Analysis – breaking down a message into meaningful elements
Evaluation – judging the value of an element; the judgment is made by comparing a message element to some standard
Grouping – determining which elements are alike in some way; determining how a group of elements is different from other groups of elements
Induction – inferring a pattern across a small set of elements, then generalize the pattern to all elements in the set
Deduction – using general principles to explain particulars
Synthesis – assembling elements into a new structure
Abstracting – creating a brief, clear, and accurate description capturing the essence of a message in a smaller number of words than the message itself