Cognitive Processes: What Exactly Are They And Why Do They Matter In Psychology?
It is very common that when we talk about some aspect of the psyche, whether from psychology or other sciences such as medicine, it arises at some point. the concept of “cognitive process”.
It is a widely used term and sometimes it is not clear what it refers to, and it can be confusing. In fact, sometimes difficulties may arise in determining what is or is not a process of these characteristics. That is why in this article we explain what a cognitive process is and expose some of the most relevant ones in our normal functioning.
Cognitive processes are understood as any set of mental operations that we perform in a more or less sequenced manner in order to obtain some type of mental product. It is about each of the operations that we carry out that allow us capture, encode, store and work with information coming from both outside and inside.
Each and every one of the cognitive processes that we carry out are fundamental when it comes to achieving our adaptation to the social environment, and even our survival, through its influence on behavior. We have to think that every physical or mental act we carry out, from picking up a piece of cutlery to eat to singing in the shower, kissing someone or simply writing this article, means that we have processed a series of information and that we are operating with it.
One aspect to keep in mind is that the cognitive process and emotion are generally considered to be separate. However, it is possible to observe that in information processing has great importance in emotional activation, since it contributes to giving the experience meaning and is essential when processing information and evaluating it. That is why, from this perspective, the fact that it was part of said cognitive processes could be considered.
There is a large number of cognitive processes, but broadly they could be divided into two typologies: basic and higher.
Basic cognitive processes
Basic cognitive processes serve as a basis for the subsequent preparation and processing of information. They are those that allow information to be captured and maintained in our system in order to be able to work with it.
Sensoperception
Sometimes separated into sensation and perception, this type of basic cognitive process is what allows information to be processed by our system. We capture sensations through different receptors which we have in our body and we subsequently perceive them by organizing the information from the receptors and giving it a meaning.
Within this category we would include, among other aspects, perceptual analysis and organization and the reception of information.
Attention
Attention is the cognitive process that allows human beings to select, focus and maintain their mental resources on a specific stimulation, stop devoting them to themselves or separate resources. exist different types of care among them the focused or the sustained, the divided, the voluntary or the involuntary, the overt or the covert.
Information processing
Closely linked to attention and perception, information processing is one of the basic cognitive processes which allows us for the information captured to be processed and processed.
In this sense, we must take into account the existence of automatic processing (involuntary and with little interference with other processes) and controlled (requiring a certain level of mental effort), serial (sequential) and parallel (several processings are carried out simultaneously). at the same time), bottom-up (we start from the stimulation to generate the processing) and top-down (expectations lead us to process the stimulation) and global or local (depending on whether we first grasp the totality or the details of the stimulation) .
Memory
Another of the basic processes, memory plays a fundamental role in cognition since it allows previously perceived information to be maintained in the system and work with her both short and long term.
Within memory we can find declarative memory (within which we find autobiographical and procedural memory) and non-declarative memory (such as procedural memory). Working memory is also part of it an essential element that allows us to work with the information currently gathered or recover elements from long-term memory.
Higher cognitive processes
They are considered cognitive processes superior to those that represent the maximum level of information integration, being processes that are derived from the union of information from various sensory modalities and basic cognitive processes. They are often conscious and require mental effort to perform.
Thought
The main and best known higher cognitive process is thinking. In it we integrate all the information and from it we perform different mental operations. It allows us to form concepts, make judgments and deductions and learn. Some of the types of thinking that we can find are inductive, deductive and hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Thinking includes both the capacity for representation and symbolization and the analysis and integration of information, in addition to making inferences.
Executive functions
Although they could be incorporated as part of thinking or separated into different basic processes, the set of executive functions allows us to manage behavior and the set of cognitive processes through the implementation of different functions. skills such as behavioral inhibition, planning or decision making among many. These are, therefore, functions that allow behavior to be oriented towards medium and long-term goals and that prevent urgent impulses from taking control of behavior.
Learning
The ability to learn is largely derived from the ability to pay attention to stimulation and then store it in memory and be able to retrieve it later.
Language
Language is considered a higher cognitive process, which, in addition to communicating with the environment and our peers, is used to internally regulate our behavior (through self-instructions). It is important to keep in mind that We are not only talking about oral language, but also about other types of communication.
However, it is important to note that language is not the same as thought. This has been known from empirical evidence in people with aphasia, that is, who have the brain structures responsible for language destroyed and non-operational.
Creativity
Creativity is considered by some authors as a higher cognitive process, since it involves the development of strategies or innovative ways of thinking and far from what was learned and acquired through experience.
Thus, the cognitive processes that belong to the field of creativity are those that escape the conventional routes of thought, those that, based on an image or an intuition, turn an idea around and, from there, create something. new.
Motivation
It is the cognitive process through which we link and dedicate our energy to a particular company, relating cognition, emotion and arousal. Thanks to it we can direct our behavior and it can facilitate or hinder the acquisition or processing of information. We can also find different types of motivation, such as intrinsic and extrinsic.
The behavioral critique
It is important that not the entire field of psychology accepts the existence of cognitive processes. Specifically, many variants of the behaviorism paradigm point out that these are, at most, a metaphor for what really happens. For these behaviorist perspectives, what we call mental processes are in any case attributions to internal mental phenomena that in theory explain part of what psychology really explains (or should explain): behavior, understood as relationships between stimuli and actions that can be modified through training or learning.
So, For behaviorism, the concept of a mental process is an unnecessary leap of faith since it is not necessary to assume that there are private psychological processes that generate from the inside out the behavior that we can observe.
