Tests

Back 31

A test deigned to predict a person's future performance; it is the capacity to learn

Front 32

Achievement Tests

Back 32

A test designed to assess what a person has learned

Front 33

Standardization

Back 33

Defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested standardization group

Front 34

Normal Curve

Back 34

The symmetrical 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

Front 35

Reliability

Back 35

The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting

Front 36

Validity

Back 36

The extent to which a test measured or predicts what it is supposed to

Front 37

Content Validity

Back 37

The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest

Front 38

Predictive Validity

Back 38

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

Front 39

Heritability

Back 39

Th proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. ...May vary depending on the range of the populations and environments studied

Front 40

Stereotype Threat

Back 40

A self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype