Modern Cognition Vocabulary

awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes

“Journaling is a powerful tool for metacognition.”

Origin: Greek meta `beyond` + Latin cognitio `knowledge`

the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes

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

Origin: Psychological term coined by Leon Festinger (1950s)

the ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections

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

Origin: Greek neuron `nerve` + plastikos `moldable`

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

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

Origin: Greek heuriskein `to find`

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

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

Origin: Latin confirmare `to strengthen`

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.”

Origin: Named after psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger

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.”

Origin: Cognitive psychology term

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.”

Origin: Coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

the amount of working memory resources used

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

Origin: Psychological term referring to memory capacity

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.”

Origin: Latin primus `first`

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'.”

Origin: Old English framian `to be useful`

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

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

Origin: Economic/Psychological theory

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.”

Origin: Old English ancor `anchor`

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.”

Origin: Latin limen `threshold`

a humble attitude toward one's own beliefs and knowledge

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

Origin: Greek episteme `knowledge` + Latin humilitas

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

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

Origin: Opposite of 'straw man' argument

a perception of something not present

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

Origin: Latin alucinari `wander in mind`