Class 8: Thought, Language, & Intelligence

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What is cognition?

Back

The mental activities of acquiring, storing, retrieving, and using knowledge.

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What is a concept?

Back

A mental representation of a group or category that shares similar characteristics. Artificial concepts have formal rules and are sharply defined (e.g., equilateral triangle).

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What is a prototype?

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A representation of the 'best or most typical example' of a category. Natural concepts are a type of prototype that are not sharply defined but have broad categories (e.g., birds).

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What is divergent thinking?

Back

Thinking that produces many alternatives from a single starting point; a major element of creativity (e.g., finding as many uses as possible for a paper clip).

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What are some barriers to problem-solving?

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Mental set: persisting in using past strategies; Functional fixedness: preferring information that confirms preexisting beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence.

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What are the stages of language acquisition?

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Prelinguistic (birth to 12 months): crying, cooing, babbling. Linguistic (beyond 12 months): babbling resembles language, overextension, telegraphic speech, overgeneralization.

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What is the nurturist viewpoint of acquiring language?

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Children learn language through a system of rewards, punishments, and imitation.

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What is intelligence?

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The global capacity to think rationally, act purposefully, and deal effectively with the environment. It includes fluid (innate) and crystallized (experience-based) intelligence.

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What is Gardner's Theory of Intelligence?

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There are multiple forms of intelligence, and their value may change according to culture.

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What is Sternberg's Triarchic Theory of Intelligence?

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Intelligence has three aspects: analytic (analysis, evaluation), creative (invention, imagination), and practical (application, execution). These are learned, not genetic.