| thinking | any mental activity or processing of information including learning, remembering, perceiving, communicating, believing and deciding |
| cognitive economy | allows us to simplify what we attend to and keep the information we need for decision making to a manageable minimum |
| thin slicing | our ability to extract useful information from small bits of behaviour |
| cognitive bias | systematic error in thinking |
| representative heuristic | heuristic that involves judging the probability of an event by its superficial similarity to a prototype |
| base rate | how common a characteristic or behaviour is in the general population |
| availability heuristic | heuristic that involves estimating the likelihood of an occurrence based on the ease with which it comes to our minds |
| hindsight bias | our tendency to over-estimate how well we could have predicted something after it has already occurred |
| top-down processing | filling in the gaps of missing information using our experience and background knowledge |
| bottom-up processing | constructing meaning from something by slowly building up understanding through experience |
| concepts | our knowledge and ideas about a set of objects, actions, and characteristics that share core properties |
| decision making | the process of selecting among a set of possible alternative |
| framing | the way a question is formulated can influence the decisions people make |
| neuro-economics | researches that are interested in how the brain works while making financial decisions |
| problem solving | generating a cognitive strategy to accomplish a goal |
| algorithms | step-by-step learned procedure used to solve a problem |
| salience | how attention-grabbing something is |
| mental set | phenomenon of becoming stuck in a specific problem-solving strategy, inhibiting our ability to generate alternatives |
| functional fixedness | difficulty conceptualising that an object typically used for one purpose can be used for another |
| what are the obstacles to problem solving? | salience, mental sets, and functional fixedness |
| embodiment models | our knowledge is organised and accessed in a manner that enables us to stimulate our actual experiences |
| language | largely arbitrary system of communication that combines symbols in rule-based ways to create meaning |
| what are the four levels of analysis to study language? | phonemes, morphemes, syntax, and extralinguistic information |
| phonemes | category of sounds our vocal apparatus produces |
| morphemes | the smallest meaningful unit of speech |
| semantics | meaning derived from words and sentences |
| syntax | grammatical rules that govern how words are composed into meaningful strings |
| morphological markers | morphemes |
| extralinguistic information | elements of communication that aren't part of the content of language but are critical to interpreting its meaning |
| sensitive period | an interval during which people are more receptive to learning and can acquire new knowledge more easily |
| metalinguistic | awareness of how language is structures and used |
| generative | allowing an infinite number of unique sentences to be created by combining words in novel ways |
| nativist | account of language acquisition that suggests children are born with some basic knowledge of how language works |
| language acquisition device | hypothetical organ in the brain in which nativists believe knowledge of syntax resides |
| social pragmatics | account of language acquisition which proposes that children infer what words and sentences mean from context and social interactions |
| general cognitive processing | proposes that children's ability to learn language results from general skills children apply across a variety of activities |
| linguisitic determinism | view that all thought is represented verbally and that, as a result, our language defines our thinking |
| linguistic relativity | view that characteristics of language shape our thought processes |
| whole word recognition | reading strategy that involves identifying common words based on their appearance without having to sound them out |
| phonetic decomposition | reading strategy that involves sounding out words by drawing correspondences between printed letters and sounds |
