Thinking, Problem Solving and Language
This domain tests reasoning, problem-solving strategies and their obstacles, creativity, and the structural units of language.
Thinking and concepts
Thinking is the manipulation of mental representations. Concepts are categories built from defining features or from prototypes - the best example of a category. Reasoning is deductive when it moves from general premises to a necessary conclusion, and inductive when it moves from specific observations to a probable generalisation.
Problem solving
- Algorithm: a step-by-step procedure that guarantees a solution if followed correctly, but is slow.
- Heuristics: mental shortcuts such as means–end analysis, availability and representativeness; fast but fallible.
- Obstacles: functional fixedness, mental set, confirmation bias, and irrelevant information.
- Creativity: divergent thinking measured by fluency, flexibility and originality; incubation and insight often precede the solution.
Language
- Phoneme: smallest sound unit.
- Morpheme: smallest unit of meaning.
- Syntax: rules for combining words.
- Semantics: meaning; pragmatics: use in context. Development runs from cooing and babbling to one-word (holophrastic) speech, two-word telegraphic speech, and then complex sentences. Chomsky posited an innate language acquisition device; Skinner explained language by imitation and reinforcement.
Worked example
A person must fix a candle to a wall using only a box of matches and thumbtacks. Fixating on the box as 'a container for matches' rather than seeing it as a possible shelf is functional fixedness. Once the box is re-categorised as a platform, the solution appears - an example of restructuring rather than trial and error.
Traps
Calling heuristics 'wrong' rather than economical; confusing phoneme with morpheme; treating a deductively valid argument as one with true premises.