a summary of a chapter in introduction to psychology. mainly from Laura King's book

1. Introduction to psychology

2. ▪ Cognition refers to the
way information is
processed and
manipulated in
remembering,
thinking, and
knowing.

3. ▪ artificial intelligence (AI) A
scientific field that focuses on
creating machines capable of
performing activities that require
intelligence when they are done by
people.

4. ▪ thinking The process of
manipulating information mentally
by forming concepts, solving
problems, making decisions, and
reflecting critically or creatively.
▪ Concepts are mental categories
that are used to group objects,
events, and characteristics
(Goldstone, Kersten, & Carvalho,
2018).

5. ▪ First, they allow us to generalize.
▪ If we did not have concepts, each
object in our world would be new
to us each time we encountered it.
Imagine having to think about how
to use a chair every time you
encountered a new member of the
category chair. Concepts allow us
to navigate the world by
generalizing our experiences across
members of a category.

6. ▪ Second, concepts allow us to
associate experiences and objects.
Baseball, soccer, and track are
sports. The concept sport gives us
a way to compare these activities.
Concepts provide the net that
captures the various objects, ideas,
and activities that constitute an
abstract idea.

7. ▪ Third, concepts make memory
more efficient. Remember the
concept of chunking in memory.
Because we have a concept, many
different items can be unified into
a chunk, facilitating memory.
▪ Fourth, concepts provide clues
about how to react to an object or
experience.

8. ▪ problem solving The mental
process of finding an appropriate
way to attain a goal when the goal
is not readily available.

9. ▪ 1. Find and Frame Problems
Recognizing that a problem exists
and then considering exactly what
the problem involves—that is,
clearly defining it—are the first
steps in solving a problem.
▪ problems are ill defined or vague

10. 2. Develop Good Problem-Solving
Strategies Once we find a problem
and clearly define it, we need to
develop strategies for solving it.
Algorithms are strategies that
guarantee a solution to a problem;
they lead to a single answer that is
the correct solution.

11. ▪ Heuristics are shortcut strategies
or guidelines that suggest a
solution to a problem but do not
guarantee an answer (Bobadilla-
Suarez & Love, 2018; Stanovich,
2018).

12. 3. Evaluate Solutions Once we think
we have solved a problem, we will
not know how effective our solution
is until we find out whether it works.
4. Rethink and Redefine Problems
and Solutions over Time An
important final step in problem
solving is to rethink and redefine
problems continually.

13. ▪ fixation Using a prior strategy and
failing to look at a problem from a
new perspective.
▪ functional fixedness Failing to
solve a problem as a result of
fixation on a thing’s usual
functions.

15. ▪ Reasoning is the mental activity of
transforming information to reach
a conclusion.

16. ▪ inductive reasoning Reasoning
from specific observations to make
generalizations.
▪ deductive reasoning Reasoning
from a general case that is known
to be true to a specific instance.

17. ▪ decision making The mental
activity of evaluating alternatives
and choosing among them.

19. ▪ hindsight bias The tendency to
report falsely, after the fact, that
one has accurately predicted an
outcome.
▪ availability heuristic refers to a
prediction about the probability of
an event based on the ease of
recalling or imagining similar
events
▪ base rate neglect The tendency to
ignore information about general
principles in favor of very specific
and vivid information.

20. ▪ representativeness heuristic is the
tendency to make judgments
about group membership based on
physical appearance or the match
between a person and one’s
stereotype of a group rather than
on available base rate information
(Gualtieri & Denison, 2018).

21. ▪ Critical thinking means thinking
reflectively and productively and
evaluating the evidence.
▪ Mindfulness means being alert
and mentally present for one’s
everyday activities.
▪ Open-mindedness means being
receptive to other ways of looking
at things.

22. ▪ divergent thinking Thinking that
produces many solutions to the
same problem.
▪ convergent thinking Thinking that
produces the single best solution
to a problem.
▪ creativity The ability to think about
something in novel and unusual
ways and to devise unconventional
solutions to problems.

23. ▪ Flexibility and playful thinking:
Creative thinkers are flexible and
play with problems. This trait gives
rise to the paradox that, although
creativity takes hard work, the
work goes more smoothly if it is
taken lightly.
▪ Inner motivation: Creative people
often are motivated by the joy of
creating.

24. ▪ Willingness to face risk: Creative
people make more mistakes than
their less imaginative counterparts
because they come up with more
ideas and more possibilities.
▪ Objective evaluation of work:
Most creative thinkers strive to
evaluate their work objectively.

25. ▪ intelligence An all-purpose ability
to do well on cognitive tasks, to
solve problems, and to learn from
experience.

26. ▪ criteria for a good intelligence test: validity, reliability, and standardization.
▪ validity refers to the extent to which a test measures what it is intended to measure.
▪ reliability The extent to which a test yields a consistent, reproducible measure of
performance.
▪ standardization The development of uniform procedures for administering and
scoring a test and the creation of norms (performance standards) for the test.

27. ▪ mental age (MA) An individual’s
level of mental development
relative to that of others.
▪ The German psychologist William
Stern devised the term intelligence
quotient (IQ) in 1912.
▪ IQ consists of an individual’s
mental age divided by
chronological age, multiplied by
100: intelligence quotient (IQ) An
individual’s mental age divided by
chronological age, multiplied by
100.
IQ = (MA/CA) × 100

28. ▪ IQ tests like the Stanford-Binet and the Wechsler scales have been given to
thousands upon thousands of children and adults.
▪ When the scores for many people are examined, they approximate a normal
distribution.
▪ A distribution refers to the frequencies of scores on a scale—basically, how many
people receive each of the possible scores.
▪ A normal distribution is a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve, with a majority of the
scores falling in the middle of the possible range and few scores appearing toward
the extremes of the range.

30. ▪ Culture-fair tests are
intelligence tests that
are intended to be
culturally unbiased.

32. ▪ Intellectual disability (or
intellectual developmental
disorder) is a condition of limited
mental ability that affects
functioning in three domains:
intellectual disability or intellectual
developmental disorder A
condition of limited mental ability
that affects an individual’s
functioning in everyday life.

33. ▪ Language is a form of
communication—whether spoken,
written, or signed— based on a
system of symbols

34. ▪ phonology A language’s sound
system.
▪ morphology A language’s rules for
word formation.
▪ syntax A language’s rules for
combining words to form
acceptable phrases and sentences.
▪ semantics The meaning of words
and sentences in a particular
language.
▪ pragmatics The useful character of
language and the ability of
language to communicate even
more meaning than is verbalized.

36. ▪ Language is a form of
communication n—whether
spoken, written, or signed—that is
based on a system of symbols.

37. ▪ Phonology is a language’s sound
system.
▪ Morphology is a language’s rules
for word formation.
▪ Syntax is a language’s rules for
combining words to form
acceptable phrases and sentences
(Moody, Baker, & Blacher, 2018;
White, Hacquard, & Lidz, 2018).
▪ Semantics is the meaning of words
and sentences in a particular
language.
▪ Pragmatics is the useful character
of language and the ability of
language to communicate even
more meaning than is said (Ninio &
Snow, 2018).

38. ▪ Is thought dependent on language
or is language dependent on
thought?

39. ▪ Language helps us think, make
inferences, tackle difficult
decisions, and solve problems.
▪ It is also a tool for representing
ideas.

40. ▪ the possibility that people might
perceive the world differently as
the result of the different
languages they speak.

41. ▪ the relationship between language
and cognition is complex.

42. ▪ BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE
▪ Language Universals American
linguist Noam Chomsky (1975)
argued that humans come into the
world biologically prewired to
learn language at a certain time
and in a certain way.

43. ▪ ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES
▪ the environment is crucial to
language development; to
stimulate children at the “critical
period” for language development

45. ▪ Cognitive Appraisal and Stress
▪ cognitive appraisal Interpreting
the events and experiences in
one’s life as harmful and
threatening, or as challenging, and
determining whether one has the
resources to cope effectively.
▪ coping Managing taxing
circumstances, expending effort to
solve life’s problems, and seeking
to master or reduce stress.

46. ▪ Primary appraisal involves our
immediate reactions to an event.
▪ Secondary appraisal means
evaluating our resources and
determining how effectively they
can be used to cope with the event
▪ cognitive reappraisal Regulating
one’s feelings about an experience
by reinterpreting that experience
or thinking about it in a different
way or from a different angle.