Psych Chapter 9: Thinking and Language

Thinking

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

Concepts

Mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

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.

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.

Algorithms

A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.

Heuristic

A mental shortcut that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently.

Insight

A sudden realization of a problem's solution.

Confirmation bias

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

Fixation

The inability to see a problem from a new perspective.

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.

The representativeness heuristic

Judging the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent particular prototypes.

The availability heuristic

Judging the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory.

Overconfidence

The tendency to be more confident than correct.

Belief perseverance

Clinging to one's initial conception after it has been discredited.

Framing

The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed 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 problem solutions to determine the single best solution.

Divergent thinking

Expanding the number of possible problem solutions.

Expertise

Well-developed knowledge.

Imaginative thinking skills

Thinking skills that allow for creative ideas.

Intrinsic motivation

Motivation that comes from within oneself.

Phonemes

The smallest distinctive sound units in a language.

Morphemes

The smallest language units that carry meaning.

Grammar

A language's set of rules that enable people to communicate.

Receptive Language

The ability to understand what is said to and about them.

Productive Language

The ability to produce words.

Babbling stage

The stage in speech development, beginning around 4 months, during which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds.

One-word stage

The stage in speech development, from about 1 to 2 years old, 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 speech

The early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram, using mostly nouns and verbs.

Critical periods

A period in the lifespan during which a particular skill must be acquired if it is to be acquired at all.

Aphasia

Impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage.

Broca's area

A frontal lobe brain area that helps control language expression.

Wernicke's area

A brain area involved in language comprehension and expression.

Linguistic determination

The hypothesis that language determines the way we think.

Linguistic relativism

The idea that language influences the way we think.

Phonology

The study of language sounds and how they combine.

Morphology

The study of meaningful parts of words.

Semantics

The study of meaning in language.

Syntax

The study of the structure of sentences.

Discourse

The exchange of ideas in connected units of speech or writing.

Pragmatics

The socially appropriate use of language.

Orthography

The conventions of spelling and capitalization in a language.

Prosody

The patterns of rhythm and sound in language.

Dialects

Variations of the same language used by specific groups of people.

Language acquisition

The process of learning a language.

Nativism

The theory that children are born with some basic knowledge of how language works.

Impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage

Aphasia is a language disorder that occurs as a result of damage to the left hemisphere of the brain, leading to difficulties in understanding and producing language.

Broca's area

Broca's area is a region located in the frontal lobe of the brain, specifically in the left hemisphere, that plays a crucial role in speech production and language processing.

Impaired speech production

Expressive aphasia, also known as Broca's aphasia, is a type of aphasia characterized by difficulties in speech production, including problems with forming words and sentences.

Wernicke's area

Wernicke's area is a region located in the left hemisphere of the brain, in the posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus, and is responsible for language comprehension and understanding.

Impaired speech perception

Receptive aphasia, also known as Wernicke's aphasia, is a type of aphasia characterized by difficulties in speech perception and comprehension, resulting in the inability to understand spoken or written language.