Language

Terms Definitions cognition The mental processes involved in acquiring, storing, retrieving, and using information and that include sensation, perception, memory, imagery, concept formation, reasoning, decision making, problem solving, and language. reasoning A form of thinking in which conclusions are drawn from a set of facts. deductive reasoning Reasoning from general to specific, or drawing particular conclusions from general principles. inductive reasoning Reasoning in which general conclusions are drawn from particular facts of individual cases. imagery The representation in the mind of a sensory experience - visual, auditory, gustatory, motor, olfactory, or tactile. concept A mental category used to represent a class or group of objects, people, organizations, events, situations, or relations that share common characteristics or attributes. formal concept A concept that is clearly defined by a set of rules, a formal definition, or a classification system; also known as an artificial concept natural concept A concept acquired not from a definition but through everyday perceptions and experiences; also known as a fuzzy concept prototype An example that embodies the most common and typical features of a concept. exemplars The individual instances, or examples, of a concept that are stored in memory from personal experience decision making The process of considering alternatives and choosing among them. systematic decision making Making a decision after carefully considering all possible alternatives elimination by aspects A decision-making approach in which alternatives are evaluated against criteria that have been ranked according to importance heuristic A rule of thumb that is derived from experience and used in decision making and problem solving, even though there is no guarantee of its accuracy or usefullness availability heuristic A cognitive rule of thumb that says that the probability of an event or the