Cognition
the mental activities associated with thinking, knowledge, remembering, and communicating
Concept
a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people
Prototype
a mental image of best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototype-typical bird, such as a robin)
Algorithm
a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrast with the usually speedier – but also more error-prone – use of heuristics
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 the problem; it contrast with strategy-based solutions
Confirmation Bias
a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence
Fixation
the inability to see a problem from a new perspective, by employing a different mental set
Mental Set
a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past
Representativeness Heuristic
judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information
Availability Heuristic
estimating the likelihood of events based on their ability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common
Overconfidence
the tendency to be more confident than correct – to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments
Belief Perseverance
clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited
Intuition
an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning
Framing
the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments
Language
our spoken, written, or signed words and the way we combine them to communicate
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
Linguistic Determination
Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think
Intelligence
mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations
General Intelligence (g)
a general intelligence factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlie specific mental ability and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test
Factor Analysis
a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person’s score.
Savant Syndrome
a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation drawings
Creativity
the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas
Emotional Intelligence
the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions
Intelligence Test
a method of assessing an individual’s mental aptitude and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores
Mental Age
a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance. Thus, a child who does as well as an average eight year old is said to have a mental age of 8
Sanford-Binet
the widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet’s original intelligence test.
Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronicle age (ca) multiplied by a 100 (thus IQ = ma/ca x 100). On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
the WAIS is the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests
Standardization
defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group
Normal Curve
the symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extreme
Reliability
the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, or on retesting
Validity
the extent to which a test measures or predicts what is supposed to.
Context Validity
the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest
Intellectual Disability
a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to demands of life; varies from mild to profound
Down Syndrome
a condition of mild to severe intellectual disability and associated physical disorder caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21
Predictive Validity
the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior
Heritability
the proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of the population and environmental studied
Stereotype Threat
A self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype