Psychology Unit 3: Cognition, Language, Problem-Solving, and Intelligence
Psychology Unit 3
ITEM 1: Basic Concepts and Units of Thought
– Cognition: The action and effect of knowing.
– Thinking: The action and effect of thinking.
– Mental Representations: Parts of our knowledge and the main elements of knowledge, such as symbols and signs.
– Category: A class that is a classification of attributes.
– Definition: A mental representation of an event, object, attribute, etc.
– Dialectic: A method to solve problems that are carried out by comparing, contrasting, and opposing facts or ideas.
– Cognitive Schemes: An integrated mental range of knowledge, beliefs, and expectations.
– Trial: A reasoned review that someone conducts on a person or thing.
– Proposition: A unit of meaning that is made of concepts and expresses a single idea.
– Thing Representations: Similar to a mental image, capturing some of the current characteristics of what it represents.
– Re-symbolic Representations: These are mental representations that have no direct relationship with the thing they represent.
– Denotative Meaning: The objective definition of a word. The definition found in a dictionary.
– Connotative Meaning: The meaning a person gives a word; therefore, it is subjective and does not appear in a dictionary.
ITEM 2: Language!
– Keywords: Simple elements.
– Sounds: Primary elements.
– Vocal Apparatus: Organs that enable human language.
– Noam Chomsky: Language is learned through the environment.
– Phoneme: The smallest unit of sound, and continues to combine in sequences to form words.
– Allophone: The sound of the proper pronunciation of a phoneme.
– Grammar: A system of rules that allows us to communicate and understand others.
– Lexeme: The part of a word which remains unchanged in all the words of one family.
– Morpheme: The smallest unit of language that carries meaning.
– Morphology: The part of linguistics that studies the rules of composition and derivation of words.
– Semantic Rules System: Derives the meaning of words, morphemes, and sentences in a language.
– Syntax: The rules of a language to combine words into grammatical sentences.
ITEM 3: Troubleshooting
Strategies: Mechanical, understanding, heuristics, insight, functional fixedness.
– Mechanical: Relying on strategies that seem familiar.
– Understanding: Understanding the problems in their entirety. Steps:
- Reassessing the situation
- Learning from experience
- Making social comparisons
- Cultivating a sense of humor
– Cognitive Strategies: Reflective processes which deal with the mechanisms required to tackle a task or solve a problem.
– Heuristics: These rules help to solve a problem but do not guarantee an optimal solution.
– Insight: The ability to realize an awareness of something that suddenly happens in our mind.
– Analogy: Comparing two or more objects or situations, indicating the individual and general characteristics, looking for similarities between them.
– Autoimmune: A disease wherein the immune system becomes the aggressor and attacks part of the body instead of defending it.
– Functional Fixedness: A mindset that makes us perceive an object to serve only one function, when the solution of the problem requires a different way of seeing.
– Inventory: A group of property with which you have.
ITEM 4: Types of Thought
– Convergent Thinking: Thought that moves in a conventional and determined manner.
– Divergent Thinking: Thought that uses creative thinking.
– Creative Thinking: Generating new, useful, and original ideas.
Phases:
- Ideation: The phase of imagination.
- Evaluation: The time to use critical thinking.
- Decision: Effective ideas that can be implemented.
- Implementation: Results to be expected.
– Fantasies: Mental production using the imagination to represent a desire that can be conscious or unconscious.
– Consistency: A property that is durable, strong, and stable.
– Display: The ability to generate a mental image.
– Preparation: Defining the problem.
– Illumination: Skill used to delve into the depths.
– Verification: Review of the solution.
ITEM 5: Intelligence
– Algorithm: A well-ordered and finite list of operations that can solve a problem.
– Factor Analysis: A method that analyzes groups of measures that are highly correlated and thus measure the same factor.
– IQ: Intelligence measure obtained by dividing the mental age by the chronological age and multiplying the result by 100.
– Normal Distribution: A symmetrical distribution curve, shaped like a bell, that represents a pattern in which many features are dispersed.
– Mental Age: A measure of mental development expressed in terms of the average mental ability of an individual of a given age.
– Factor G: Talents and skills of the person are related to general intellectual ability.
– Intelligence: The ability to acquire knowledge, to learn from experience, think abstractly, act purposefully, or adapt to the environment.
– Emotional Intelligence: The ability to identify emotions in yourself and other people in a realistic way and to express your emotions clearly.
– Dialectical Thinking: A method of questioning, reasoning, and interpretation.
– Heuristic Thinking: Thinking creatively used to solve problems; the ability to use the mind immediately for positive developments in decision-making.
– Psychometrics: The measure of mental abilities, characteristics, and processes.
– Deductive Reasoning: Reasoning where the conclusion necessarily follows from the given premises.
– Inductive Reasoning: A type of reasoning that draws general conclusions from particular premises.
– Reactive: Refers to the questions found on a psychometric test.