Unit Iii-Thinking Skills: Thinking Can Refer To The Act of Producing Thoughts or The Process of Producing
Unit Iii-Thinking Skills: Thinking Can Refer To The Act of Producing Thoughts or The Process of Producing
Unit Iii-Thinking Skills: Thinking Can Refer To The Act of Producing Thoughts or The Process of Producing
(Reshma S., Arun Lawrence, Dr. Jayesh Patidar, Miles Therese Granada)
Nature
Thinking can refer to the act of producing thoughts or the process of producing
thoughts. In spite of the fact that thought is a fundamental human activity familiar to
understanding its physical and metaphysical origins, processes, and effects has been
Thinking allows humans to make sense of, interpret, represent or model the world they
organism with needs, objectives, and desires as it makes plans or otherwise attempts
Ross:
“Thinking is a mental activity in its cognitive aspect or mental activity with regard to
psychological aspects”.
Garrett:
“Thinking is a behaviour which is often implicit and hidden and in which symbols are
ordinarily employed”.
Some limit in the definition of thinking is as follows:
2. Thinking is a reasonable working of various views with the knowledge that has
been stored in the mind long before the emergence of new knowledge.
information from the environment and the symbols are stored in the memory of
his past.
thinking.
1. Trial and error It took a long time (Short Term Memory). Trial and error is to
try to resolve if one tried to repeat it will know where lies the fault.
2. Informational Retrieval retrieve the information for solving problems quickly
differences between the situation with the desired objectives through the
intermediary of a way.
Tools of Thinking:
1. Images:
heard and felt. These mental pictures symbolize actual objects, experiences and
activities. In thinking, we usually manipulate the images rather than the actual objects,
experiences or activities.
2. Concepts:
A concept is a general idea that stands for a general class and represents the common
economize the efforts in thinking, for example, when we hear the word ‘elephant’ we
are at once reminded not only about the nature and qualities of elephant as a class
but also our own experiences and understanding of them come to the surface in our
Symbols and signs represent and stand for substitute of the actual objects,
experiences and activities. For example, traffic lights, railway signals, school bells,
badges, songs, flags and slogans all are symbolic expressions, they stimulate and
4. Language:
Is the most efficient and developed vehicle used for carrying out the process of
gesture in any language one is stimulated to think. Thus reading and writing of
documents and literature also help in stimulating and promoting the thinking process.
5. Muscular activities:
Thinking in one way or the other shows the evidence of the involvement of some
incipient movements of groups of our muscles. A high positive relation has been found
to exist for the thinking and muscular activities of an individual. The more we engage
ourselves in thought, the greater is the general muscular tension and conversely as
Whatever may be the role of the muscles, thinking is primarily a function of the brain.
Our mind is said to be the chief instrument of the thinking process. The experiences
registered by our sense organs have no meaning, and thus cannot serve as
stimulating agents, or instruments for thinking unless these impressions are received
The mental pictures or images can be stored, reconstructed or put to use only on being
processed by the brain. What happens in our thought process is simply the function
ELEMENT OF THOUGHT
Thought (also called thinking) – the mental process in which beings form
solving, reason and make decisions. Thought, the act of thinking, produces thoughts.
A thought may be an idea, an image, a sound or even an emotional feeling that arises
brain – organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate
jellyfish, adult sea squirts and starfish do not have a brain). It is the physical
computer (see § Machine thought below) – general purpose device that can be
living creatures possess the cognitive abilities to learn, form concepts, understand,
comprehend ideas, plan, problem solve, make decisions, retaining, and use
think.
A type of mental process – something that individuals can do with their minds.
sense.
b. Comparison - compare these features to be found traits - traits which are the
same, which is not the same, which is always there and which ones do not
always exist where the essential and which are not essential.
c. Abstraction, that is set aside, dispose, traits that are not essential, capturing
terms or more. The opinions expressed in the language called the sentence,
something, for example Franzel was clever, and aswell as Yyah….and so on.
b. Negative opinion, the repeal That opinion, which clearly explains the absence
of anything thing else on the nature of things: For example Mikkha is ugly and
so skinny.
nature of things: for example it might rain today, Miles might not come. And so
on.
act makes sense to form a new opinion based on the opinions that already exist. There
b. Deductive conclusions Deductive decision drawn from the general to the specific,
TYPES of THINKING
1. Perceptual or Concrete Thinking:
This is the simplest form of thinking the basis of this type is perception, i.e.
thinking as it is carried out on the perception of actual or concrete objects and events.
Here one makes use of concepts, the generalized objects and languages, it is
3. Reflective Thinking:
This type of thinking aims in solving complex problems, thus it requires reorganization
This is an insightful cognitive approach in reflective thinking as the mental activity here
does not involve the mechanical trial and error type of efforts.
In this type, thinking processes take all the relevant facts arranged in a logical order
4. Creative Thinking:
This type of thinking is associated with one’s ability to create or construct something
new, novel or unusual. It looks for new relationships and associations to describe and
interpret the nature of things, events and situations. Here the individual himself usually
formulates the evidences and tools for its solution. For example; scientists, artists or
inventors.
Skinner, the famous psychologist says creative thinking means that the prediction and
inferences for the individual are new, original, ingenious and unusual. The creative
thinker is one who expresses new ideas and makes new observations, new predictions
a. Creative thinking, in all its shapes and forms is absolutely an internal mental process
behaviour.
phenomenon.
routine and final types of convergent thinking. The mind must have complete freedom
e. The field of creative thinking and its out part is quite comprehensive and built wide.
5. Critical Thinking:
It is a type of thinking that helps a person in stepping aside from his own personal
beliefs, prejudices and opinions to sort out the faiths and discover the truth, even at
Here one resorts to set higher cognitive abilities and skills for the proper interpretation,
judgement.
minded in evaluation, free from personal bias and prejudices, honest in seeking
relevant information, skilled in the proper use of the abilities like interpretation,
The critical thinking is of a higher order well-disciplined thought process which involves
the use of cognitive skills like conceptualization, interpretation, analysis, synthesis and
evaluation for arriving at an unbiased, valid and reliable judgment of the gathered or
thinking is obviously important. But critical thinking skills are not restricted to a
particular subject area. Being able to think well and solve problems
to be able to deal with changes quickly and effectively. The new economy
problems. Good critical thinking promotes such thinking skills, and is very
clearly and systematically can improve the way we express our ideas. In
learning how to analyse the logical structure of texts, critical thinking also
a problem involves not just having new ideas. It must also be the case that the
new ideas being generated are useful and relevant to the task at hand. Critical
thinking plays a crucial role in evaluating new ideas, selecting the best ones
and to structure our lives accordingly, we need to justify and reflect on our
values and decisions. Critical thinking provides the tools for this process of self-
evaluation.
who can think critically about social issues to inform their judgments about
There are times when we find ourselves engaged in a unique type of thinking which is
non-directed and without goal. It is reflected through dreaming and other free-flowing
associative thinking.
Here day-dreaming, fantasy and delusions all fall in the category of withdrawal
behaviour that helps an individual to escape from the demands of the real world by
making his thinking face non-directed and floating, placing him somewhere, ordering
A person under the influence of such delusions may think or believe that he is a
millionaire, the ruler of the universe, a great inventor, a noted historian or even God.
In contrast, a person in the grip of delusion may be inclined to be the most incapable,
unworthy and unwanted person and may develop guilt feelings or complain that he is
CONCEPT FORMATION
A concept is the sum total of what we know about the object. It refers to a generalized
idea about the objects/persons/ events. It stands for a general class and not for a
There are concepts of objects such as cat, tree, chair etc., and concept of persons
such as mother, Indian, Negro etc., and concepts of qualities such as honesty,
meaning of the objects or perceived earlier. In one sense, it is general mental image
– Morgan.
Concepts are those thoughts which mention things, incidents, qualities, etc. –
A concept is not static, it is always changing. For example first a child considers even
the walls and doors to be living things. Then it understands they are non-living,
considers cars, buses and running objects to be alive. Later, it learns that only animals
and plants are living. The concept is not common for all, different persons may have
different concept about the same object / events. Concept is a part of thought process.
Concept can be formed without the use of language. Concert formation is the
of the common features. Concepts are very useful in recognizing, naming and
1. Direct Experience: It is the first type of concept formation, in which the learner
develops concept through direct experience with the particular objects / persons /
events. It is developed during from the early childhood onwards. For example, the
2. Indirect Experience: Here the learner develops concept through pictures, photos
and reading descriptions, hearing from other. For example, the concept about
Kangaroo.
3. Faulty Concepts: The concepts or the general ideas we have about the objects,
persons or events, are not always adequate and accurate. Small children have so
many concepts that are quite erroneous and inadequate. For example, one’s anxiety
over the crossing of his way by a cat or one’s feeling of hatred towards the person
belonging to other caste or religion is the result of faulty concepts. Faulty concepts
important phases.
1. Perception: Experiences or learning in any form is the starting point of the process
learning, provide opportunities for getting mental images of the objects, persons or
events.
2. Abstraction: The mind analyses the perceived images and synthesizes what is
common to all, neglecting what is particular. This process of observing similarities and
numbers of times the child is able to generalize or form a general idea about the
EG- The child perceives a black cow at the first time and is told that it is a cow, he tries
to form an idea about it. In the beginning the idea is very particular in nature. Later
on, when he perceives a white or red cow he does not at once, call it a cow. He again
makes an enquiry and comes to that these are cows. He tries to compare the particular
mental image the idea of the previously perceived cow with the images he is having,
at present, by perceiving white and red cows. In this way he compares and contrasts
the similarities or dissimilarities of his mental images related to all perceived cows. In
spite of the differences in colour, appearance etc., they are found to possess so many
Reasoning
It is the cognitive process of looking for reasons for beliefs, conclusion, actions or
controlled thinking in which the thought process is directed consciously towards the
solutions of a problem. Reasoning is the highest form of thinking to find out causes &
Nature of Reasoning-
Reasoning does not occur unless a question has arisen for which there is no
ready answer.
It is classified into;
II. Deductive reasoning: This moves from the whole to part, from