Types of Mental Behaviors
&
Key Verbs We Use in Teaching and Test Item Writing

 
Thomas M. Haladyna provides an interesting, accessible, and useful approach to writing test items in his Writing Test Items to Evaluate Higher Order Thinking (Allyn & Bacon Publisher, 1997).  

His chart focuses on four types of "mental behaviors" and provides verbs that can help us think about ways of quizzing that particular type of learning.  The chart can be found on page 32 of his book.

To see a similar chart is based on Bloom's Taxonomy of the cognitive demands of different activities, click here.
Mental Behavior Key Verbs in Student Outcomes and Test Items
Understanding Define, demonstrate, describe, find, exemplify, illustrate, list, listen, provide, show, tell
Problem solving Answer, compute, conclude, determine, find, figure out, locate, solve
Critical thinking Anticipate, appraise, attack, analyze, classify, compare, contrast, critique, defend, distinguish, expect, evaluate, hypothesize, infer, judge, predict, relate, value
Creativity Build, construct, create, design, invent, make, perform, plan, redesign, write