| cognitive psychology | The branch of psychology that focuses on the study of higher mental processes, including thinking, language, memory, problem solving, knowing, reasoning, judging, and decision making.
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| thinking | The manipulation of mental representations of information.
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| mental images | Representations in the mind of an object or event.
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| concepts | A mental grouping of similar objects, events, or people.
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| prototypes | Typical, highly representative examples of a concept.
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| syllogistic reasoning | Formal reasoning in which people draw a conclusion from a set of assumptions.
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| algorithm | A rule that, if applied appropriately, guarantees a solution to a problem.
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| heuristic | A thinking strategy that may lead us to a solution to a problem or decision, but- unlike algorithms-may sometimes lead to errors.
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| means-ends analysis | Involves repeated tests for differences between the desired outcome and what currently exists.
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| insight | A sudden awareness of the relationships among various elements that had previously appeared to be independent of one another.
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| functional fixedness | The tendency to think of an object only in terms of its typical use.
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| mental set | The tendency for old patterns of problem solving to persist.
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| confirmation bias | The tendency to seek out and weight more heavily information that supports one's initial hypotheses and to ignore contradictory information that supports alternative hypotheses or solutions.
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| creativity | The ability to generate original ideas or solve problems in novel ways.
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| divergent thinking | The ability to generate unusual, yet nonetheless appropriate, responses to problems or questions.
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| convergent thinking | The ability to produce responses that are based primarily on knowledge and logic.
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| language | The communication of information through symbols arranged according to systematic rules.
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| grammar | The system of rules that determine how our thoughts can be expressed.
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| phonology | The study of the smallest units of speech, called phonemes.
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| phonemes | The smallest units of speech.
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| syntax | Ways in which words and phrases can be combined to form sentences.
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| semantics | The rules governing the meaning of words and sentences.
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| babble | Meaningless speechlike sounds made by children from around the age of 3 months through 1 year.
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| telegraphic speech | Sentences in which words not critical to the message are left out.
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| overgeneralization | The phenomenon by which children apply language rules even when the application results in an error.
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| learning-theory approach (to language development) | The theory that language acquisition follows the principles of reinforcement and conditioning.
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| nativist approach (to language development) | The theory that a genetically determined, innate mechanism directs language development.
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| universal grammar | Noam Chomsky's theory that all the world's languages share a common underlying structure.
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| language-acquisition device | A neural system of the brain hypothesized by Noam Chomsky to permit understanding of language.
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| interactionist approach (to language development) | The view that language development is produced through a combination of genetically determined predispositions and environmental circumstances that help teach language.
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| linguistic-relativity hypothesis | The notion that language shapes and may determine the way people in a particular culture perceive and understand the world.
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