Thinking

Thinking
 Thinking can refer to the act of producing thoughts or the
process of producing thoughts.

 Thought can refer to the ideas or arrangements of ideas

that result from thinking, the act of producing thoughts, or
the process of producing thoughts

 Thinking or cognitionrefers to a process that involves
knowing, understanding, remembering
and communicating.
 Thinking allows humans to make sense
of interpret, represent
or model the world they experience,
and to make predictions
about that world.

 In spite of the fact that thought

is a fundamental human activity
familiar to everyone, there is no
generally accepted agreement
as to what thought is or how it is created.
 Different Types of Thinking
 1.Critical thinking - This is convergent thinking. It
assesses the worth and validity of something existent. It
involves precise, persistent, objective analysis.

2. Implementation thinking is the ability to organize ideas

and plans in a way that they will be effectively carried out.

 3. Conceptual thinking consists of the ability to find

connections or patterns between abstract ideas and then
piece them together to form a complete picture
 4.Innovative thinking involves generating new ideas or
new ways of approaching things to create possibilities and
opportunities.

 5.Intuitive thinking is the ability to take what you may

sense or perceive to be true and, without knowledge or
evidence, appropriately factor it in to the final decision.
 Theories and Models of Thinking
 Behaviorist Theory
 Behaviorists view thinking as something that produces a measureable
change in an individual’s actions.  Since thinking takes place as a
result of reacting to external stimuli in this model
 Pavlov’s famous experiment about dogs salivating when they would
hear the dinner bell ring is an example of behaviorist theory
 Cognitive Theory
Cognitive theorists such as Piaget and Gagne argue that thinking and
learning are internal mental actions that take place in the brain and
include sensory perception, processing of information, applying and
combining information, and memory
 Humanist Theory

 In the humanist model, the purpose of thinking is to fulfill

an individual’s potential. As such, the acts of thinking and
learning are always personal, not institutional.

 Also known as “whole child” theory, humanists advise that

the purpose of education is to develop a self-motivated,
autonomous individual who can think and learn on his own
 Cognition
 The word cognition comes from the Latin verb cognosco (con 'with'
+ gnōscō 'know'),  'I know' so broadly, 'to conceptualize' or 'to
recognize'
 The mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness,
perception, reasoning, and judgment
  That which comes to be known, as through perception, reasoning, or
intuition; knowledge
 In science cognition isa group of mental processes that
includes attention, memory, producing and
comprehending language, learning, reasoning, problem solving,
and decision making
 Cognitionis a faculty for the processing of information, applying
knowledge, and changing preferences
 Cognition, or cognitive processes, can be natural or artificial,
conscious or unconscious
  It
encompasses the mental functions, mental processes (thoughts),
and states of intelligent entities 
  Incognitive psychology and cognitive engineering, cognition is
typically assumed to be information processing in a participant’s or
operator’s mind or brain
 Stages of Processing

Stages of Processing: The steps required to

form, use, and modify mental representations
in a cognitive task.

Perhapsperceiving, encoding,
remembering and retrieving
 The mind is a complex machine –an
information processing machine
 It uses Hardware (the brain)
 Software – (mental images or representations)
 Information input to the mind comes via bottom- up processing (from the
sensory system)
 Information is processed in the mind by top down processing via prestored
information in the memory
 Output is in the form of behavior
Levels of Cognition
 Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Domain
 Bloom identified six levels within the cognitive domain, from the simple recall or
recognition of facts, as the lowest level, through increasingly more complex and
abstract mental levels, to the highest order which is classified as evaluation. 
 Knowledge is defined as remembering of previously learned material. Knowledge
represents the lowest level of learning outcomes in the cognitive domain.
 Verbs: arrange, define, duplicate, label, list, memorize, name, order, recognize,
relate, recall, repeat, reproduce state.
 Comprehension is defined as the ability to grasp the meaning of material.
 Verbs: classify, describe, discuss, explain, express, identify, indicate, locate,
recognize, report, restate, review, select, translate
 Application refers to the ability to use learned material in new and concrete
situations
 Verbs: apply, choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate,
practice, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write
 Analysis refers to the ability to break down material into its component parts so that
its organizational structure may be understood
 Verbs: analyze, appraise, calculate, categorize, compare, contrast, criticize,
differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test.
 Synthesis refers to the ability to put parts together to form a new whole. This may
involve the production of a unique communication (theme or speech), a plan of
operations (research proposal)
 Verbs: arrange, assemble, collect, compose, construct, create, design, develop,
formulate, manage, organize, plan, prepare, propose, set up, write
 Evaluation is concerned with the ability to judge the value of material (statement,
novel, poem, research report) for a given purpose. The judgements are to be based
on definite criteria.
 Verbs: appraise, argue, assess, attach, choose compare, defend estimate, judge,
predict, rate, core, select, support, value, evaluate.