mental activity that involves understanding, manipulating, and communicating information
What is thinking?
100
a problem-solving strategy that eventually leads to a solution; usually involves trying random solutions to a problem in a systematic way
What is algorithm?
100
the process of drawing logical conclusions from facts and arguments
What is reasoning?
100
the communication of ideas through sounds and symbols that are arranged according to the rules of grammar
What is language?
100
the ways in which words and phrases are arranged into grammatical sentences
What is syntax?
200
a mental structure used to categorize objects, people, or events that share similar characteristics
What is concept?
200
a problem-solving method that involves reducing the difference between the present situation and the desired one
What is difference reduction?
200
a statement or assertion that serves as the basis for an argument
What is premise?
200
the inborn ability of humans to acquire language
What is language acquisition device?
200
a form of thinking in which conclusions are inferred from premises; the conclusions are true if the premises are true
What is deductive reasoning?
300
an original model on which others in the same category are patterned
What is prototype?
300
a barrier to problem solving that involves the tendency to think of objects only in terms of their common uses
What is functional fixedness?
300
the tendency to make decisions on the basis of information that is available in one's immediate consciousness
What is availability heuristic?
300
the smallest unit of meaning in a language
What is morpheme?
300
a form of thinking that involves using individual cases or particular facts to reach a general conclusion
What is inductive reasoning?
400
a thought process that attempts to generate multiple solutions to a problem; nondirected thinking
What is divergent thinking?
400
the mental rearrangement of elements of a problem
What is recombination?
400
the process of making decisions about a sample according to the population that the sample appears to represent
What is representativeness heuristic?
400
the study of meaning in language; the relationship between language and the objects depicted by the language
What is semantics?
400
the tendency to approach a new problem in a way that has been successful in the past
What is mental set?
500
planning, evaluating, and monitoring mental activities; thinking about thinking
What is metacognition?
500
the tendency to arrive at a solution after a period of time away from the problem
What is incubation effect?
500
the process of making decisions based on certain ideas or standards held by the decision maker
What is anchoring heuristic?
500
the formation of plurals and the past tense of irregular nouns and verbs according to rules of grammar that apply to regular nouns and verbs; characteristic of the speech of young children
What is overregularization?
500
directed thinking; thinking that is limited to available facts