Introduction to Cognitive Processing

ATL: Essential Understandings of Cognitive Processing

1. Mental Representations guide our behaviour. Mental representations refer to the internal images, concepts, or frameworks our minds create to interpret and make sense of the world. These can be things like memories, schemas, beliefs, or expectations. They’re not physical images in our brains, but rather mental models that shape how we think, feel, and act, even if we don’t know it
2. Different models can be used to help us understand a variety of complex processes like memory and decision making
3. We as humans, are all “information processors” that intake and process information
4. The mind and it’s inner workings, though cannot be directly observed, can be studied scientifically

Cognitive Processing:

• When people think about solving math problems, or telling a joke they’ve heard before, or trying to decide on what car to buy, they are involved in the phenomenon of cognitive processing. (All these daily life activities trigger cognitive processing)
• Cognitive psychologists aim to find out how we perceive the world and how we process what we perceive into knowledge

What is Cognition and the Mind?

• The mind can be defined as an entity that has a set of mental processes that are carried out by the brain. These processes are all mental processes, and include processes like perception (how we see and interpret things), decision making (making decisions in different contexts) , problem-solving, memory, language, and attention.
• The concept of cognition, is an umbrella term for these processes. Everytime we perceive something, make a decision, solve a problem, form a memory, and pay attention to something, we are undergoing cognitive processes, or cognition
• Cognition is also related to one's own personal experience. As we interact with the world around us, we create mental representations - that is, our own conceptual understandings of how the world works. Since people have different experiences, they have different mental representations - for example, of what is right or wrong, or about what boys and girls can and cannot do. These mental processes will influence the way they think about the world and behave.
• Cognition is also heavily linked to our own personal experiences. When we interact with the world around us, we create mental representations of how the world works to us: Since everyone has different experiences, their mental representations of things will differ: For example, what is right and wrong, or what boys and girls can and cannot do. For example, in Indian households, it is seen as wrong to call ones parents by name, whereas in western households this differs: And this is because of the experiences each have gone through.

Assumptions of the Cognitive Approach

1. Humans are information processors: Cognitive psychologists see the mind as an information processing machine using the brain as its hardware. It’s like the brain is a macbook, and safari and all the applications are proponents of different cognitive processes

→ The input to this hardware (the brain) is our interaction with the environment, and this form of perception is known as bottom up processing (Bottom-up processing is when perception starts with the sensory input — basically, you take in raw data from the environment and your brain processes it step by step.)

→ What occurs next is what cognitive psychologists refer to as “Top down processing”, or the process of information being processed in our brain, and how previous experiences and stimuli impact this processing of the stimuli being received, and how previous mental representations impact the perception