Cognitive processes: what are they exactly?

It is very common that when talking about some aspect of the psyche, whether from psychology or from 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 well known 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 in our normal functioning.

• Related article: "Cognition: definition, main processes and operation"

Conceptualizing: what are cognitive processes?

Cognitive processes are understood as all that set of mental operations that we carry out in a more or less sequenced way 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 the conduct. We have to think that every physical or mental act that we carry out, from taking a place setting to eat to singing in the shower, kissing someone or simply writing this article assumes that we have processed a series of information and that we are operating with they.

One aspect to keep in mind is that it is generally considered that cognitive process and emotion go separately. However, it is possible to observe that in information processing is of great importance emotional activation, since it contributes to endow the experience with meaning and is fundamental when it comes to processing information and evaluating it. That is why under this perspective, the fact that it was part of said cognitive processes could be considered.

Types of cognitive processes

There are a large number of cognitive processes, but broadly they could be divided into two typologies: basic and superior.

Basic cognitive processes

Basic cognitive processes serve as the basis for the subsequent elaboration and processing of the information. They are those that allow the information to be captured and maintained in our system in order to work with it.

Sensory perception

Sometimes separated into sensation and perception, this type of basic cognitive process is what allows information to be processed by our system. We capture the sensations through the different receptors of those that we have in our organism and later we perceive them when organizing the information of the receivers and endowing it with a meaning.

Within this category we would include, among other aspects, the 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 given stimulation, stop dedicating them or separate resources. exist different types of care, including the focused or sustained, divided, voluntary or involuntary, open or covert.

• You may be interested: "The 15 types of care and what are their characteristics"

Information processing

Closely linked to attention and perception, information processing is one of the processes cognitive skills which allows the information captured to be processed and can become elaborate.

In this sense, it is necessary to 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 processes are carried out at the same time), bottom-up (starting 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 capture all or the details of the stimulation).

Memory

Another of the basic processes, memory plays a fundamental role in cognition since it allows the previously perceived information to be kept in the system and work with her both short and long term.

Within the memory we can find the declarative (within which we find the autobiographical and the procedural) and the non-declarative (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 to recover elements from long-term memory.

• Related article: "Types of memory: how does the human brain store memories?"

Higher cognitive processes

They are considered as cognitive processes superior to those that suppose the maximum level of integration of the information, 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 thought. In it we integrate all the information and from it we carry out 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 hypothetical-deductive reasoning. Thought includes both the capacity for representation and symbolization as well as the analysis and integration of information, as well as making inferences.

• You may be interested: "Rational people: these are their 5 characteristics"

Executive functions

Although they could be incorporated as part of thought or separated into different basic processes, the set of Executive functions allow us to manage behavior and the set of cognitive processes through the implementation of different skills such as behavioral inhibition, planning, or decision-making among many. These are, therefore, functions that allow orienting behavior towards medium and long-term goals and that prevent urgent impulses from taking control of behavior.

Learning

The learning capacity it is derived largely from the ability to pay attention to stimulation and later 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 note 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 testing in people with aphasiaThat is, they have the brain structures responsible for language destroyed and inoperative.

Creativity

Creativity is considered by some authors as a superior cognitive process, since it supposes the elaboration of novel strategies or ways of thinking and far from what has been learned and acquired through experience.

Thus, the cognitive processes that belong to the field of creativity are those that escape the routes conventional thinking, those that from an image or an intuition turn an idea around and, from there, create something new.

Motivation

It is the cognitive process by 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 behaviorist critique

It is important that not all the field of psychology accepts the existence of cognitive processes. In particular, many variants of the behaviorism paradigm indicate that these are, at most, a metaphor for what actually happens. For these behavioral perspectives, what we call mental processes are in any case attributions to internal mental phenomena that in theory explain part of what really explains (or should explain) psychology: behavior, understood as relationships between stimuli and actions that can be modified by training or learning.

A) Yes, for behaviorism the concept of 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.

Bibliographic references:

• Blomberg, O. (2011). "Concepts of cognition for cognitive engineering". International Journal of Aviation Psychology. 21 (1): 85 - 104.
• T.L. Brink (2008) Psychology: A Student Friendly Approach. "Unit 7: Memory." p. 126
• Von Eckardt, Barbara (1996). What is cognitive science?. Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 45 - 72.