Question

What is meant by thinking?

Answer 1

Thinking is a mental activity that uses various cognitive elements and processes that involve the manipulation of information, problem-solving, reasoning and decision-making.

The core elements of thinking are:

1. Mental representation: Mental representation is “the mental imagery of a thing that is not currently physically available to the senses”. Mental representation is a coded internal sensation.
2. Concepts: Concept is “an internal representation which the brain uses to denote certain classes of things in the world”. The concepts involve the extraction of some ‘idea’ on the basis of similarities and differences among many sensations.
3. Schema: A schema is “an internal representation that organises knowledge about related concepts and relationships among them”. Schemata influence most of the cognitive processes.
4. Language: Language is a system of symbols. Mental representations, concepts and schemata are all better represented by language.