Chapter 8: Thinking, Intelligence, and Language

Vocabulary practice flashcards generated from the transcript covering key definitions in cognition, problem solving, biases, intelligence testing, and language development.

Cognition

The way in which information is processed and manipulated in remembering, thinking, and knowing.

Behaviorists

Psychologists prior to the 1950s who maintained that psychology must ignore unobservable mental processes and explain everything strictly in terms of stimulus and response.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

A field focusing on creating machines capable of performing activities that require intelligence when they are done by people.

Large Language Model

A modern model of AI described effectively as a vastly sophisticated autocomplete, differing from traditional cognitive science concepts of AI.

Black Box of Cognition

The unobservable cognitive processes (such as memory, reasoning, and problem solving) that occur between an incoming input or stimulus and an outgoing output or behavior.

Thinking

Mentally manipulating information to form concepts, solve problems, make decisions, and engage in critical and creative thought.

Concepts

Mental categories used to group objects, events, and characteristics, allowing individuals to generalize, associate experiences, aid memory, and obtain reaction clues.

Prototype Model

An approach to categorization stating that individuals categorize objects based on how similar they are to the average member of that concept.

Problem Solving

An application of thinking aimed at finding an appropriate way of achieving a goal when that goal is not readily accessible or available.

Sub-goals

Intermediate goals or intermediate problems defined during problem solving to put a person in a better position to reach the final goal.

Algorithms

Strategies or sets of step-by-step procedures that guarantee a single, correct solution to a problem.

Heuristics

Shortcut strategies that suggest a potential solution to a problem but do not guarantee a correct answer.

Fixation

Fixating on using a prior strategy and failing to look at a problem from a fresh, new perspective.

Functional Fixedness

A specific type of fixation where an individual fixates only on the usual, customary function of a given object.

Cognitive Flexibility

The ability to recognize options and adapt to changing situations, necessary to overcome functional fixedness.

Reasoning

The mental activity of transforming information to reach a conclusion using logic, weighing arguments, and supplying rules.

Inductive Reasoning

Bottom-up, data-driven reasoning that starts with specific incoming information or observations to form general conclusions or generalizations.

Deductive Reasoning

Top-down, logic-driven reasoning that starts with a general principle or premise and applies it to derive a specific conclusion.

Decision Making

Evaluating alternatives and making choices among them under conditions involving uncertainty.

System 1 Decisions

Automatic, fast, intuitive decision-making that follows hunches and relies heavily on heuristics, making it vulnerable to mistakes and bias.

System 2 Decisions

Controlled, slower, effortful, and analytical decision-making that involves conscious reflection.

Loss Aversion

A powerful human preference to avoid losing something compared to acquiring something new of equal value.

Endowment Effect

The tendency to assign a greater value to objects that one already owns compared to identical objects owned by someone else.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

Reluctance to abandon a venture due to past non-recoverable investments of time or money, rather than deciding based on current circumstances.

Confirmation Bias

Also known as my side bias; the tendency to search for, use, and readily accept information that confirms pre-existing beliefs while ignoring refuting evidence.

Hindsight Bias

The tendency for a person to falsely report after an event that they had predicted the outcome all along.

Availability Heuristic

Predicting or judging the likelihood of an event based on the ease of recalling or vividly imagining similar occurrences.

Base Rate Neglect Heuristic

The tendency to make decisions using vivid, striking information rather than objective statistical general information.

Representativeness Heuristic

The tendency to judge group membership based on physical appearances or matching a personal stereotype.

Bias Blind Spot

The pervasive tendency to fail to notice decision-making and cognitive biases within oneself while perceiving them in others.

Critical Thinking

Thinking reflectively and productively, evaluating evidence, questioning long-held assumptions, and critiquing one's own thoughts.

Mindfulness

Being alert and mentally present for everyday activities, actively aware of both world events and internal experiences.

Open-mindedness

Being receptive to alternative ways of looking at things and recognizing that strong convictions do not guarantee correctness.

Divergent Thinking

Thinking that produces many different answers to the same open question, commonly utilized during brainstorming.

Convergent Thinking

Thinking focused on selecting or arriving at the single best solution to a problem.

Intelligence

An all-purpose ability to do well on cognitive tasks, solve problems, and learn from experience.

Eugenics

The belief that the human species should be improved by controlling reproduction and discouraging it among those deemed to have undesirable traits.

Spearman's G

The concept that intelligence is a single, common general cognitive ability underlying performance across all cognitive tasks.

Validity

The extent to which an assessment tool or test actually measures what it intends to measure.

Criterion Validity

The degree to which a test score predicts an individual's performance when assessed by independent external measures.

Reliability

The extent to which a test yields a consistent, reproducible measurement over repeated attempts.

Standardization

The development of uniform, consistent procedures for administering and scoring a test across all participants.

Mental Age

An individual's level of mental development relative to their chronological age, calculated by Binet to determine IQ using $\text{IQ} = \left( \frac{\text{Mental Age}}{\text{Chronological Age}} \right) \times 100$.

Heritability

The proportion of variation in intelligence across a population that can be attributed to genetic differences, currently estimated at around $50\%$.

Flynn Effect

The observed phenomenon that intelligence test scores across the general population have steadily increased over time.

Giftedness

A classification assigned to individuals with an IQ score of $130$ or higher and/or superior talent in a specific domain.

Intellectual Disability

A condition of limited mental capacity characterized by an IQ score under $70$ and deficits in conceptual, social, and practical adaptive skills.

Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

Sternberg's theory stating that intelligence consists of three primary components: analytical intelligence, creative intelligence, and practical intelligence.

Gardner's Multiple Intelligences

A framework proposing nine distinct types of intelligence possessed in varying degrees by everyone: verbal, mathematical, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist, and existentialist.

Infinite Generativity

The fundamental property of language that allows humans to produce an endless number of meaningful, unique sentences.

Phonology

A language's system of sound, composed of basic structural sound units called phonemes.

Morpheme

The smallest structural unit of language that carries distinct meaning.

Syntax

The structural rules dictating how words are combined to construct acceptable phrases and sentences.

Semantics

The explicit meaning derived from words, phrases, and sentences in a language.

Pragmatics

The functional aspect of language that conveys contextual meaning beyond what is literally spoken.

Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

Worf's unsupported hypothesis asserting that language completely determines the structures and boundary of human thought.

Broca's Area

A left-hemisphere brain area involved in preparing and coordinating speech; according to the lecture, damage results in fluent-sounding but meaningless word salad.

Wernicke's Area

A brain area involved in speech production; according to the lecture, damage causes stuttering and an inability to produce coherent speech.