This document provides an overview of cognition, including concepts like thinking, problem solving, creativity, and language. It discusses topics such as how we form concepts and categories, use algorithms and heuristics to solve problems, and develop creative insights. It also examines language structure, development, and the relationship between thinking and language. Key terms covered include cognition, concepts, prototypes, algorithms, heuristics, creativity, confirmation bias, and more.
20. Language Development
When Do We Learn Language?
• Receptive language
• Productive language
–Babbling stage
–One-word stage
–Two-word stage
–Telegraphic speech
28. Cognition
= the mental activities associated with
thinking, knowing, remembering, and
communicating.
29. Concept
= a mental grouping of similar objects,
events, ideas, or people.
30. Prototype
= a mental image or 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 prototypical bird, such as a robin).
31. Algorithm
= a methodical, logical rule or procedure that
guarantees solving a particular problem.
Contrasts with the usually speedier – but
also more error-prone – use of heuristics.
32. 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.
33. Insight
= a sudden and often novel realization of the
solution to a problem; it contrasts with
strategy-based solutions.
35. Confirmation Bias
= a tendency to search for information that
supports our preconceptions and to ignore
or distort contradictory evidence.
36. Fixation
= the inability to see a problem from a new
perspective, by employing a different
mental set.
37. Mental Set
= a tendency to approach a problem in one
particular way, often a way that has been
successful in the past.
38. Functional Fixedness
= the tendency to think of things only in
terms of their usual functions; an
impediment to problem solving.
39. 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.
40. 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
41. Overconfidence
= the tendency to be more confident that
correct – to over-estimate the accuracy of
our beliefs and judgments.
42. Belief Perseverance
= clinging to one’s initial conceptions after
the basis on which they are formed has
been discredited.
43. Intuition
= an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling
or thought, as contrasted with explicit,
conscious reasoning.
44. Framing
= the way an issue is posed; how an issue is
framed can significantly affect decisions
and judgments.
45. Language
= our spoken, written, or signed words and
the ways we combine them to
communicate meaning.
47. Morpheme
= in a language, the smallest unit that
carries meaning; may be a word or a part
of a word (such as a prefix).
48. Grammar
= in a language, a system of rules that
enables us to communicate with and
understand others.
49. Semantics
= the set of rules by which we derive
meaning from morphemes, words, and
sentences in a given language; also, the
study of meaning.
50. Syntax
= the rules for combining words into
grammatically sensible sentences in a
given language.
51. 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.
52. One-word Stage
= the stage in speech development, from
about age 1 to 2, during which a child
speaks mostly in single words.
53. Two-word Stage
= beginning about age 2, the stage in
speech development during which a child
speaks mostly two-word statements.
54. Telegraphic Speech
= early speech state in which a child speaks
like a telegram – “go car” – using mostly
nouns and verbs.