Unit 7 – Thinking and
Intelligence
,Cognition
• Cognition – thinking, including perception, learning, problem solvin
judgment, and memory
• Cognitive psychology – field of psychology dedicated to examining
how people think
• It attempts to explain how and why we think the way we do by studying th
interactions among human thinking, emotion, creativity, language, and
problem solving, in addition to other cognitive processes
,Our Brains and Information
• We take in Information constantly whether we realize it or not
• Our senses receive stimuli from the external environment and send
that information to the brain where the brain then processes this
information and uses bits and pieces of that to create thoughts
• Thoughts are either expressed immediately through language or
stored in a person’s memory for another time
• Our brain combines the information from the external environmen
with existing emotions and memories to create our own unique
perception of what’s happening around us
, Concepts
• With information constantly coming in and thoughts being created
and altered, our brain needs a way to organize this information in a
comprehensive way
• Think of files in a computer
• The way we do that is combine related information into concepts
• Concepts – categories or groupings of linguistic information, image
ideas, or memories, such as life experiences
• Essentially big ideas that are generated by observing details, and categoriz
and combining these details into cognitive structures.
Intelligence
,Cognition
• Cognition – thinking, including perception, learning, problem solvin
judgment, and memory
• Cognitive psychology – field of psychology dedicated to examining
how people think
• It attempts to explain how and why we think the way we do by studying th
interactions among human thinking, emotion, creativity, language, and
problem solving, in addition to other cognitive processes
,Our Brains and Information
• We take in Information constantly whether we realize it or not
• Our senses receive stimuli from the external environment and send
that information to the brain where the brain then processes this
information and uses bits and pieces of that to create thoughts
• Thoughts are either expressed immediately through language or
stored in a person’s memory for another time
• Our brain combines the information from the external environmen
with existing emotions and memories to create our own unique
perception of what’s happening around us
, Concepts
• With information constantly coming in and thoughts being created
and altered, our brain needs a way to organize this information in a
comprehensive way
• Think of files in a computer
• The way we do that is combine related information into concepts
• Concepts – categories or groupings of linguistic information, image
ideas, or memories, such as life experiences
• Essentially big ideas that are generated by observing details, and categoriz
and combining these details into cognitive structures.
