Modules 34-36

Cognition

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

concepts

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

prototypes

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

Creativity

the ability to produce new and valuable ideas

Convergent thinking

narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution

Divergent thinking

expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions

algorithms

a methodical, logical rule, or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier--but more error-prone--use of heuristics

Heuristics

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

insight

a sudden realization of a problem's solution; an Aha! moment; contrasts with strategy based solutions

Confirmation bias

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

Fixation

in cognition, the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an obstacle to problem solving

mental set

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

Intuition

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

Representative heuristic

estimating 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

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

Overconfidence

the tendency to be more confident than correct--to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgements

Belief perseverance

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

Framing

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

Language

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

Phonemes

in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit

Morphemes

in a language, smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or part of a word (i.e. prefix)

Grammar

in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. Semantics is the language's set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is its set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences

Babbling stage

beginning around 4 months, the stage of speech development in which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated 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

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

telegraphic speech

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

aphasia

impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke's area (impairing understanding)

Broca's area

helps control language expression--an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech

Wernicke's area

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

Linguistic determinism

the strong form of Whorf's hypothesis--that language controls the way we think and interpret the world around us

Linguistic influence

the weaker form of "linguistic relativity"--the idea that language affects thought (thus our thinking and world view is "relative to" our cultural language)