 | Term | Definition |
| |
cognition |
the mental activities involved in acquiring, retaining, and using knowledge |
| |
thinking |
the manipulation of mental representations of information in order to draw inferences and conclusions |
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mental image |
a mental representation of objects or events that are not physically present |
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concept |
a mental category of objects or ideas based on properties they share |
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formal concept |
a mental category that is formed by learning the rules or features that define it |
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natural concept |
a mental category that is formed as a result of everyday experience |
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prototype |
the most typical instance of a particular concept |
| |
exemplars |
individual instances of a concept or category, held in memory |
| |
problem solving |
thinking and behavior directed toward attaining a goal that is not readily available. |
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trail and error |
a problem solving strategy that involves attempting difference solutions and eliminating those that do not work |
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algorithm |
a problem solving strategy that involves following a specific rule, procedure, or method that inevitable produces a correct solution |
| |
heuristic |
a problem solving strategy that involves following a general rule of thumb to reduce the number of possible solutions |
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insight |
the sudden realization of how a problem can be solved |
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intuition |
coming to a conclusion or making a judgement without conscious awareness of the thought processes invovled |
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functional fixedness |
the tendency to view objects as functioning only in thier usual or customary way |
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mental set |
the tendency to persist in solving problems with solutions that have worked in the past |
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availability heuristic |
a strategy in which the likelihood of an event is estimated on the basis of how readily available other instances of the event are in memory |
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representativeness heuristic |
a strategy in which the likelihood of an event is estimated by comparing how similar it is to the prototype of the event |
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language |
a system for combining arbitrary symbols to produce an infinite number of meaningful statements |
| |
linguistic relativity hypothesis |
the hypothesis that differences among languages cause differences in the thoughts of their speakers |
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animal cognition |
the study of animal learning, memory, thinking, and language; also called comparative cognition |
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intelligence |
the global capacity to think rationally, act purposefully, and deal effectively with the environment |
| |
mental age |
a measurement of intelligence in which an individual's mental level is expressed in terms of the average abilities of a given age group |
| |
intelligence quotient |
a measure of general intelligence derived by comparing an individual's score with the scores of others in the same age group |
| |
achievement test |
a test designed to measure a person's level of knowledge, skill, or accomplishment in a particular area. |
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aptitude test |
a test designed to assess a person's capacity to benefit from education or training |
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standardization |
the administration of a test to a large, representative sample of people under uniform conditions for the purpose of establishing norms. |
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normal cure |
aka normal distribution a bell shaped distribution of individual differences in a normal population in which most scores cluster around the average score |
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reliability |
the ability of a test to produce consistent results when administered on repeated occasions under similar conditions |
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validity |
the ability of a test to measure what it is intended to measure |
| |
g factor |
the notion of a general intelligence factor that is responsible for a person's overall performance on tests of mental ability aka general intelligence |
| |
triarchic theory of intelligence |
sternberg's theory that there are three distinct forms of intelligence; analytic, creative, and practical |
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heritability |
the percentage of variation within a given population that is due to heredity |
| |
stereotype threat |
a psychological predicament in which fear that ou will be evaluated in terms of a negative stereotype about a group to which you belong creates anxiety and self-doubt, lowering performance in a particualr domain that is important to you |
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