- What is cognitive?
- Cognitive process
- Cognitive learning
- Cognitive impairment
- Cognitive activities
- Cognitive and cognitive
We explain what is cognitive, how is its learning, process and the activities that compose it. Also, cognitive decline.
What is cognitive?
The word "cognitive" comes from the Latin word we will not, "Know", so that it applies to everything related to the knowledge. That is, to the faculty of the species human apply your reasoning to understanding the nature that surrounds it, being able to establish relationships, obtain conclusions, predict events and project theories.
To some extent, all living beings have a certain capacity for cognition in a broad sense, that is, to translate their experiences in learning and thus better adapt to their environment, applying certain forms of memory and privilege of the information.
However, no other species possesses the enormous cognitive capacity of the human being, which has allowed him, among many other things, to study cognition itself and identify nearby concepts of importance, such as intelligence, perception, learning or reasoning.
The psychology It is perhaps the discipline that most and best studies the cognitive processes of the human being, in its quest to understand and describe the functioning of the mind. Thus, he is interested in cognitive mechanisms or processes, in the structure that allows learning and, together with medicine, in problems that with age or illness can arise around cognitive ability.
Cognitive process
Mental processes or cognitive processes are called the different mental operations that we carry out in order to perceive, encode, store and link information. It can be both the information obtained through the senses from the outside world, and that formulated autonomously, in our internal forum.
These processes serve the purpose of adapting to the environment, which may sound simple, but in reality it is an extremely complex dynamic, in which we modify our conduct, we predict future actions, we formulate hypothesis and theories, and we fulfill the purposes that we have assigned ourselves.
Cognitive processes can be of two types:
- Simple or basic. When they involve the minimum actions of perception and retention of information so that we can process and work with it, that is, perception through the senses, the ability to focus attention, the fundamental activities of the memory and minimal processing of sensory information.
- Superior or complex. When they involve a high level of effort and integration of the mental functions of the individual, allowing them to elaborate their own information from the perceived, at high levels of abstraction or depth, which has nothing to do with handling difficult content, but rather with the capacity for a full intellectual life. We refer to processes such as the formation of the thought, learning, ability logic, the creativity and the language.
Cognitive learning
In the sensorimotor period the cognitive depends on the senses.Cognitive learning is the process in which information enters the cognitive system, is processed and then triggers a reaction. According to the Theory of cognitive development proposed by the Swiss Jean Piaget (1896-1980), the development of this capacity that takes place throughout the first years of life, necessarily includes the following stages:
- Sensorimotor period. It begins with birth and ends around two years of age, and consists of learning through the senses and the impression that the events that the individual experiences leave on memory. As it grows and imitates its parents, the infant goes from one existence reflected, of mere stimulus-response, to demonstrate its first schemes own of conduct.
- Pre-operational period. Between two years of age and seven years, the child gains the ability to elaborate symbols, which is why he enjoys so much the stories children. This is closely linked to the acquisition of language, which allows them to “take” the world through words, although they still lack the capacity for logical operations, since the child understands the world from their own egocentric perspective.
- Period of concrete actions. Period that ranges from eight years to eleven and presents the entry of logic to the mind of the individual, although still limited by concreteness and immediacy. It is rare for the young person to be able to organize and classify his own knowledge, since his thinking is limited by what he can experience personally.
- Period of formal operations. Starting at eleven years old and spanning up to fifteen, formal thinking is fully developed in this period, empowering the individual to carry out hypotheses of what could happen, put them to the test and draw conclusions. In addition, it is here where the interest in the personal identity and for the human relations.
Cognitive impairment
Cognitive impairment is understood to be the decline or progressive decline of human cognitive functions. It can be due to internal conditions of the body, such as wear and tear typical of age, or the appearance of mental illnesses such as Alzheimer's or dementia.
Many of these conditions are congenital, typical of inheritance genetics of each, while others may be linked to the effect of habits vital in the human brain: diet, amount of sleep, daily mental activity, etc.
In most cases, the processes of cognitive deterioration begin slowly and progressively after 45 years of age, and manifest 20 or 30 years later. There are no appropriate medicinal treatments to slow or reverse cognitive decline.
Cognitive impairment can be:
- Mild. Forgetfulness, decreased understanding, slowed down of thinking.
- Serious. Loss of language, blurring of personality, catatonia.
Cognitive activities
This is the name given to the different mechanisms that make up the cognitive process, and that, although we can define separately, they really act together to obtain a specific behavior of the individual. The most important of these activities are:
- Attention. It consists of the allocation of mental (neural) resources to the perception and processing of information, to focus the mind on a certain point. Thanks to the activation of certain neural networks, attention can be selective and exclusive, abstracting from the environment and focusing on the point of interest.
- Memory. Memory is understood as the set of knowledge acquired and recovered without the explicit use of consciousness, which includes body memory and skills motor skills, and a vast background of experience available to the individual.
- Language. It refers to the linguistic mental capacity, specifically in relation to lexicon (the number of words and their meanings) and at the syntax (the formal ordering of words), all according to a grammar extremely complex combinatorial. Language is an inseparable projection of thought, and there is no part of it that the former cannot reflect.
- Perception. It is about the reception, organization, integration and interpretation of sensory information. It is a process that implies the comparison of this new information with the "database" of previous experience and its more complex formulation, in order to allow learning.
- Intelligence. It refers to the ability to process large amounts of information in a convenient, agile and precise way, to solve specific problems or formulate abstract knowledge, which later allow to predict or solve problems even more efficiently. Bliss efficiency has to do with the ability to take advantage of the means available to face situations and achieve objectives.
Cognitive and cognitive
According to the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, the cognitive is defined as "belonging to or related to knowledge", while the cognitive is what is "capable of knowing". Seen like this, the difference between both terms is:
- Cognitive. It is linked to the power of knowing, that is, the possibility of doing it.
- Cognitive. It is what, in itself, has to do in some way with knowledge.
It's a nicety, if anything, and generally both terms are handled as synonyms or equivalent.