UGC NET Psycology Thinking, Intelligence and Creativity Syllabus

Thinking, Intelligence and Creativity syllabus — full chapter and topic list

Expand any chapter to see its topics and sub-topics. This is the whole examinable outline for Thinking, Intelligence and Creativity in UGC NET Psycology, not a summary of it.

1. 1

   Theoretical perspectives on thought processes

   4 topics

   • Associationism
   • Gestalt
   • Information processing
   • Feature integration model
2. 2

   Concept formation

   4 topics

   • Rules
   • Types
   • Strategies
   • Role of concepts in thinking
3. 3

   Types of Reasoning

   3 topics

   • Inductive Reasoning
   • Deductive Reasoning
   • Abductive Reasoning
4. 4

   Language and thought

   3 topics

   • Language Acquisition
   • Language Processing
   • Language and Cognition
5. 5

   Problem solving

   3 topics

   • Type
   • Strategies
   • Obstacles
6. 6

   Decision-making

   2 topics

   • Types
   • Models
7. 7

   Metacognition

   2 topics

   • Metacognitive knowledge
   • Metacognitive regulation
8. 8

   Intelligence

   8 topics

   • Spearman
   • Thurstone
   • Jensen
   • Cattell
   • Gardner
   • Stenberg
   • Goleman
   • Das, Kar & Parrila
9. 9

   Creativity

   4 topics

   • Torrance
   • Getzels & Jackson
   • Guilford
   • Wallach & Kogan
10. 10

    Relationship between Intelligence and Creativity

    overview

    Examined as a single unit within Thinking, Intelligence and Creativity — no further topic split in the official outline.

Thinking, Intelligence and Creativity flashcards for UGC NET Psycology

22 of 53 cards from the Thinking, Intelligence and Creativity deck — real questions with worked answers.

1. What is Associationism's core explanation of thinking?

   Thinking is the chaining together of ideas (mental elements) that have become linked through experience, governed by laws of association such as contiguity, similarity, and frequency.

2. How does the Gestalt school view thinking and problem solving?

   As productive restructuring of the whole problem field through insight, where the solution emerges from reorganizing perceptual/cognitive structure rather than from trial-and-error association.

3. What is 'insight' in Gestalt psychology, as shown by Köhler's chimpanzee studies?

   A sudden reorganization (the 'aha' experience) in which the relationships within a problem are perceived in a new way, producing an immediate solution without gradual learning.

4. What does the information-processing approach compare the mind to, and what are its core stages?

   It compares the mind to a computer; cognition proceeds through encoding (input), storage, processing/transformation, and retrieval (output), with limited-capacity stages and serial/parallel operations.

5. What does Treisman's Feature Integration Theory propose about visual attention?

   Perception has two stages: a preattentive parallel stage that registers individual features (color, shape, orientation), and a focused-attention serial stage that binds (integrates) those features into a unified object.

6. In Feature Integration Theory, what is a 'conjunction search' and why is it slow?

   A search where the target is defined by a combination of features (e.g., red + vertical); it requires focused attention to bind features object-by-object, so reaction time rises with the number of distractors.

7. What are 'illusory conjunctions' in Feature Integration Theory?

   Errors in which features from different objects are wrongly combined (e.g., seeing a red X when a red O and blue X were shown), occurring when attention is divided so features are not correctly bound.

8. What is a concept in cognition, and what role does it play in thinking?

   A mental representation grouping objects/events/ideas by shared properties; concepts allow categorization, economy of cognition, inference, and serve as the building blocks of thought and language.

9. Distinguish the classical (rule-based) view of concepts from the prototype view.

   Classical view: concepts are defined by necessary and sufficient features (rules for membership). Prototype view: concepts are organized around a best/average example, and membership is graded by similarity to the prototype.

10. What is the exemplar theory of concepts?

    Concepts are represented by stored specific instances (exemplars) previously encountered; a new item is categorized by comparing it to remembered exemplars rather than to an abstract prototype or rule.

11. In concept formation, distinguish conjunctive, disjunctive, and relational rules.

    Conjunctive: membership requires multiple features together (red AND square). Disjunctive: any of several features suffices (red OR square). Relational: defined by a relationship between attributes (e.g., larger than).

12. What are the main strategies people use in concept attainment (Bruner)?

    Conservative focusing (vary one attribute at a time), focus gambling (vary several at once), and scanning strategies (simultaneous/successive hypothesis testing).

13. What is inductive reasoning?

    Reasoning from specific observations to a probable general conclusion; conclusions are likely but not logically certain (bottom-up reasoning, basis of generalization and hypothesis formation).

14. What is deductive reasoning?

    Reasoning from general premises to a specific, logically certain conclusion; if the premises are true and the form valid, the conclusion must be true (top-down reasoning, e.g., syllogisms).

15. What is abductive reasoning?

    Inference to the best explanation: starting from an observation and reasoning to the most plausible/likely cause or hypothesis that would account for it (used in diagnosis and scientific discovery).

16. Compare the certainty of conclusions in deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning.

    Deductive: conclusions are logically certain (truth-preserving). Inductive: conclusions are probable generalizations. Abductive: conclusions are plausible best guesses, the least certain of the three.

17. In a categorical syllogism, what is the difference between validity and truth?

    Validity concerns the logical form (whether the conclusion follows from the premises); truth concerns whether the statements match reality. An argument can be valid yet have false premises/conclusion.

18. What is 'belief bias' in deductive reasoning?

    The tendency to judge an argument's validity by the believability of its conclusion rather than by its logical structure, accepting believable conclusions and rejecting unbelievable ones regardless of validity.

19. According to Chomsky, what is the Language Acquisition Device (LAD)?

    An innate, biologically given mental faculty containing Universal Grammar that enables children to acquire language rapidly from limited input (the nativist account of language acquisition).

20. What is the 'poverty of the stimulus' argument in language acquisition?

    Chomsky's claim that the linguistic input children receive is too limited and degraded to explain the rich grammatical competence they attain, implying innate grammatical knowledge.

21. What is the Critical Period Hypothesis (Lenneberg) in language acquisition?

    The proposal that there is a biologically determined window (roughly up to puberty) during which language is acquired naturally and fully; acquisition after it is effortful and incomplete.

22. Name the typical sequence of stages in early language acquisition.

    Cooing, babbling, the one-word (holophrastic) stage, the two-word stage, telegraphic speech, and then increasingly complex grammatical speech.

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