Thinking, Language, and Intelligence

Cognition

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

Metacognition

Cognition about our cognition; keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes.

Concept

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

Prototype

A mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as when you compare a feathered creature to a prototypical bird, such as a crow).

Algorithm

A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees you will solve  a particular problem. Contrasts with  the usually speedier—but also more error-prone—use of heuristics.

Heuristic

A simple thinking strategy—a mental shortcut—that often allows you to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than an algorithm.

Insight

A sudden realization of the solution to a problem; contrasts with strategy-based solutions.

Confirmation Bias

A tendency to search for information that supports your preconceptions and to ignore or distort evidence that contradicts them.

Fixation

In cognition, the inability to consider a problem from a new perspective; an obstacle to problem solving.

Intuition

An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.

Representative Heuristic

Judging the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information.

Availability Heuristic

Judging the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if an event comes readily to mind (perhaps because it was vivid), we assume it must be common.

Overconfidence

The tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.

Belief Perseverance

Clinging to beliefs even after evidence has proven them wrong.

Framing

The way an issue is posed; framing can significantly affect decisions and judgments.

Nudge

Framing choices in a way that encourages people to make beneficial decisions

Creativity

The ability to produce new and valuable ideas.

Convergent Thinking

Narrowing the available solutions to determine the single best solution to a problem.

Divergent Thinking

Expanding the number of possible solutions to a problem; creative thinking that branches out in different directions

Language

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

Syntax

The correct way to string words together to form sentences for a given language.

Grammar

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

Babbling Stage

The stage in speech development, beginning around 4 months, during which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds that are not all related to the household language.

One-Word Stage

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

Two-Word Stage

The stage in speech development, beginning about age 2, during which a child speaks mostly in two-word sentences.

Telegraphic Stage

The early speech stage in which a child speaks in compressed sentences, like a telegram—“want milk” or “Daddy go store”—using mostly nouns and verbs.

Broca’s Area

A frontal lobe brain area, usually in the left hemisphere, that helps control language expression by directing the muscle movements involved in speech.

Wernicke's area

A brain area, usually in the left temporal lobe, involved in language comprehension and expression.

Large Language Model

An artificial intelligence program that uses statistical probabilities to perform basic language processes, such as producing, translating, and categorizing text.

Intelligence

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

general intelligence (g)

According to Spearman and others, underlies all mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.

fluid intelligence (Gf)

Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease with age, especially during late adulthood.

crystallized intelligence (Gc)

Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.

Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory

The theory that our intelligence is based on general intelligence (g) as well as specific abilities, bridged by fluid intelligence (Gf) and crystallized intelligence (Gc).

Savant Syndrome

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

Emotional Intelligence

The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.

Intelligence Test

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

Achievement Test

A test designed to assess what a person has learned.

Aptitude Test

A test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.

Mental Age

A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the level of performance typically associated with children of a certain chronological age. Thus, a child who does as well as an average 8-year-old is said to have a mental age of 8.

Stanford-Binet

The widely used U.S. revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet’s original intelligence test.

intelligence quotient (IQ)

Defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 (thus, IQ = ma/ca × 100). On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100.

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

The WAIS and its companion versions for children are the most widely used intelligence tests; they contain verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests.

Standardization

Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group.

Normal Curve

The 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.

Reliability

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

Validity

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

Predictive Validity

The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict.

Heritability

The proportion of variation among people in a group that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the population and the environment.

Growth Mindset

A belief that abilities are not fixed, but can grow with persistent effort.

Cross-Sectional Study

Research that compares people of different ages at the same point in time.

Longitudinal Study

Research that follows and retests the same people over time.

Stereotype Threat

A self-confirming concern that you will be judged based on a negative stereotype.