| Cognition
The term cognition is used in several different loosely related
ways. In psychology it is used to refer to the mental 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 emergent development of knowledge
and concepts within a group.
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 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.
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 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 Learning
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', i.e., 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 have the opportunity
to see samples of emergent 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 reliabliy occuring, 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 developing child cognition, choices are made regarding the environment
and permitted 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 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.
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 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.
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