Cognition and Intelligence AP Psych

cognition

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

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

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.

algorithm

a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with usually speedier, heuristics.

heuristic

a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier than an algorithm.

insight

a sudden realization of a problem's solution; 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

(1) in cognition, the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an obstacle to problem solving. (2) in personality theory, according to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.

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.

representativeness 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, we presume such events are common.

overconfidence

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

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 worded can significantly affect decisions and judgments.

language

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

phoneme

in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.

babbling stage

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 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

intelligence

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

general intelligence

underlies all mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.

factor analysis

a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that show a person's total score.

savant syndrome

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

grit

Those who become highly successful tend also to be conscientious, well-connected, and doggedly energetic

emotional intelligence

the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions. (p. 629)

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. 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 American revision of Binet's original intelligence test.

intelligence quotient (IQ)

IQ = mental age/chronological age × 100).

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

the most widely used intelligence tests for children; they contain verbal and performance subtests.

standardization

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

normal curve

(normal distribution) a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data

reliability

the extent to which a test yields consistent results

validity

the extent to which a test or experiment measures or predicts what it is supposed to. (See also content validity and predictive validity.)

content validity

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

predictive validity

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.

cohort

a group of people sharing a common characteristic, such as from a given time period.

crystallized intelligence

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

fluid intelligence

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

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.

intellectual disability

a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence test score of 70 or below and difficulty adapting to the demands of life.

down syndrome

a condition of mild to severe intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21.

heritability

variation among individuals in a group that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied.