| Question | Answer |
| Thinking | mental activity that involves understanding, manipulating, and communicating information. |
| Symbol | an object or an act that stands for something else. |
| Concept | a mental structure used to categorize objects, people, or events that share similar characteristics. |
| Prototype | an original model on which others in the same category are patterned. |
| Algorithm | a problem solving strategy that eventually leads to a situation; usually involves trying random solutions to a problem in a systematic way. |
| Heuristic | a strategy for making judgements and solving problems. |
| Difference Reduction | a problem solving method that involves reducing the difference between the present situation and the desired one. |
| Means-end Analysis | a heuristic device in which a solution to a problem is found by evaluating the difference between the current situation and the goal. |
| Incubation Effect | the tendency to arrive at a solution after a period of time away from the problem |
| Mental Set | the tendency to approach a new problem in a way that has been successful in the past |
| Functional Fixedness | a barrier to problem solving that involves the tendency to think of objects only in terms of their common uses |
| Convergent Thinking | thinking that is limited to available facts |
| Divergent Thinking | a thought process that attempts to generate multiple solutions to a problem. |
| Reasoning | the process of drawing logical conclusions from the facts and arguments. |
| Deductive Reasoning | a form of thinking in which conclusions are inferred from premises; the conclusions are true if the premises are true. |
| Premise | a statement or assertion that serves as the basis for an argument |
| Inductive Reasoning | a form of thinking that involves using individual cases or particular facts to reach a general conclusion |
| Confirmation Bias | the tendency to look for information that confirms one’s preconceived notions |
| Representativeness Heuristic | the process of making decisions about a sample according to the population that the sample appears to represent |
| Availability Heuristic | the tendency to make decisions on the basis of information that is available in one’s immediate consciousness |
| Anchoring Heuristic | the process of making decisions based on certain ideas or standards held by the decision maker |
| Framing Effect | the influence of wording, or the way in which information is presented, on decision making |
| Language | the communication of ideas through sounds and symbols that are arranged according to the rules of grammar |
| Phoneme | the basic sound unit in a spoken language |
| Morpheme | the smallest meaningful unit of language, such as prefix or suffix |
| Syntax | the ways in which words and phrases are arranged into grammatical sentences |
| Semantics | the studying in language; the relationship between language and the objects depicted by the language |
| Overregulation | 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 |
| Language Acquisition Device | according to Chomsky, the inborn ability of humans to acquire language |
