| A | B |
|---|
| algorithm | a mechanical, repetitive procedure for solving a problem |
| attention | the tendency to respond to some stimuli more than others or to remember some more than others |
| attentional blink | a brief period after perceiving a stimulus, during which it is difficult to attend to anohter stimulus |
| attentive process | a procedure that extracts information from one part of the visual field at a time |
| availability heuristic | the strategy of assuming that how easily one can remember examples of some kind of event indicates how common the event actually is |
| base-rate information | data about the frequency or probabilty of a given item |
| bilingual | able to use two languages about equally well |
| Broca's aphasia | a condition characterized by inarticulate speech and by difficulties with both using and understanding grammatical devices - prepositions, conjunctions, word endings, complex sentence structures and so forth |
| change blindness | the tendency to fail to detect changes in any part of a scene to which we are not focusing our attention |
| cognition | the processes of thinking, gaining knowledge, and dealing with knowledge |
| confirmation bias | the tendency to accept one hypothesis and then look for evidence to support it, instead of considering other possibilities |
| critical thinking | the careful evaluation of evidence for and against any conclusion |
| fixation | a period when the eyes are steady |
| framing effect | the tendency to answer a question when it is phrased differently |
| functional fixedness | the tendency to adhere to a single approach to a problem or a single way of using an item |
| heuristics | strategies for simplifying a problem or for guiding an investigation |
| language acquisition device | a built-in mechanism for acquiring language |
| morpheme | a unit of meaning |
| overconfidence | the belief that one's opinions or predictions are highly correct when in fact they are not |
| phoneme | a unit of sound |
| preattentive process | a procedure for extracting information automatically and simultaneously across a large portion of the visual field |
| productivity | the ability to express new ideas |
| prototype | a familiar or typical example of a category |
| representative heuristic | the tendency to assume that, if an item is similar to merbers of a particular category, then it probably a member of that category |
| saccade | a quick jump in the focus of the eyes from one point to another |
| spreading activation | the process by which the activation of one concept also activates or primes other concepts that are linked to it |
| Stroop effect | the tendency to read a word, especially if it is a color name, in spite of instructions to disregard the word and state the color of the ink in which it is printed |
| sunk cost effect | the willingness to do something we wouldn't otherwise choose to do because of money or effort already spent |
| transformational grammar | a system for converting a deep structure of a language into a surface structure |
| Wernicke's aphasia | a condition marked by difficulty recalling the names of objects and impaired comprehension of language |
| Williams syndrom | a genetic condition characterized by mental retardation in most regards but skillful use of language |
| word-superiority effect | identifying a letter with greater ease when it is part of a whole word than when it is presented by itself |
