What Are The Six (6) Elements of Thinking?

ELEMENTS OF THINKING
Psychology

When we were in first-year college, we had a General Psychology course. As education students we have to be trained to speak and teach in front. So that is why we always have to have reportorial presentations. In the Psychology course, I was designated to present the Elements of Thinking.

It was very hard for me to search what the Elements of Thinking are. I tried the library and the internet but to no avail. This is the part where I had to ask help from my professor. LOL.

Now, I thought of posting this so that it could help people in their General Psychology lessons. Here they are:

1. Inner speech

2. Body Movement

3. Mapping

4. Imagery

5. Reasoning

6. Masking

INNER SPEECH

Every time I'm asked a problem or anything to solve, I talk to myself and I guess I'm not the only one who's doing it. This is inner speech. Lev Vygotsky used this in his cognitive development theory, THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE. He said that we learn by instructing ourselves what to do.

One of the manifestations of inner speech is what we do in the bathroom and in front of the mirror. We talk to ourselves.

BODY MOVEMENT

When I think of a problem -- a really big problem --, I hold or scratch my head or forehead. I don't command my hands through my circuit of system of nerves to this this but it naturally happens. This is very common to many people. My friend, for one, blinks more often than usual when he's thinking.

This proves that our mind is over our body. Our bodies are affected by what is happening in our minds.

MAPPING

To put it in a smaller box, when we learn something, we put it somewhere in our storage house where we can retrieve it easily when we need the information. We place it near information which are similar. We arrange the information in our minds logically if possible. This way we are MAPPING the concepts in our minds.

The time I learned how to play the guitar, I placed it near music information in my mind. This way, whenever I think about music, I think about piano guitar. Because of this concept mapping, I learned to relate guitar and piano in playing chords.

Of course, I don't do this intentionally. The whole process is done subconsciously as if the brain is designed for sorting and arranging.

IMAGERY

Imagery is the visual description we see in our minds when we are thinking, especially when reading or listening to stories.

When I was reading Jack London's To Build A Fire, I imagine blue and white. I see in my mind how cold the setting was.

There are many types of imagery.

• VISUAL IMAGERY. We see what we hear. While reading or hearing the part where Juliet makes her monologue in the balcony, we see Juliet making her monologue in our minds.
• TACTILE IMAGERY. While Geoffrey Chaucer is describing Allison's dress as one of the pilgrims, I picture in my mind how smooth her dress was.
• GUSTATORY IMAGERY. Talking about food, I and my friend usually imagine in our minds how delicious the food would be. Most of the time, it makes us salivate.
• OLFACTORY IMAGERY. How did you feel while reading William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily? How did you imagine the smell that the neighborhood complained about in the story? We picture the smell in our mind.
• AUDITORY IMAGERY. Imagine the some of long nails scratching the blackboard. Your mind gives you the information the sound would be really awful because you are picturing it in your mind.
• KINESTHETIC IMAGERY. Every time I dream about myself falling down from a building, I wake up kicking.
• THERMAL IMAGERY. Temperature means a lot to the body and especially to the mind.
• VISCERAL IMAGERY. Upon hearing the word SAD, HAPPY, EXCITED or any emotion, we imagine the feeling in our minds.

REASONING

Said Rene Descartes, DUBITO ERGO COGITO ERGO SUM. This means I DOUBT THEREFORE I THINK THEREFORE I AM. Also, according to what I read, from a book I can't remember, INTELLIGENCE IS NOT THINKING ABOUT THE THINGS YOU DOUBT BUT DOUBTING THE THINGS YOU THINK YOU KNOW.

As a part of the thinking process, we doubt all information that comes in our mind and verify them by the use of our logically arranged and systematized storage house. We reason out based on our prior knowledge.

MASKING

Jean Piaget can still remember the time when some guys attempted to kidnap him and his nanny. The memory in his mind is so clear that he's very sure that it really happened. But everything was a hoax. His nanny tried to make a alibi when they arrived home late. Even if Jean Piaget already knows the fact, he still can't erase in his mind the mask that it made.

As a natural function, our mind masks things we think we should know.

People who saw the news about the 9/11 Terrorist Attack thought that they saw in the television the fall of both of the towers in the same day; only to find out that the video of the second tower falling only went out to the public after a week but people say that they have a clear memory of seeing the two towers collapse in the same video in the same day.