Thought And Language

Question 1

Manipulating mental representations for a purpose.

Answer 1

Thinking

Question 2

People think using:

Answer 2

Mental images and mental models

Question 3

A visual representation of a stimulus.

Answer 3

Mental image

Question 4

Representations that describe, explain or predict the way things work.

Answer 4

Mental model

Question 5

A mental representation of a class of objects, ideas or events that share common properties.

Answer 5

Concept

Question 6

Groupings based on common properties.

Answer 6

Categories

Question 7

In problem solving, these are shortcuts or rules of thumb.

Answer 7

Heuristics

Question 8

Most of the time, people rely on these cognitive shortcuts that allow them to make rapid judgements but can sometimes lead to irrational choices.

Answer 8

Heuristics

Question 9

The conscious manipulation of representations.

Answer 9

Explicit cognition

Question 10

Cognition outside awareness.

Answer 10

Implicit cognition

Question 11

The theory that asserts that most cognitive processes occur simultaneously through the action of multiple, activated networks.

Answer 11

Connectionism, or parallel distributed processing.

Question 12

The process by which people generate and evaluate arguments and beliefs.

Answer 12

Reasoning

Question 13

The process of transforming one situation into another to meet a goal.

Answer 13

Problem solving

Question 14

The process by which an individual weighs the pros and cons of different alternatives in order to make a choice.

Answer 14

Decision making

Question 15

The system of symbols, sounds, meanings and rules for their combination that constitutes the primary mode of communication among humans.

Answer 15

Language

Question 16

The theory that language shapes thought, thought shapes language, and language evolves to express new concepts.

Answer 16

Whorfian hypothesis of linguistic relativity

Question 17

The process of using rules to transform sounds and symbols into meaningful language.

Answer 17

Grammar

Question 18

The way language is used and understood in everyday life.

Answer 18

Pragmatics

Question 19

The way people speak, hear, read and write in interconnected sentences.

Answer 19

Discourse

Question 20

The ideal time to gain fluency in a language.

Answer 20

First three years of life.

Question 21

The stages of speech acquisition.

Answer 21

Babbling, one-word, two-word, holophrastic, fluency.

Question 22

Speech used by children that leaves out all but the essential words.

Answer 22

Telegraphic speech

Question 23

The ability to attribute mental states to oneself and to others, enabling social interaction to occur.

Answer 23

Theory of mind

Question 24

Essential or present qualities needed to classify the object as a member of the category.

Answer 24

Defining features

Question 25

A typical mental example of a category of things.

Answer 25

Prototype

Question 26

A particularly good example of a category.

Answer 26

Exemplar

Question 27

The level people tend to use in categorising objects

Answer 27

Basic level

Question 28

The level of categorisation to which people naturally go; the level at which objects share distinctive common attributes.

Answer 28

Basic level

Question 29

A level of categorisation below the basic level in which more specific attributes are shared by members of a category.

Answer 29

Subordinate level

Question 30

The most abstract level of categorisation in which members of a category share few common features.

Answer 30

Superordinate level

Question 31

Reasoning from specific observations to more general propositions.

Answer 31

Inductive reasoning

Question 32

Identifying an object as belonging to a category.

Answer 32

Categorisation

Question 33

The process by which people understand a novel situation in terms of a familiar one.

Answer 33

Analogical reasoning

Question 34

Systematic procedures that produce a solution to a problem.

Answer 34

Algorithm

Question 35

Mentally imagining the steps involved in solving a problem before doing them.

Answer 35

Mental simulation

Question 36

The tendency for people to ignore other possible functions of an object when they have a fixed function in mind.

Answer 36

Functional fixedness

Question 37

The tendency to use the same problem solving techniques that have worked in the past.

Answer 37

Mental set

Question 38

The tendency for people to search for confirmation of what they already believe.

Answer 38

Confirmation bias

Question 39

Unrealistic optimism

Answer 39

Optimism bias

Question 40

A tendency to overestimate how successful our predictions could have been once the outcome is known and when the event itself was predictable.

Answer 40

Hindsight bias

Question 41

In expectancy value theory, a combined measure of the importance of an attribute and how well a given option satisfies it.

Answer 41

Weighted utility value

Question 42

A combined assessment of the value and probability of different options.

Answer 42

Expected utility

Question 43

A cognitive shortcut used to assess whether an object or incident belongs in a particular class.

Answer 43

Representativeness heuristic

Question 44

A strategy that leads people to judge the frequency of a class of events or the likelihood of something happening on the basis of how easy it is to retrieve from explicit memory.

Answer 44

Availability heuristic

Question 45

People are rational within constraints imposed by their environment, goals and abilities.

Answer 45

Bounded rationality

Question 46

An area in the brain that plays a central role in working memory and explicit manipulation of representations.

Answer 46

Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

Question 47

An area in the brain that helps people use their emotional reactions to guide decision making and behaviour.

Answer 47

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Question 48

The elements of language.

Answer 48

Phonemes, morphemes, phrases and sentences.

Question 49

The rules that govern the meanings of morphemes, words, phrases and sentences.

Answer 49

Semantics

Question 50

When answers to seemingly insoluble problems come to mind after the problem has been put aside.

Answer 50

Implicit problem solving