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
Algorithm
a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem
Heuristic
a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms
Insight
a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem
Confirmation Bias
a tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions
Fixation
the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an impediment to problem solving
Mental Set
a tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past
Functional Fixedness
the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions
Representativeness Heuristic
judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead one 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 one's beliefs and judgments
Framing
the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments
Belief Bias
the tendency for one's preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning, sometimes by making invalid conclusions seem valid, or valid conclusions seem invalid
Belief Perseverance
clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited
Artificial Intelligence
a subdiscipline of computer science that attempts to simulate human thinking
Computer Neural Networks
Computer circuits that mimic the brain's interconnected neural cells, performing tasks such as learning to recognize visual patterns and smells
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
Morpheme
in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix)
Grammar
in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others
Semantics
the set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language; also, the study of meaning
Syntax
the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language
Babbling Stage
beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the 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 two word statements
Telegraphic Speech
early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram--'go car'--using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting 'auxiliary' words
Linguistic Determinism
Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think