AP Psychology Unit 7B Vocabulary

The mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

A mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a this provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin).

A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier-but also more error-prone use of heuristics.

A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms.

A sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contrasts with strategy-based solutions.

The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.

A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.

The inability to see a problem from a new perspective, by employing a different mental set.

A tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past.

The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving.

Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes, may lead us to ignore other relevant information.

Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume events are common.

The tendency to be more confident than correct-to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.

Clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.

An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoing.

The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments.

Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

In language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.

In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix).

In a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others.

The set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in given language; also, the study of meaning.

The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language.

Beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.

The stage in speech development, from about 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words.

Beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two-word statements.

Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram-"go car"-using mostly nouns and verbs.

Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think.