AP Psych 7-3 Vocab

Concept

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

Prototype

a mental image or best example of a category

Algorithm

step-by-step procedures that guarantee a solution

Heuristic

a simple thinking strategy 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

Creativity

the ability to produce new and valuable ideas

Mental Set

the tendency to approach a problem with the mind-set of what has worked for us previously

Representative Heuristic

To judge the likelihood of something by intuitively comparing it to particular prototypes

Availability Heuristic

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory

Belief Perseverance

our tendency to cling to our beliefs in the face of contrary evidence

Intuition

our fast, automatic, unreasoned feelings and thoughts

Framing

the way we present an issue

Language

rules for combining words or symbols used for thinking and communication

Morpheme

the smallest language units that carry meaning

Phoneme

the smallest distinctive sound unit in language

Grammar

language's set of rules that enable people to communicate

Semantics

deriving meaning from sounds

Syntax

the ordering of words when making a sentence

Telegraphic speech

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram

Linguistic Determinism

hypothesis that language controls the way we think and interpret the world around us

Convergent Thinking

Thinking directed towards a single correct answer

Divergent Thinking

Thinking that produces multiple ideas or alternatives

Deductive Thought

Applying a general rule to specific situations

Inductive Thought

A general rule is discovered from a series of specific examples

functional fixedness

the tendency to perceive an item only for its most common use