Modern Cognition Vocabulary

awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes

“Journaling is a powerful tool for metacognition.”

the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes

“The cognitive dissonance of loving animals but eating meat troubled him.”

the ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections

“Learning a new language demonstrates the brain's neuroplasticity.”

a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make judgments quickly

“We use heuristics to make decisions when information is incomplete.”

the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs

“He only read news that supported his confirmation bias.”

a cognitive bias where people with low ability overestimate their ability

“His confidence despite his ignorance was a classic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect.”

an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world

“First principles thinking is a powerful mental model for innovation.”

a mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed

“The coder entered a flow state and worked for hours without pause.”

the amount of working memory resources used

“Simplifying the UI reduced the user's cognitive load.”

a phenomenon whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus

“Talking about money before the negotiation was a form of priming.”

a cognitive bias where people decide on options based on whether the options are presented with positive or negative connotations

“The framing effect makes '95% fat-free' sound better than '5% fat'.”

people's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains

“Loss aversion explains why people hold onto losing stocks too long.”

a cognitive bias where an individual relies too heavily on an initial piece of information

“The initial price set the anchoring point for the entire negotiation.”

the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage

“Adolescence is a space of liminality between childhood and adulthood.”

a humble attitude toward one's own beliefs and knowledge

“Science requires epistemic humility—admitting what we don't know.”

the practice of addressing the strongest possible version of an opponent's argument

“Try steelmanning his objection instead of attacking a straw man.”

a perception of something not present

“Large language models are prone to hallucination when facts are scarce.”