The Aspects of Cognition - Essay Example

?Cognition Cognition is a term that is used to refer to internal mental processes, and is related to how people think, solve problems, learn to speakand other related concepts. It is generally studied using the scientific method, meaning that it relies on gathering empirical data and rejects looking at cognitive processes from a subjective introspective manner. Obviously, there were many debates about how a subject examining internal processes could possibly examine cognition from an external perspective, but new techniques in neuroscience have allowed thehave field to blossom and expand. The purpose of this paper is to discuss three aspects of cognitive psychology; namely perception, memory and language and the purpose of these in human cognition and thought processes. The discussion of each of these parts of cognition will be put into context using peer-reviewed studies that give an insight into the internal workings of the mind that make up the field of cognitive sciences. Perception One of the most important fields in the study of cognition is perception. Perception refers to how an individual has awareness or gains understanding of the environment in which they are in. It can refer to a myriad of different aspects of perception, including the perception of time and other less obvious aspects of our environment. Perception is particularly important in psychology because people with perception that does not match what is considered normal can have serious mental issues that do not allow them to function correctly in society. Differences in perception can also cause physical problems that can lead to injury. Perception and differences in perception are also interesting in their own right, with studies being conducted on the differences in perception between people of different cultures, for example. The purpose of perception is to give the individual an accurate picture of the world and the objects within it. One important study concerning perception is the work of Stefanucci, Proffitt, Clore and Parekh (2008). This study focuses on how fear can influence how an individual perceives a geographical slope. In this case, the study asks participants to judge the slope of a hill using three different methods; verbal, visually matched estimate and a visually guided action. There were two groups of participants, one who were stood on a wooden box at the top of the hill (and therefore were assumed to have less fear because they could not go down the hill at any great speed) and one who were stood on a skateboard (who were assumed to have a higher level of fear). Each group also had their fear assessed before making the judgement. The research was a cross-sectional study, because all the variables between the participants were measured at one time. This is useful in such a study because it ensures that the weather conditions or other variables are less likely to be involved in the perception of the slope. It is also a controlled study, because the researchers were manipulating the variables (e.g. the box or the skateboard) although there was an element of interview in the fact that the participants were asked to verbally judge the slope of the hill. This is again, useful in this type of study because the researchers can have maximum control over the conditions and therefore there will be less anomalies in the results of the perception tests. Memory Memory is another element of cognition, and refers to the ability of an individual to retain and recall information. There are traditionally thought to be three different types of memory; long-term (in which the memory is stored on a permanent or semi-permanent basis), short-term (in which the memory is stored for a short period of time only) and sensory (in which the memory is based upon sensory information). These three all have very important roles to play in the study of the cognitive sciences, and memory is particularly important in studies on education and learning. In this case, researchers and educators alike would like to know the processes of memory to perhaps enhance the ability of an individual to store and recall this information. One subset of memory research is on the word length effect, which is essentially the culmination of several studies showing that the longer a word takes to pronounce, the more difficult it is to store in memory. One such study based on this is attempting to discover at exactly which length the word length effect begins to have an effect on cognition. The research by Jalbert, Neath, Bireta, and Surprenant (2011) consisted of three different experiments. The first was based on a small sample group being presented with six words on a computer screen (random and of various lengths) and asked to correctly identify the order in which they were presented. The study was, like the above study, a cross-sectional study, because all the participants were involved on the same day and results were not collected at a later date. This was a controlled experiment, because the researchers had full control over the design of the computer interface, the words used and the order in which they were to appear. The results not only reinforced that the word length effect is a real phenomenon, but that the placing of the words in different neighbourhoods can have an effect on recall. Although there were no conclusive results about how long exactly a word would be before it becomes subject to the word length effect (as presumably this is based partly upon perception and the individual's own memory ability), the results did show that there were different results based on orthographical and phonological word size. Language Language is another element of human thinking that is considered to be a part of cognition. In this case, language refers to how an individual acquires a language and then how they use and recall words for the purpose of communication. In some senses, it is directly linked to the cognitive process of memory because of the use of storing and recall, although psychologists generally categorize them separately. In most people, language skills are gained in the very first few years of life without any conscious effort to learn, which is unique amongst the cognitive skills. Language, like many other cognitive facilities, is often studied by examining what happens when acquisition or use is not normal to try and illustrate how language cognition works generally. In a study by McBridge-Chang et al (2011), a longitudinal study was undertaken on 94 Chinese children (which make up the cohort for the study), half of which were categorized as 'at-risk' of having or developing a language problem, and the other half as 'normal' controls. The children were tested on syllable awareness, tone detection, rapid automatized naming, visual skill, morphological awareness, and word reading at age 5 and subsequently tested for dyslexia at the age of 7 on a standardized test. It was found that children who show language acquisition problems at a young age are more likely to develop dyslexia. The use of a longitudinal study here is useful, because it shows how language develops over an individuals lifetime, something that could not have been achieved with a cross-sectional study. It is also good that this study was heavily controlled, as some children may respond better to certain types of words. Performing a laboratory controlled experiment helps to eliminate any chance of such bias. Another interesting aspect of language cognition is illustrated in the study by Choi & Bowerman (1991). The purpose of the study was to illustrate how language can be used to express motion events in English and Korean. These two languages are very dissimilar, particularly in the way the lexicalize motion events. This longitudinal study tracked a cohort of young children up to the age of 24 months to see how they generalize their spatial words. In English, it was found that spatial and motion words tend to be very much grouped together, suggesting that the cognition behind learning English is helped by doing this. In Korean, the children were found to separate the words for spontaneous and caused motion, suggesting that Korean grammar and linguistic cognition is aided by this phonological separation. It is useful that this is a longitudinal study because it enables the researchers to see just how these patterns in language acquisition occur. Overall, it seems that language acquisition studies tend to be of the longitudinal sort, whereas studies on other aspects of language focus on the cross-sectional sort. Conclusion In conclusion, cognition is a complex set of different elements that make up various internal thought processes. There are many ways of examining this, whether it be in studies such as those mentioned above that attempt to objectively discover these internal processes, or by more recent developments in neuroscience that allow researchers to 'see' cognition directly. It is interesting that the three separate elements of cognition outlined above do not cover the entirety of processes that can be considered cognitive. It is also interesting that, by examining peer-reviewed studies of cognitive processes, we can see the similarities and differences between studying language, memory or perception in a formal environment. It is not always evident how accurate the results are from these studies, as many cognitive processes cannot be measured in a finite, scientific way. However, it is interesting to see the results from the studies above, and others, and see how the discipline of cognitive sciences within psychology has developed and the techniques used to study it. References Choi, S., & Bowerman, M. (1991). Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: The influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns. Cognition, 41(1-3), 83-121. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(91)90033-Z Jalbert, A., Neath, I., Bireta, T. J., & Surprenant, A. M. (2011). When does length cause the word length effect? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(2), 338-353. doi:10.1037/a0021804 McBride?Chang, C., Lam, F., Lam, C., Chan, B., Fong, C. Y. ?C, Wong, T. T. ?Y, & Wong, S. W. ?L. (2011). Early predictors of dyslexia in Chinese children: familial history of dyslexia, language delay, and cognitive profiles. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 52(2), 204-211. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02299.x Stefanucci, J. K., Proffitt, D. R., Clore, G. L., & Parekh, N. (2008). Skating down a steeper slope: Fear influences the perception of geographical slant. Perception, 37(2), 321-323. doi:10.1068/p5796 Read More