Everything about Cognitive Function totally explained
The term
cognition is used in different ways by different disciplines. In psychology, it refers to an
information processing view of an individual's psychological
functions. Other interpretations of the meaning of
cognition link it to the development of
concepts; individual minds, groups, organizations, and even larger coalitions of
entities, can be modelled as
societies which
cooperate to form
concepts. The autonomous elements of each '
society' would have the opportunity to demonstrate
emergent behavior in the face of some crisis or opportunity. Cognition can also be interpreted as "understanding and trying to make sense of the world".
Introduction
The term
cognition (
Latin:
cognoscere, "to know") is used in several loosely related ways to refer to a faculty for the human-like processing of
information, applying knowledge and changing preferences. Cognition or cognitive processes can be natural and artificial, conscious and not conscious; therefore, they're analyzed from different perspectives and in different contexts, in
anesthesia,
neurology,
psychology,
philosophy,
systemics and
computer science. The concept of cognition is closely related to such abstract
concepts as
mind,
reasoning,
perception,
intelligence,
learning, and many others that describe numerous capabilities of the human mind and expected properties of artificial or synthetic intelligence. Cognition is an abstract property of advanced living
organisms; therefore, it's studied as a direct property of a brain or of an abstract mind on sub-symbolic and symbolic levels.
In
psychology and in
artificial intelligence, it's used to refer to the
mental functions,
mental processes and states of
intelligent entities (humans, human organizations, highly autonomous robots), with a particular focus toward the study of such mental processes as
comprehension,
inferencing,
decision-making,
planning and
learning (see also
cognitive science and
cognitivism). Recently, advanced cognitive researchers have been especially focused on the capacities of
abstraction, generalization,
concretization/specialization and meta-reasoning which descriptions involve such concepts as beliefs,
knowledge, desires,
preferences and intentions of intelligent individuals/
objects/s/
systems.
The term "cognition" is also used in a wider sense to mean the act of knowing or
knowledge, and may be interpreted in a social or cultural sense to describe the
emergent development of knowledge and concepts within a group that culminates in both
thought and action.
Cognition in mainstream psychology
The sort of mental processes described as
cognitive or
cognitive processes are largely influenced by research which has successfully used this paradigm in the past. Consequently, this description tends to apply to processes such as
memory,
attention,
perception,
action,
problem solving and
mental imagery. Traditionally,
emotion wasn't 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 strategies and methods of cognition, known as
metacognition.
Empirical research into cognition is usually scientific and quantitative, or involves creating models to describe or explain certain behaviors.
While few people would deny that cognitive processes are a function of the
brain, a cognitive theory won't necessarily make any reference to the brain or any other biological process (compare
neurocognitive). It may purely describe behaviour 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 information-processing functions (see also
cognitive neuroscience), or how pure information-processing systems (for example, 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).
Influence and influences
This success has led to its application within a wide range of areas:
In its widest sense, the field is quite eclectic and draws from a number of areas, such as:
Computer science and information theory, where attempts at artificial intelligence, collective intelligence and robotics focus on mimicking living beings' capacities for cognition, or applying the experience gathered in one place by one being to actions by another being elsewhere.
Philosophy, epistemology and ontology
Moral philosophy, where it deals with the problem of ignorance, often seen as the opposite of cognition.
Biology and neuroscience
Mathematics and probability
Physics, where observer effects are studied in depth mathematically.
Cognitive ontology
On an individual being level, these questions are studied by the separate fields above, but are also more integrated into cognitive ontology of various kinds. This challenges the older linguistically dependent views of ontology, wherein one could debate being, perceiving, and doing, with no cognizance of innate human limits, varying human lifeways, and loyalties that may let a being "know" something (see qualia) that for others remains very much in doubt.
On the level of an individual mind, an emergent behavior might be the formation of a new concept, 'bubbling up' from below the conscious level of the mind. A simple way of stating this is that beings preserve their own attention and are at every level concerned with avoiding interruption and distraction. Such cognitive specialization can be observed in particular in language, with adults markedly less able to hear or say distinctions made in languages to which they were not exposed in youth.
Cognition as compression
By the 1980s, researchers in the Engineering departments of the University of Leeds, UK hypothesized that 'Cognition is a form of compression', for example, cognition was an economic, not just a philosophical or a psychological, process; in other words, skill in the process of cognition confers a competitive advantage. An implication of this view is that choices about what to cognize are being made at all levels from the neurological expression up to species-wide priority setting; in other words, the compression process is a form of optimization. This is a force for self-organizing behavior; thus we've the opportunity to see samples of emergent behavior at each successive level, from individual, to groups of individuals, to formal organizations.
Cognition as and in a social process
It has been observed since antiquity that language acquisition in human children fails to emerge unless the children are exposed to language. Thus, language acquisition is an example of an emergent behavior, which in fact requires a narrow, yet evolutionarily reliably occurring, set of inputs. In this case, the individual is made up of a set of mechanisms 'expecting' such input from the social world.
In education, for instance, which has the explicit task in society of developing child cognition, choices are made regarding the environment and permitted action that lead to a formed experience. In social cognition, face perception in human babies emerges by the age of two months. This is in turn affected by the risk or cost of providing these, for instance, those associated with a playground or swimming pool or field trip. On the other hand, the macro-choices made by the teachers are extremely influential on the micro-choices made by children.
In a large systemic perspective, cognition is considered closely related to the social and human organization functioning and constrains. Managerial decision making processes can be erroneous in politics, economy and industry for the reason of different reciprocally dependent socio-cognitive factors. This domain became the field of interest of emergent socio-cognitive engineering (Google search
).
Cognition in a cultural context
One famous image, Earthrise, taken during Apollo 8, the first Apollo mission to the Moon, shows planet Earth in a single photograph. Earthrise is now the icon for Earth Day, which didn't arise until after the image became widespread. At this level, an example of an 'emergent behavior' might be concern for Spaceship Earth, as encouraged by the development of orbiting space observatories etc.
Other concepts which seem to have arisen only recently (in the last century) include increased expectations for human rights. In this case, an example of an 'emergent behavior' might perhaps be the use of the mass media to publicize inequities in the human condition, perhaps using highly portable cameras and telephones.
Example of emergent organization
It is possible to find other examples of critical mass necessary to develop a concept. For example, a nascent coalition of individuals might fail in the implementation of some agreement among them; but in the words of Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the Wiki-wiki Web: » I thought there would be failure modes, but I wasn't surprised that communities found ways around them. I thought it was important that when the organization proved to be wrong, people could reorganize on their own, that organization could emerge.
In other words, when the organization adapted, the concept adapted and survived the incipient failure mode.
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