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Cognition
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cognition is "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through
thought, experience, and the senses."[1] It encompasses processes such as knowledge, attention,
memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and "computation", problem
solving and decision making, comprehension and production of language, etc. Human cognition is
conscious and unconscious, concrete or abstract, as well as intuitive (like knowledge of a language)
and conceptual (like a model of a language). Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and
generate new knowledge.

The processes are analyzed from different perspectives within different contexts, notably in the
fields of linguistics, anesthesia, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, education, philosophy,
anthropology, biology, systemics, logic, and computer science.[2] These and other different
approaches to the analysis of cognition are synthesised in the developing field of cognitive science,
a progressively autonomous academic discipline. Within psychology and philosophy, the concept of
cognition is closely related to abstract concepts such as mind and intelligence. It encompasses the
mental functions, mental processes (thoughts), and states of intelligent entities (humans,
collaborative groups, human organizations, highly autonomous machines, and artificial
intelligences).[3]

Thus, the term's usage varies across disciplines; for example, in psychology and cognitive science,
"cognition" usually refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological
functions. It is also used in a branch of social psychology called social cognition to explain
attitudes, attribution, and group dynamics.[4] In cognitive psychology and cognitive engineering,
cognition is typically assumed to be information processing in a participants or operators mind or
brain.[3]

Cognition can in some specific and abstract sense also be artificial.[5]

The term "cognition" is often incorrectly used to mean "cognitive abilities" or "cognitive skills."

Contents
1 Etymology
2 Origins
3 Psychology
4 Social process
5 Piaget's theory of cognitive development
6 Common experiments
7 See also

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8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links

Etymology
The word cognition comes from the Latin verb cognosco (con 'with' and gnsc 'know') (itself a
cognate of the Greek verb () gi(g)nsko, meaning 'I know, perceive' (noun: gnsis
'knowledge')) meaning 'to conceptualize' or 'to recognize'.[6]

Origins
Cognition is a word that dates back to the 15th century, when it meant "thinking and awareness".[7]
Attention to the cognitive process came about more than eighteen centuries ago, beginning with
Aristotle and his interest in the inner workings of the mind and how they affect the human
experience. Aristotle focused on cognitive areas pertaining to memory, perception, and mental
imagery. The Greek philosopher found great importance in ensuring that his studies were based on
empirical evidence; scientific information that is gathered through observation and conscientious
experimentation.[8] Centuries later, as psychology became a burgeoning field of study in Europe
and then gained a following in America, other scientists like Wilhelm Wundt, Herman Ebbinghaus,
Mary Whiton Calkins, and William James, to name a few, would offer their contributions to the
study of cognition.

Wilhelm Wundt (18321920) heavily emphasized the notion of what he called introspection:
examining the inner feelings of an individual. With introspection, the subject had to be careful to
describe his or her feelings in the most objective manner possible in order for Wundt to find the
information scientific.[9][10] Though Wundt's contributions are by no means minimal, modern
psychologists find his methods to be quite subjective and choose to rely on more objective
procedures of experimentation to make conclusions about the human cognitive process.

Hermann Ebbinghaus (18501909) conducted cognitive studies that mainly examined the function
and capacity of human memory. Ebbinghaus developed his own experiment in which he
constructed over 2,000 syllables made out of nonexistent words, for instance EAS. He then
examined his own personal ability to learn these non-words. He purposely chose non-words as
opposed to real words to control for the influence of pre-existing experience on what the words
might symbolize, thus enabling easier recollection of them.[9][11] Ebbinghaus observed and
hypothesized a number of variables that may have affected his ability to learn and recall the
non-words he created. One of the reasons, he concluded, was the amount of time between the
presentation of the list of stimuli and the recitation or recall of same. Ebbinghaus was the first to
record and plot a "learning curve," and a "forgetting curve."[12] His work heavily influenced the
study of serial position and its effect on memory, discussed in subsequent sections.

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Mary Whiton Calkins (18631930) was an influential American pioneer in the realm of
psychology. Her work also focused on the human memory capacity. A common theory, called the
recency effect, can be attributed to the studies that she conducted.[13] The recency effect, also
discussed in the subsequent experiment section, is the tendency for individuals to be able to
accurately recollect the final items presented in a sequence of stimuli. Her theory is closely related
to the aforementioned study and conclusion of the memory experiments conducted by Hermann
Ebbinghaus.[14]

William James (18421910) is another pivotal figure in the history of cognitive science. James was
quite discontent with Wundt's emphasis on introspection and Ebbinghaus' use of nonsense stimuli.
He instead chose to focus on the human learning experience in everyday life and its importance to
the study of cognition. James' major contribution was his textbook Principles of Psychology that
preliminarily examines many aspects of cognition like perception, memory, reasoning, and
attention, to name a few.[14]

Psychology
The sort of mental processes described as cognitive are largely
influenced by research which has successfully used this
paradigm in the past, likely starting with Thomas Aquinas, who
divided the study of behavior into two broad categories:
cognitive (how we know the world), and affective (how we
understand the world via feelings and emotions). Consequently,
this description tends to apply to processes such as memory,
association, concept formation, pattern recognition, language,
attention, perception, action, problem solving and mental
imagery.[15][16] Traditionally, emotion was not thought of as a
cognitive process. This division is now regarded as largely
artificial, and much research is currently being undertaken to
examine the cognitive psychology of emotion; research also
includes one's awareness of one's own strategies and methods of
cognition called metacognition and includes metamemory. When the mind makes a
generalization such as the
Empirical research into cognition is usually scientific and
concept of tree, it extracts
quantitative, or involves creating models to describe or explain
similarities from numerous
certain behaviors.
examples; the simplification
While few people would deny that cognitive processes are a enables higher-level thinking
function of the brain, a cognitive theory will not necessarily (abstract thinking).
make reference to the brain or other biological process
(compare neurocognitive). It may purely describe behavior in terms of information flow or
function. Relatively recent fields of study such as cognitive science and neuropsychology aim to
bridge this gap, using cognitive paradigms to understand how the brain implements these

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information-processing functions (see also cognitive neuroscience), or how pure information-

processing systems (e.g., computers) can simulate cognition (see also artificial intelligence). The
branch of psychology that studies brain injury to infer normal cognitive function is called cognitive
neuropsychology. The links of cognition to evolutionary demands are studied through the
investigation of animal cognition. And conversely, evolutionary-based perspectives can inform
hypotheses about cognitive functional systems' evolutionary psychology.

The theoretical school of thought derived from the cognitive approach is often called cognitivism.

The phenomenal success of the cognitive approach can be seen by its current dominance as the core
model in contemporary psychology (usurping behaviorism in the late 1950s).

Cognition is severely damaged in dementia.

Social process
For every individual, the social context in which he or she is embedded provides the symbols of his
or her representation and linguistic expression. The human society sets the environment where the
newborn will be socialized and develop his or her cognition. For example, face perception in
human babies emerges by the age of two months: young children at a playground or swimming
pool develop their social recognition by being exposed to multiple faces and associating the
experiences to those faces. Education has the explicit task in society of developing cognition.
Choices are made regarding the environment and permitted action that lead to a formed experience.

Language acquisition is an example of an emergent behavior. From a large systemic perspective,

cognition is considered closely related to the social and human organization functioning and
constrains. For example, the macro-choices made by the teachers influence the micro-choices made
by students..

Piaget's theory of cognitive development

For years, sociologists and psychologists have conducted studies on cognitive development or the
construction of human thought or mental processes.

Jean Piaget was one of the most important and influential people in the field of Developmental
Psychology. He believed that humans are unique in comparison to animals because we have the
capacity to do "abstract symbolic reasoning." His work can be compared to Lev Vygotsky, Sigmund
Freud, and Erik Erikson who were also great contributors in the field of Developmental
Psychology. Today, Piaget is known for studying the cognitive development in children. He studied
his own three children and their intellectual development and came up with a theory that describes
the stages children pass through during development.[17]

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Stage Age or Period Description

Intelligence is present; motor activity but no symbols;
knowledge is developing yet limited; knowledge is based on
Sensorimotor Infancy (02 experiences/ interactions; mobility allows child to learn new
stage years) things; some language skills are developed at the end of this
stage. The goal is to develop object permanence; achieves
basic understanding of causality, time, and space.
Symbols or language skills are present; memory and
Toddler and imagination are developed; nonreversible and nonlogical
Pre-operational
Early Childhood thinking; shows intuitive problem solving; begins to see
stage
(27 years) relationships; grasps concept of conservation of numbers;
egocentric thinking predominates.
Logical and systematic form of intelligence; manipulation of
Elementary and symbols related to concrete objects; thinking is now
Concrete Early characterized by reversibility and the ability to take the role
operational stage Adolescence of another; grasps concepts of the conservation of mass,
(712 years) length, weight, and volume; operational thinking
predominates nonreversible and egocentric thinking
Logical use of symbols related to abstract concepts; Acquires
Adolescence and
Formal flexibility in thinking as well as the capacities for abstract
Adulthood (12
operational stage thinking and mental hypothesis testing; can consider possible
years and on)
alternatives in complex reasoning and problem solving.[18]

Common experiments
Serial position

The serial position experiment is meant to test a theory of memory that states that when information
is given in a serial manner, we tend to remember information in the beginning of the sequence,
called the primacy effect, and information in the end of the sequence, called the recency effect.
Consequently, information given in the middle of the sequence is typically forgotten, or not recalled
as easily. This study predicts that the recency effect is stronger than the primacy effect because the
information that is most recently learned is still in working memory when asked to be recalled.
Information that is learned first still has to go through a retrieval process. This experiment focuses
on human memory processes.[19]

Word superiority

The word superiority experiment presents a subject with a word, or a letter by itself, for a brief
period of time, i.e. 40ms, and they are then asked to recall the letter that was in a particular location
in the word. By theory, the subject should be better able to correctly recall the letter when it was

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presented in a word than when it was presented in isolation. This experiment focuses on human
speech and language.[20]

Brown-Peterson

In the Brown-Peterson experiment, participants are briefly presented with a trigram and in one
particular version of the experiment, they are then given a distractor task, asking them to identify
whether a sequence of words are in fact words, or non-words (due to being misspelled, etc.). After
the distractor task, they are asked to recall the trigram from before the distractor task. In theory, the
longer the distractor task, the harder it will be for participants to correctly recall the trigram. This
experiment focuses on human short-term memory.[21]

Memory span

During the memory span experiment, each subject is presented with a sequence of stimuli of the
same kind; words depicting objects, numbers, letters that sound similar, and letters that sound
dissimilar. After being presented with the stimuli, the subject is asked to recall the sequence of
stimuli that they were given in the exact order in which it was given. In one particular version of
the experiment, if the subject recalled a list correctly, the list length increased by one for that type
of material, and vice versa if it was recalled incorrectly. The theory is that people have a memory
span of about seven items for numbers, the same for letters that sound dissimilar and short words.
The memory span is projected to be shorter with letters that sound similar and longer words.[22]

Visual search

In one version of the visual search experiment, a participant is presented with a window that
displays circles and squares scattered across it. The participant is to identify whether there is a
green circle on the window. In the "featured" search, the subject is presented with several trial
windows that have blue squares or circles and one green circle or no green circle in it at all. In the
"conjunctive" search, the subject is presented with trial windows that have blue circles or green
squares and a present or absent green circle whose presence the participant is asked to identify.
What is expected is that in the feature searches, reaction time, that is the time it takes for a
participant to identify whether a green circle is present or not, should not change as the number of
distractors increases. Conjunctive searches where the target is absent should have a longer reaction
time than the conjunctive searches where the target is present. The theory is that in feature searches,
it is easy to spot the target or if it is absent because of the difference in color between the target and
the distractors. In conjunctive searches where the target is absent, reaction time increases because
the subject has to look at each shape to determine whether it is the target or not because some of the
distractors if not all of them, are the same color as the target stimuli. Conjunctive searches where
the target is present take less time because if the target is found, the search between each shape,
stops.[23]

Knowledge representation

The semantic network of knowledge representation systems has been studied in various paradigms.

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One of the oldest is the leveling and sharpening of stories as they are repeated from memory
studied by Bartlett. The semantic differential used factor analysis to determine the main meanings
of words, finding that value or "goodness" of words is the first factor. More controlled experiments
examine the categorical relationships of words in free recall. The hierarchical structure of words
has been explicitly mapped in George Miller's Wordnet. More dynamic models of semantic
networks have been created and tested with neural network experiments based on computational
systems such as latent semantic analysis (LSA), Bayesian analysis, and multidimensional factor
analysis. The semantics (meaning) of words is studied by all the disciplines of cognitive science.

See also
Cognitive computing
Cognitive biology
Cognitive psychology
Cognitive science
Comparative cognition
Information processing technology and aging
Outline of human intelligence topic tree presenting the traits, capacities, models, and
research fields of human intelligence, and more.
Outline of thought topic tree that identifies many types of thoughts, types of thinking,
aspects of thought, related fields, and more.
Nootropic

References
1. "cognition - definition of cognition in English
from the Oxford dictionary".
www.oxforddictionaries.com. Retrieved
2016-02-04.
2. Von Eckardt, Barbara (1996). What is cognitive
science?. Massachusetts: MIT Press.
ISBN 9780262720236.
3. Blomberg, O. (2011). "Concepts of cognition
for cognitive engineering". International
Journal of Aviation Psychology. 21 (1):
85104. doi:10.1080/10508414.2011.537561.
4. Sternberg, R. J., & Sternberg, K. (2009).
Cognitive psychology (6th Ed.). Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
5. Boundless. Anatomy and Physiology.
Boundless, 2013. p. 975.
6. Stefano Franchi, Francesco Bianchini. "On The
Historical Dynamics Of Cognitive Science: A
View From The Periphery". The Search for a
Theory of Cognition: Early Mechanisms and
New Ideas. Rodopi, 2011. p. XIV.
7. Cognition: Theory and Practice by Russell
Revlin
8. Matlin, Margaret (2009). Cognition. Hoboken,
NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 4.
9. Fuchs, A. H.; Milar, K.J. (2003). "Psychology
as a science". Handbook of psychology. 1 (The
history of psychology): 126.
doi:10.1002/0471264385.wei0101.
10. Zangwill, O. L. (2004). The Oxford companion
to the mind. New York: Oxford University
Press. pp. 951952.
11. Zangwill, O.L. (2004). The Oxford companion
to the mind. New York: Oxford University
Press. p. 276.

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12. T.L. Brink (2008) Psychology: A Student
Friendly Approach. "Unit 7: Memory." p. 126
13. Madigan, S.; O'Hara, R. (1992). "Short-term
memory at the turn of the century: Mary
Whiton Calkin's memory research". American
Psychologist. 47 (2): 170174.
doi:10.1037/0003-066X.47.2.170.
14. Matlin, Margaret (2009). Cognition. Hoboken,
NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 5.
15. Sensation & Perception, 5th ed. 1999, Coren,
Ward & Enns, p. 9
16. Cognitive Psychology, 5th ed. 1999, Best, John
B., pp. 1517
17. Cherry, Kendra. "Jean Piaget Biography". The
New York Times Company. Retrieved
18 September 2012.
18. Parke, R. D., & Gauvain, M. (2009). Child
psychology: A contemporary viewpoint (7th
Ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
19. Surprenant, A (2001). "Distinctiveness and
serial position effects in total sequences".
Perception and Psychophysics. 63 (4):
737745. doi:10.3758/BF03194434.
PMID 11436742.
20. Krueger, L. (1992). "The word-superiority
effect and phonological recoding". Memory &
Cognition. 20 (6): 685694.
doi:10.3758/BF03202718.
21. Nairne, J.; Whiteman, H.; Kelley, M. (1999).
"Short-term forgetting of order under
conditions of reduced interference". Quarterly
Journal of Experimental Psychology A: Human
Experimental Psychology. 52: 241251.
doi:10.1080/713755806.
22. May, C.; Hasher, L.; Kane, M. (1999). "The
role of interference in memory span". Memory
& Cognition. 27 (5): 759767.
doi:10.3758/BF03198529. PMID 10540805.
23. Wolfe, J.; Cave, K.; Franzel, S. (1989). "Guided
search: An alternative to the feature integration
model for visual search". Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception
and Performance. 15 (3): 419433.
doi:10.1037/0096-1523.15.3.419.

Further reading
Coren, Stanley; Lawrence M. Ward; James T. Enns (1999). Sensation and Perception.
Harcourt Brace. p. 9. ISBN 0-470-00226-3.
Lycan, W.G., (ed.). (1999). Mind and Cognition: An Anthology, 2nd Edition. Malden, Mass:
Blackwell Publishers, Inc.
Stanovich, Keith (2009). What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought.
New Haven (CT): Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-12385-2. Lay summary (PDF) (21
November 2010).

External links
Cognition (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find Wikiversity has
/journaldescription.cws_home/505626 learning resources
/description#description) An international journal about Cognition
publishing theoretical and experimental papers on the
study of the mind. Wikibooks has a book
Information on music cognition, University of Amsterdam on the topic of:
(http://www.hum.uva.nl/mmm/) Cognitive psychology

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Cognitie.NL (http://www.cognitie.nl/) Information on Look up cognition in

cognition research, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Wiktionary, the free
Research (NWO) and University of Amsterdam (UvA) dictionary.
Emotional and Decision Making Lab, Carnegie Mellon,
EDM Lab (http://computing.hss.cmu.edu/lernerlab/home.php)
The Limits of Human Cognition (http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Limits-of-Human-
Cognition-37388.shtml) an article describing the evolution of mammals' cognitive abilities
Half-heard phone conversations reduce cognitive performance (http://www.physorg.com
/news194023346.html)
The limits of intelligence (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-limits-
of-intelligence) Douglas Fox, Scientific American, 14 June 14, 2011.

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