| Algorithms | Strategies that guarantee a solution to a problem.
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| approach coping | Directly confronting a problem with active attempts to solve it.
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| artificial intelligence (AI) | The science of creating machines capable of performing activities that require intelligence when they are done by people.
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| availability heuristic | A prediction about the probability of an event based on the ease of recalling or imagining similar events.
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| avoidant coping | Coping with a problem by trying one's best to ignore it.
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| classical model | Model stating that all instances of a concept share defining properties.
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| Cognition | The way in which information is processed and manipulated in remembering, thinking, and knowing.
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| cognitive appraisal | Individuals' interpretation of the events in their lives as harmful, threatening, or challenging and their determination of whether they have the resources to cope effectively with the events.
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| Concepts | Mental categories that are used to group objects, events, and characteristics.
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| confirmation bias | The tendency to search for and use information that supports, rather than refutes, our ideas.
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| convergent thinking | Thinking that produces one correct answer; characteristic of the type of thinking required on traditional intelligence tests.
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| Coping | Managing taxing circumstances, expending effort to solve life's problems, and seeking to master or reduce stress.
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| Creativity | The ability to think about something in novel and unusual ways and come up with unconventional solutions to problems.
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| culture-fair tests | Intelligence tests that are intended to be culturally unbiased.
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| decision making | Evaluating alternatives and making choices among them.
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| deductive reasoning | Reasoning from the general to the specific.
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| divergent thinking | Thinking that produces many answers to the same question; characteristic of creativity.
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| emotion-focused coping | Responding to the emotional aspects of stress rather than focusing on the problem causing the stress.
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| Expertise | The quality of having a particular talent—that "something special"—for the things that one does in a particular domain.
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| Fixation | Using a prior problem-solving strategy and failing to look at a problem from a fresh, new perspective.
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| functional fixedness | A type of fixation in which individuals fail to solve a problem because they are fixated on a thing's usual functions.
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| Gifted | Descriptive of individuals who have an IQ of 130 or higher and/or superior talent in a particular area.
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| Heritability | The proportion of the IQ differences in a population that is attributed to genetic differences.
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| Heuristics | Shortcut strategies or guidelines that suggest, but do not guarantee, a solution to a problem.
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| hindsight bias | The tendency to report falsely, after the fact, that we accurately predicted an outcome.
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| inductive reasoning | Reasoning from the specific to the general or from the bottom-up.
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| infinite generativity | The ability to produce an infinite number of sentences using a relatively limited set rules.
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| Intelligence | Problem-solving skills and the ability to adapt to and learn from life's everyday experiences.
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| intelligence quotient (IQ) | An individual's mental age divided by chronological age multiplied by 100.
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| Language | A form of communication, whether spoken, written, or signed, that is based on a system of symbols.
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| mental age (MA) | An individual's level of mental development relative to that of others.
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| mental retardation | A condition of limited mental ability in which the individual has a low IQ, usually below 70, has difficulty adapting to everyday life, and has an onset of these characteristics in the so-called developmental period.
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| Mindfulness | Being alert and mentally present for one's everyday activities.
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| Morphology | A language's rules for word formation.
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| normal distribution | A symmetrical, bell-shaped curve with a majority of the scores falling in the middle of the possible range and few scores appearing toward the extremes of the range.
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| open-mindedness | Being receptive to the possibility of other ways of looking at things.
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| phonics approach | An approach to learning to read that emphasizes basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds.
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| Phonology | A language's sound system.
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| problem solving | An attempt to find an appropriate way of attaining a goal when the goal is not readily available.
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| problem-focused coping | The cognitive strategy of squarely facing one's troubles and trying to solve them.
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| prototype model | Model emphasizing that when people evaluate whether a given item reflects a certain concept, they compare the item with the most typical item(s) in that category and look for a "family resemblance."
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| Reasoning | The mental activity of transforming information to reach conclusions.
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| Reliability | The extent to which a test yields a consistent, reproducible measure of performance.
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| Semantics | The meaning of words and sentences in a particular language.
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| Standardization | Developing uniform procedures for administering and scoring a test, as well as creating norms for the test.
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| Subgoaling | Setting intermediate goals or defining intermediate problems in order to be in a better position to reach the final goal or solution.
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| syntax | A language's rules for the way words are combined to form acceptable phrases and sentences.
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| thinking | Manipulating information mentally, as when we form concepts, solve problems, make decisions, and reflect in a creative or critical manner.
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| triarchic theory of intelligence | Sternberg's theory that there are three main types of intelligence: analytical, creative, and practical.
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| whole-language approach | An approach to learning to read that stresses that reading instruction should parallel a child's natural language learning; so reading materials should be whole and meaningful.
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