cognition
all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
cognitive psychologists
psychologists who study the way people think, remember, mentally organize information, concept formation, decision making, judgement formation, and problem solving
prototype
a mental image or best example of a category. provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories
- matching new items to the prototype provides a quick and easy method for organization
- prototypes in cognitive psychology are fairly simila
insight
a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem
- a0ha experience
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
convergent thinking
a type of critical thinking in which one evaluates existing possible solutions to a problem to choose the best one
- thinking sbout a question in terms of figuring out the one right answer
- most learning that occurs in schools is done convergently
divergent thinking
a type of creative thinking in which one generates new solutions to problems
- thinking about a question in terms of many possible correct answer (name as many things as you can that are round)
- this is a more creative way of problem solving
Fixation
the inability to see a problem from the perspective needed to find a solution
functional fixedness
the tendency to think of things only in terms of the uses for which they were originally created
mental set
A tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, especially a way that has been successful in the past but may or may not be helpful in solving a new problem
overconfidence bias
the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments
- often the ost confident people are the most overconfident
confirmation bias
the tendency to only acknowledge information that justifies ones preconceptions
- this is a dangerous bias for reasearchers whoa re hiping for a certain effect of a technique or drug-- if you look for it, you will probably find it
representativeness heuristic
judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes/schemas; 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 (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common
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
- essentially, one is proven wrong, but continues to think and act based on their same arroneous thinking
- in some ways, this can be thoght of as a type
Framing
the way information/questions is presented so as to emphasize either a potential gain or a potential loss as the outcome
language
our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning
Dialect
A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, and by its use by a group of speakers who are set off from others geographically or socially
phoneme
in language, the smallest distinctive sound unit
- english has about 42
- linguists have identified 869 different ones in all human languages
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
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
-(how we put words together in a way that makes sense)
babbling stage
beginning at about 3 to 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language
holophrastic stage
the second stage of language acquisition: in this stage the child speaks one-word sentences
- from about age 1 to 2
telegraphic stage
early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram--'go car'--using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting 'auxiliary' words
- beginning about age 2
- mostly 2 word statements which are often poorly conjugated pairing of noun and verb, or an adjectiv
syntax stage
the child has learned and is capable of using appropriate word order
- starting between 3 and 4 continuing into adulthood
critical period
an optimal period shortly after birth when an organism's exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces proper development
Operant Learning Theory
asserts that learning occurs only through the making and subsequent reinforcement of behavior
- language is learned through consequences
- B.F. skinner
Inborn Universal Grammar
Chomsky opposed Skinner's ideas and suggested that the rate of language acquisition is so fast that it cannot be explained through learning principles, and thus most of it is inborn.
- the potential for language os "hard wired: into our brains (called a l
statistical learning
- takes a person between skinner and chmsky by acknowledging the role of learning as well as a hard-wired LAD
- it says that we have an inborn ability to learn language, but learning occurs not solely based on consequence, but on experience, during which
Pruning
When applied to brain development, the process by which unused connections in the brain atrophy and die.
linguistic determinism
Whorf's hypothesis that language determines/influeences the way we think and the way we think influences the language we possess
- benjamin whorfts
Clever Hans
A horse that was claimed to have been able to perform math and other intellectual tasks. It was determined that the horse wasn't actually performing these mental tasks but was watching the reaction of the human observers.
Wolfgang Kohler and the chimps
Put forward the result of the theory of insight learning
computer neural networks
Computer circuits that mimic the brain's interconnected neural cells, performing tasks such as learning to recognize visual patterns and smells