Thinking

Thinking

What is Thinking

What do we do when we think? During most of our walking hours and even in sleep and dreams, we are thinking.

The dictionary meaning of thinking is to exercise the mind in an active way, to form connected ideas and using thoughts or rational judgment about things.

We may say that thinking consist of the mental rearrangement or manipulation of information from environment and symbols stored in long-term memory. The symbols are often words, numbers, diagram, gestures and visual image that are closely related. Thinking involves solving problems, but this is not always true. Dreaming—night dreaming or day dreaming – is also thinking.

From another angle, thinking is a set of mental processes which mediate, or go between stimuli and responses. Suppose you are trying to make decision about buying a toy car. The sales person presents several cars in your price range (the stimuli) and you eventually purchase one of them (response). Before making the response, however you weight the advantages and disadvantages of various cars. You, in fact, Process the information you have about them. This is thinking.

According to psychologists, thinking is actually a series of symbolic activities represented by previous learning, words images and concepts stored in memory.