Thinking - Cognitive Psychology

1. Thinking
SONAM MANOJ
M.PHIL CLINICAL
PSYCHOLOGY TRAINEE

2. DURING OUR
WAKING HOURS,
AND EVEN WHEN WE
ARE ASLEEP AND
DREAMING, WE ARE
THINKING.
Even when you are reading these words you are thinking!
Even if you stop thinking about what you are reading your
thoughts wander off to something else…..

3. What is thinking?
Thinking, or cognition (from a Latin word meaning “to know”), can be defined as
mental activity that goes on in the brain when a person is processing information-
organizing it, understanding it and communicating it. (Ciccarelli,1998)
Thinking consists of the cognitive rearrangements or manipulation of both
information from the environment and the symbols stored in long term memory.
(Morgan&King, 1993)

4. Building Blocks of Thoughts – How do
people think?
• Mental pictures of the
world
Mental Imagery
• Relations between
Concepts
Language/Proposition
• Categories for
understanding
experience
Concepts

5. Concepts
• Concepts that can be clearly described by the set
of rules or properties
Logical
Concepts
• Concepts that are not based on a precise set of
attributes or properties, do not have clear-cut
boundaries, and are often defined by prototypes.
Natural
Concepts

6. What/who is
this?
What made you say so?

7. Types of Thinking
Perceptual thinking
Conceptual/Concrete thinking
Creative /Abstract thinking
Reflective thinking
Critical Thinking
Free thinking/Autistic thinking

8. What is Creative thinking?
Convergent thinking Divergent thinking

9. Development of Thinking
Adequacy of the Knowledge and Experience
Adequate Motivation and Definiteness of Aims
Adequate Freedom and Flexibility
Incubation

10. Development of Thinking
Intelligence and wisdom
Proper development of concepts and language
Adequacy of reasoning process

11. Levels of thinking
Knowledge – Who, why , how, what
Comprehension – Compare, Demonstrate, Interpret
Application – Apply, Build, Construct
Analysis – Assumption, discover, survey
Synthesis – Create, Imagine, solve
Evaluation – Judge, defend, critique

12. Reasoning
Cognitive activity in which we transform information in order to
specific conclusions

13. Types of Reasoning
Inductive
Reasoning
• M is mortal, R is mortal, K is mortal , E is mortal.
Therefore, all human beings are mortal.
Deductive
Reasoning
• All human beings are mortal: you are a human
therefore, you are mortal.

14. Products of Thinking
Poetry Painting
Machine
Building
Music

15. Errors Of thinking
1. Partialism : The error occurs when thinker observes the problem through one perspective only.
2. Adversary Thinking: You’re wrong so I’m right
3. Time Scale errors: This is a kind of partialism where the thinker sees the problem only from a
limited timeframe.
4. Initial judgement: The thinker became very subjective. The thinker approaches thinking with
prejudice or bias.
5. Arrogance and Conceit: The thinker believes that there is no better solution than theirs.

16. Heard of
‘Village
Venus
effect’?

17. Summary
Definition of Thinking
Building Blocks of Thoughts
Products of Thinking
Types of Thinking
Development of Thinking
Reasoning
Errors of Thinking

18. References
Wittig, A. F. (2022). Introduction to Psychology (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill.
Baron. (2022). Psychology (Adaptation) Four Colour (5th ed.). PEARSON INDIA.
Noland, W. J., & Saundra, C. G. M. K. (2017). Psychology 5Th Edition (5th ed.). Pearson India.

19. Thank you