Cognitive Processes

Introduction
Cognitive processes are very important for human behavior. It is about knowledge and the way people use their knowledge.

The first paragraph is about storing knowledge in memory and about the accuracy of the stored information. It is a short paragraph in which we will explain how you can recognize, for example, a dog as being a dog.

The second paragraph is about memory. It describes different phases in remembering. The last part tells you how you can improve your memory.

The third paragraph is about understanding and using language. How come you recognize texts and know what it means? How do you develop your speech so you can use your language in daily life?

In the fourth paragraph we will explain intelligence. How can you measure intelligence and what is the connection between creativity and intelligence? We will tell you something about the genetic influence on intelligence; how come some people are so smart, while others are not that intelligent?

The last paragraph is about learning. There are several theories about this topic. They explain the simple ways of learning, like for example the way a dog learns a trick. But they also explain the more complicated things that are learned by cognitive learning. An example of this could be learning the content of this site. The last part of this paragraph is about computer-assisted learning.

1.Mental representation
Mental representations
Our memory has stored mental representations of experiences. There are two basic forms of mental representations.
In this paragraph we will explain the analogous representations, also called mental imagery. The second form of representation, the symbolic representations, will be explained in the next paragraph.
"Memory never gives a perfect match with reality, because mental images are not perfect."
Match with the real world
Our memory never matches the real world perfectly, because stored mental representations (from now on called mental imagery) are not perfect. Mental representations have some sensory qualities, for example: in your imagination, you can make a walk through your house. Recent studies using brain imaging have shown that during mental imagery most brain structures are active as if subjects are really experiencing or acting.
An example of the fact that mental images do not always match the real world, is the following:
When you are asked which city is farther west, San Diego, California or Reno, Nevada, the answer may not correspond with the correct answer, which you would have obtained after consulting an atlas.


This example shows that our mental map is not very detailed. However, it is not necessary to have a very detailed mental image. For example: when you are searching for the keys of your car, you do not have to know that they are in the bottom of the basket on the wooden table in the kitchen. You only have to know that they are somewhere in the kitchen. Then you will have them found within a couple of moments.

When do you use it?
You use your mental imagery when you are thinking of what has happened at a specific place, and when you look in advance. For example, when someone asks you to show him the way, you use your mental imagery to mention the name of the streets and the distances


2.Memory
Memory Systems
In the external world there are a lot of memory systems, such as an appointment calendar, a video tape, a compact disc and a computer. These artificial memory systems have been a source for ideas about possible functioning of the human memory system. The computer, for example, has served as a model for psychologists about cognitive processes and human memory.
"The amount of information we can process is limited."
Levels of Memory
The classical theory of Richard C. Atkinson and Richard M. Shiffrin illustrates the information-processing approach. This is how the analogy works:
The environment stimulates one or more sensory systems. This environmental information then passes three levels of memory called sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory. (These three levels will be explained later.)

At each level, cognitive processes operate on the information, giving it meaning, refreshing it and integrating it. In the sensory memory, the information is encoded to go to the short term memory. There the information is encoded to go to the long term memory. This is illustrated in the scheme.

Attention
The amount of information, that can be processed is limited. The main bottle-neck is attention. If you are distracted by a TV program, while you are trying to study, your attention will be divided over both the book and the TV. When you would study without having the TV on, you would have more attention to 'spend' on your study.
Cognitive processes determine which of the available information will be used and which will be ignored.

Flow of Information
The flow of information in this system is interactive. Sensory information streams bottom-up to more central stages and centrally guided attention driven by mental representations modulates (top-driven) sensory information.


3. Language
What is necessary to understand a sentence?
Understanding what others have written is very interesting. A writer coverts his thoughts into a series of visible marks, and the reader converts that marks into understandable ideas.
To understand the meaning of the text, the reader must identify the units of meaning, the words. But he must also apply certain rules underlying their sequence.
"A writer converts his thoughts to meaningful words, the reader converts these words to thoughts."
There are two major structural components: the syntax(or grammar) and the semantics. The syntax describes the forms of the strings of symbols. The words can only be combined in a certain sequence to be comprehensible. But when you are proficient in language you might not even be able to name any rule about syntax.

Semantics refers to the meaning of a luinguistic utterance. The meaning of any particular sentence occurs on at least three levels: First you need to know the meaning of individual words, second, you need to combine the individual words to form propositions. And third, you need to join those propositions to form a complete sentence.

What happens when you read a sentence?
To explain the levels described above we use the following easy sentence as an example:"The injured student anxiously called the family doctor".
First you have to look up every word in you "personal dictionary" in your head, this happens very quick. Then you have to understand the propositions in the sentence, you must know that the combination of family and doctor means something different than the the individual words, the same applies for "injured student" and "anxiously called".
Now you have to combine the information collected in the stadia above and understand the whole sentence. This all happens very quickly, because the perception (reading the sentence) takes between 1 and 1.5 seconds, and in the same time, you understand the meaning of the sentence.

Now we have described the understanding of one single sentence. But very often, the meaning of the sentence also depends on the context. Therefore it might be necessary to analyze larger units

4. Intelligence
The first intelligence test
To indicate the intelligence of humans several tests have been developed. We will explain some of them.
The first intelligence test was developed by Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of the famous Charles Darwin.

Galton was interested in the differences in intelligence between human beings, and he believed that certain families were more intelligent than others. Galton administered a battery of tests measuring qualities such as reaction time, breathing capacity and head size.
"The IQ is a ratio of intelligence of a person and that of an average subject."
The present-day intelligence tests
The intelligence test as we know it was formulated by the French psychologist Binet. He assumed that intelligence should be measured by tasks requiring reasoning and problem solving abilities.

Binet thought that a slow learning child was like a normal child but retarded in metal growth. So he concluded that a slow learning child would perform the same as a younger child in intelligence tests. he devised a scale of mental age. Average mental age (MA) scores correspond to chronological mental age (CA). A bright child's MA is above his CA, and a slow learning child's MA is below his CA. An advantage of the mental aged scale is that it can easily be interpreted.

The American psychologist Lewis Terman used Binet's method to develop a scale for intelligence. This index is called Intelligence Quotient (IQ), and this scale expresses intelligence as a ratio of mental age (MA) to chronological age (CA):

IQ = MA/CA × 100

The 100 is used to make the result better to compare. Numbers like 101, 125 and 89 are easier to handle than 1.01, 1.25 and .89. It is easy to conclude that when a child is smarter than the average (his MA is higher than his CA), his IQ will be above 100, and otherwise.

Failures
Tests following the pattern originated by Binet, use a great variety of items to test intelligence. Failure on one kind of item is scored the same way as a failure on another item. So this test does not show any particular strenghts or weaknesses.
To distinguish between various aspects of intelligence, the Wechsler Intelligence scale is developed. This test is almost identical to Binet's test, but it is divided in two parts, a verbal scale and a performance scale.

Another failure of the tests is that performance increases with practice. There are books containing intelligence tests, and when you pratice them a couple of time, you know how to handle every problem so you will score pretty high on an IQ-test.

5. Learning
Learning is basic for understanding behavior. Learning may be defined as a relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as the result of prior experience.
"Learning is a permanent change as the result of specific experiences."
Types of learning
There are several types of learning. First we will explain associative learning. This is the most basic form of learning. It is making a new association between events in the environment. Psychologists distinguish two types of associative learning: the classical conditioning and the operant conditioning. Classical conditioning will be explained in this paragraph; operant conditioning will be explained in the following paragraph.
The more complicated types of learning are called cognitive learning. This types of learning as a large overlap with memory and language.

People in all cultures cry in response to pain. This reaction does not have to be learned. Classical conditioning is illustrated by the observation that children do not cry when they see a doctor with a needle when they visit the doctor for the first time. However, in the future they will immediately cry when they see a doctor or a needle. This response is an example of classical conditioning.

Pavlov
The study of classical conditioning started with a series of experiments conducted by the Russian scientist (and Nobel Prize winner) Ivan Pavlov. He did one of the most famous experiments ever done in history:

A dog was prepared for this experiment by having a small operation exposing the salivary gland to the surface, which made it possible to measure salivation automatically.
Then the dog, which is fastened by leashes such that he cannot move, is given food while ringing a bell. This procedure was repeated several times. Normally, when ringing a bell, a dog does not salivate. A dog salivates when he gets food. However, when the bell is ringing every time when the dog receives food, he will salivate while the bell is ringning, even when there is no food.

Pavlov called this the conditioned response. The dog had been conditioned to associate the bell with food and to respond to it by salivating. Pavlov's experiment was an example of the classical conditioning. A new association between a conditioned stimulus and a response through the repeated pairing of the conditioned stimulus (the bell) with an unconditioned stimulus (the salivating when eating food), that elicts the response.