Ch 7Thinking — Class 11 Psychology, concept-first.

Thinking is described here as a core, independent subject area in psychology, distinct from the loose, everyday sense in which the word 'think' gets used as a stand-in for remembering ('I can't think…

Thinking is presented as the base of all cognitive activities and unique to human beings. It involves manipulating and analysing information taken in from the environment, rather than passively regist…

Box 7.1. Beliefs, values and social practices shape how people think, illustrated by a study comparing American and Asian students shown the same underwater scene for a brief period and then asked to…

Having established what thinking is and what it is built from — mental images and concepts — the chapter turns from the nature of thinking to the particular ways in which thinking gets applied.

Problem solving is thinking that is directed towards a goal. It covers far more than dramatic obstacles or crises — repairing a broken bicycle, planning a summer trip, patching up a broken friendship,…

Reasoning is introduced using the example of noticing a person running desperately on a railway platform — a number of explanations could be inferred, such as that he is trying to catch a train about…

Deductive reasoning begins with a general assumption taken to be true and draws a specific conclusion from it — reasoning from the general to the particular.

Inductive and deductive reasoning both feed into the making of judgments — drawing conclusions, forming opinions, and evaluating people, objects or events based on existing knowledge and available evi…

Someone, at some point, was the very first person to think of planting a seed, devising a wheel, or decorating cave walls with drawings — dissatisfied with existing ways of doing things, such people t…

Creative thinking is set apart from other kinds of thinking by the fact that it produces novel and original ideas or solutions.

Box 7.2. Edward de Bono used the term 'lateral thinking' for essentially what Guilford called divergent thinking, distinguishing it from vertical thinking.

Research on how the mind operates makes clear that thinking of new and unusual ideas involves more than a single flash of insight — there are stages before and after a new idea appears.

Research on characteristics of creative people has identified attitudes, dispositions and skills that facilitate creative thinking, translating into practical strategies.

Having examined thinking, its building blocks, and the processes through which it is applied, the chapter turns to whether words or language are essential to express what a person thinks.

Different languages carve up experience differently — Hindi and other Indian languages have distinct words for a mother's brother, a father's elder brother, a father's younger brother, a mother's sist…

Jean Piaget believed thought not only determines language but precedes it. Piaget argued that children form an internal representation of the world through thinking, and that when children see somethi…

The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky argued that thought and language develop separately in a child until about two years of age, when they merge.

Without language, communicating ideas and feelings, or knowing what others think and feel, would be impossible.

Language is a complex system unique to human beings. Although psychologists have tried teaching sign language and use of symbols to chimpanzees, dolphins and parrots, human language remains more compl…

Box 7.3. Bilingualism refers to attaining proficiency in communicating through any two languages; learning more than two languages is multilingualism.

Language use involves knowing socially appropriate ways of communicating. Knowledge of vocabulary and syntax alone does not ensure proper use of language to achieve communication's purpose across vari…