cognitive

of or being or relating to or involving cognition

"cognitive psychology"

"cognitive style"

psychology wiktionary The term cognition is used in several different loosely related ways. In psychology it is used to refer to the mental functionsmental processes of an individual, with particular relation to a view that argues that the mind has internal mental states (such as beliefs, desires and intentions) and can be understood in terms of information processing, especially when a lot of abstraction or concretization is involved, or processes such as involving knowledge, expertise or learning for example are at work. It 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 emergenceemergent development of knowledge and concepts within a group that culminate 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 (philosophy)action, problem solving and mental imagesmental imagery. 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 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 behaviours.While few people would deny that cognitive processes are the responsibility of the brain, a cognitive theory will not 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 (e.g. computers) can simulate cognition (see also artificial intelligence). The branch of psychology which 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 conversly, evolutionary-based perspectives can inform hypotheses about cognitive functional systems evolutionary psychology. unsolvedcognitive scienceHow much human intervention is needed to produce a cognition? (Nature versus nurture) What is the relationship of personhood to cognition? Why is it currently so much more difficult for a computermachine to recognize a human than for a cat to recognitionrecognize its human owner? Why is the concept horizonconceptual horizon wider for some than for others? Might there be a relationship between the speed of cognition and number of eyeballeyeballs? What is its form of such relationship? The theoretical school of thought derived from the cognitive approach is often called cognitivism (psychology)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 it being applied in a wide range of areas:

Psychology (particularly cognitive psychology), cognitive science and psychophysics

Cognitive neuroscience, neurology and neuropsychology

Behavioral economics and Behavioral finance

Artificial intelligence and cybernetics

Ergonomics and user interface design

Philosophy of mind

Linguistics, especially psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics

Economics, especially experimental economics

Learning styles and LearningIn 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 linguisticslinguistically-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 emergenceemergent 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 Hrair limit''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, United KingdomUK hypothesized that 'Cognition is a form of data compressioncompression', i.e., cognition was an economicseconomic, not just a philosophyphilosophical or a psychologypsychological 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-organizationself-organizing behavior; thus we have the opportunity to see samples of emergenceemergent behavior at each successive level, from individual, to groups of individuals, to formal organizations, to societies.

Cognition as a social process - In multiple observations, some dating back to antiquity, 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 form the social world.In education, for instance, which has the explicit task in society of human developmentdeveloping child cognition, choices are made regarding the social environmentenvironment and permitted action (philosophy)action that lead to a formed experience. 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. The macro-choices made by the political economy in effect will be extremely influential on the micro-choices made by the teachers or children. So at least on this level, there is feedback between the economic choice and the psychology of the activity. In social cognition, face perception in human babies emerges by the age of two months.

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 did not 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 observatoryspace 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.See: wiki.wikisym.org - Ward Cunningham, Notes on stewardship of his WikiWikiWeb

Summary - ''Cognition'' is a diffuse term and is used in radically different ways by different disciplines. In psychology, it refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. Wider interpretations of the meaning of ''cognition'' link it to the development of ''concepts''; individual minds, groups, organizations, and even larger coalitions of entityentities can be modelled as ''society of mind theorysocieties'' which cooperationcooperate to form concepts. The autonomous elements of each 'society' would have the opportunity to demonstrate emergenceemergent behavior in the face of some crisis or opportunity.

Related fields -

Cognitive linguistics

Cognitive ontology

Cognitive neuropsychology

Cognitive neuroscience

Cognitive psychology

Cognitive science

Evolutionary neuroscience

See also -

Animal cognition

Animal communication

As We May Think

Cognitive bias

Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive radio

Cognitive space

Cognitivism (psychology)

Emergence

Functional neuroimaging

Gestalt effect

Holonomic brain theory

Information foraging

List of cognitive scientists

Memory

Memory-prediction framework

Neurocognitive

NLP meta programs

Temporal cognition

Theory of Cognitive development

Theory of mind

Quantum mind

External links -

elsevier.nl - ''Cognition'' An international journal publishing theoretical and experimental papers on the study of the mind.

hum.uva.nl - Information on music cognition, University of Amsterdam

Emotional and Decision Making Lab, Carnegie Mellon, computing.hss.cmu.edu - EDM Lab

insead.edu - cognition in the CALT !encyclopediaCategory:Cognition !category:PsychologyCategory:Ph ilosophy? of !mindda:Tænkningde:Kognitionfr :Cognitionhe:הכרהnl:Cognit ief? !procesno:Kognisjonja:認識pl: Procesy? !poznawczeru:Когнитивн остьsv:Kognition DEBUG REDIRECT (cognition)

Pedagogia senso-percettiva
Scienza della formazione
http://www.openbrain.it/

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Alternative Thinking Institute Self Help Philosophy
An alternative thinking program that will bring more truth and create more love and happiness in your life.
http://www.rogerbondy.net/

Cognitive Science Society
The premier professional organization in the field. Information on membership, conferences, and the journal Cognitive Science (including abstracts of recent and upcoming articles).
http://www.cognitivesciencesociety.org/

Stanford University
One specialty of the Department of Psychology is cognitive sciences, with strength in the areas of visual science, cognitive neuroscience, and psychophysiology.
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/

COGPRINTS: Cognitive Sciences Eprint Archive
Cogprints makes preprints and reprints of papers in all areas of the cognitive sciences openly available on-line. Authors can deposit their work here, and all may freely read it. Directed by Stevan Harnad (best known as editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences).
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/

Dartmouth College
The smallest of the Ivy League colleges. Located in Hanover, NH.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/

CogNet
An electronic community for cognitive and brain sciences, run by MIT Press. Includes access to many of their cognitive science books and journal articles, and news.
http://cognet.mit.edu/