Cognition is "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through

thought, experience, and the senses".

It encompasses many aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as attention, the
formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and
"computation", problem solving and decision making, comprehension and production
of language. Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and generate new knowledge.
The processes are analyzed from different perspectives within different contexts, notably in the
fieldsof linguistics, anesthesia, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, education, philosophy, ant
hropology, biology, systemics, logic, and computer science.[2] These and other different
approaches to the analysis of cognition are synthesised in the developing field of cognitive
science, a progressively autonomous academic discipline.

Etymology
The word cognition comes from the Latin verb cognosco (con, 'with', and gnōscō, 'know'; itself a
cognate of the Greek verb γι(γ)νώσκω, gi(g)nόsko, meaning 'I know, perceive'), meaning 'to
conceptualize' or 'to recognize'.[3]

The beginnings of the studies on cognition

The word cognition dates back to the 15th century, when it meant "thinking and
awareness".[4] Attention to cognitive processes came about more than eighteen centuries earlier,
however, beginning with Aristotle (384–322 BC) and his interest in the inner workings of the mind
and how they affect the human experience. Aristotle focused on cognitive areas pertaining to
memory, perception, and mental imagery. He placed great importance on ensuring that his
studies were based on empirical evidence, that is, scientific information that is gathered through
observation and conscientious experimentation.[5] Two millennia later, as psychology emerged as
a burgeoning field of study in Europe and then gained a following in America, other scientists like
Wilhelm Wundt, Herman Ebbinghaus, Mary Whiton Calkins, and William James would offer their
contributions to the study of human cognition.
Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) emphasized the notion of what he called introspection: examining
the inner feelings of an individual. With introspection, the subject had to be careful to describe his
or her feelings in the most objective manner possible in order for Wundt to find the information
scientific.[6][7] Though Wundt's contributions are by no means minimal, modern psychologists find
his methods to be quite subjective and choose to rely on more objective procedures of
experimentation to make conclusions about the human cognitive process.
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) conducted cognitive studies that mainly examined the
function and capacity of human memory. Ebbinghaus developed his own experiment in which he
constructed over 2,000 syllables made out of nonexistent words, for instance EAS. He then
examined his own personal ability to learn these non-words. He purposely chose non-words as
opposed to real words to control for the influence of pre-existing experience on what the words
might symbolize, thus enabling easier recollection of them.[6][8]Ebbinghaus observed and
hypothesized a number of variables that may have affected his ability to learn and recall the non-
words he created. One of the reasons, he concluded, was the amount of time between the
presentation of the list of stimuli and the recitation or recall of same. Ebbinghaus was the first to
record and plot a "learning curve," and a "forgetting curve."[9] His work heavily influenced the
study of serial position and its effect on memory, discussed in subsequent sections.
Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930) was an influential American pioneer in the realm of
psychology. Her work also focused on the human memory capacity. A common theory, called
the recency effect, can be attributed to the studies that she conducted.[10] The recency effect, also
discussed in the subsequent experiment section, is the tendency for individuals to be able to
accurately recollect the final items presented in a sequence of stimuli. Calkin's theory is closely
related to the aforementioned study and conclusion of the memory experiments conducted by
Hermann Ebbinghaus.[11]
William James (1842–1910) is another pivotal figure in the history of cognitive science. James
was quite discontent with Wundt's emphasis on introspection and Ebbinghaus' use of nonsense
stimuli. He instead chose to focus on the human learning experience in everyday life and its
importance to the study of cognition. James' most significant contribution to the study and theory
of cognition was his textbook Principles of Psychology that preliminarily examines aspects of
cognition such as perception, memory, reasoning, and attention.[11]

In psychology[edit]

When the mind makes a generalization such as the concept of tree, it extracts similarities from numerous
examples; the simplification enables higher-level thinking (abstract thinking).

In psychology, the term "cognition" is usually used within an information processing view of an
individual's psychological functions (see cognitivism),[12] and it is the same in cognitive
engineering;[13] in a branch of social psychology called social cognition, the term is used to
explain attitudes, attribution, and group dynamics.[12]
Human cognition is conscious and unconscious, concrete or abstract, as well as intuitive (like
knowledge of a language) and conceptual (like a model of a language). It encompasses
processes such as memory, association, concept formation, pattern
recognition, language, attention, perception, action, problem solving and mental
imagery.[14][15] Traditionally, emotion was not thought of as a cognitive process, but now much
research is being undertaken to examine the cognitive psychology of emotion; research is also
focused on one's awareness of one's own strategies and methods of cognition, which is
called metacognition.
While few people would deny that cognitive processes are a function of the brain, a cognitive
theory will not necessarily make reference to the brain or to biological processes
(compare neurocognitive). It may purely describe behavior in terms of information flow or
function. Relatively recent fields of study such as neuropsychology aim to bridge this gap, using
cognitive paradigms to understand how the brain implements the information-processing
functions (see also cognitive neuroscience), or to understand how pure information-processing
systems (e.g., computers) can simulate human cognition (see also artificial intelligence). The
branch of psychology that studies brain injury to infer normal cognitive function is called cognitive
neuropsychology. The links of cognition to evolutionary demands are studied through the
investigation of animal cognition.
Piaget's theory of cognitive development[edit]
For years, sociologists and psychologists have conducted studies on cognitive development or
the construction of human thought or mental processes.
Jean Piaget was one of the most important and influential people in the field of Developmental
Psychology. He believed that humans are unique in comparison to animals because we have the
capacity to do "abstract symbolic reasoning." His work can be compared to Lev
Vygotsky, Sigmund Freud, and Erik Erikson who were also great contributors in the field of
Developmental Psychology. Today, Piaget is known for studying the cognitive development in
children. He studied his own three children and their intellectual development and came up with a
theory that describes the stages children pass through during development.[16]

Stage Age or Period Description

Intelligence is present; motor activity but no symbols;

knowledge is developing yet limited; knowledge is based on
Sensorimotor Infancy (0–2 experiences/ interactions; mobility allows child to learn new
stage years) things; some language skills are developed at the end of
this stage. The goal is to develop object permanence;
achieves basic understanding of causality, time, and space.

Symbols or language skills are present; memory and

Pre- Toddler and Early imagination are developed; nonreversible and nonlogical
operational Childhood (2–7 thinking; shows intuitive problem solving; begins to see
stage years) relationships; grasps concept of conservation of numbers;
egocentric thinking predominates.

Logical and systematic form of intelligence; manipulation of

Elementary and symbols related to concrete objects; thinking is now
Concrete
Early characterized by reversibility and the ability to take the role
operational
Adolescence (7– of another; grasps concepts of the conservation of mass,
stage
12 years) length, weight, and volume; operational thinking
predominates nonreversible and egocentric thinking

Logical use of symbols related to abstract concepts;

Formal Adolescence and Acquires flexibility in thinking as well as the capacities for
operational Adulthood (12 abstract thinking and mental hypothesis testing; can
stage years and on) consider possible alternatives in complex reasoning and
problem solving.[17]

Common experiments on human cognition[edit]

Serial position
The serial position experiment is meant to test a theory of memory that states that when
information is given in a serial manner, we tend to remember information in the beginning of the
sequence, called the primacy effect, and information in the end of the sequence, called the
recency effect. Consequently, information given in the middle of the sequence is typically
forgotten, or not recalled as easily. This study predicts that the recency effect is stronger than the
primacy effect, because the information that is most recently learned is still in working memory
when asked to be recalled. Information that is learned first still has to go through a retrieval
process. This experiment focuses on human memory processes.[18]
Word superiority
The word superiority experiment presents a subject with a word, or a letter by itself, for a brief
period of time, i.e. 40ms, and they are then asked to recall the letter that was in a particular
location in the word. By theory, the subject should be better able to correctly recall the letter
when it was presented in a word than when it was presented in isolation. This experiment
focuses on human speech and language.[19]
Brown-Peterson
In the Brown-Peterson experiment, participants are briefly presented with a trigram and in one
particular version of the experiment, they are then given a distractor task, asking them to identify
whether a sequence of words are in fact words, or non-words (due to being misspelled, etc.).
After the distractor task, they are asked to recall the trigram from before the distractor task. In
theory, the longer the distractor task, the harder it will be for participants to correctly recall the
trigram. This experiment focuses on human short-term memory.[20]
Memory span
During the memory span experiment, each subject is presented with a sequence of stimuli of the
same kind; words depicting objects, numbers, letters that sound similar, and letters that sound
dissimilar. After being presented with the stimuli, the subject is asked to recall the sequence of
stimuli that they were given in the exact order in which it was given. In one particular version of
the experiment, if the subject recalled a list correctly, the list length was increased by one for that
type of material, and vice versa if it was recalled incorrectly. The theory is that people have a
memory span of about seven items for numbers, the same for letters that sound dissimilar and
short words. The memory span is projected to be shorter with letters that sound similar and with
longer words.[21]
Visual search
In one version of the visual search experiment, a participant is presented with a window that
displays circles and squares scattered across it. The participant is to identify whether there is a
green circle on the window. In the "featured" search, the subject is presented with several trial
windows that have blue squares or circles and one green circle or no green circle in it at all. In
the "conjunctive" search, the subject is presented with trial windows that have blue circles or
green squares and a present or absent green circle whose presence the participant is asked to
identify. What is expected is that in the feature searches, reaction time, that is the time it takes
for a participant to identify whether a green circle is present or not, should not change as the
number of distractors increases. Conjunctive searches where the target is absent should have a
longer reaction time than the conjunctive searches where the target is present. The theory is that
in feature searches, it is easy to spot the target, or if it is absent, because of the difference in
color between the target and the distractors. In conjunctive searches where the target is absent,
reaction time increases because the subject has to look at each shape to determine whether it is
the target or not because some of the distractors if not all of them, are the same color as the
target stimuli. Conjunctive searches where the target is present take less time because if the
target is found, the search between each shape stops.[22]
Knowledge representation
The semantic network of knowledge representation systems has been studied in various
paradigms. One of the oldest paradigms is the leveling and sharpening of stories as they are
repeated from memory studied by Bartlett. The semantic differential used factor analysis to
determine the main meanings of words, finding that value or "goodness" of words is the first
factor. More controlled experiments examine the categorical relationships of words in free recall.
The hierarchical structure of words has been explicitly mapped in George Miller's Wordnet. More
dynamic models of semantic networks have been created and tested with neural
network experiments based on computational systems such as latent semantic
analysis (LSA), Bayesian analysis, and multidimensional factor analysis. The semantics
(meaning) of words is studied by all the disciplines of cognitive science.[citation needed]

Recent developments[edit]
An emergent field of research, referred to as "Team Cognition", is arising in military sciences.
"Team cognition" indicates “an emergent property of teams that results from the interplay of
individual cognition and team process behaviors [...] [Team cognition] underlies team
performance” (Arizona State University East, 2005, Cooke NJ, 2005).[23]

Metacognition[edit]
This section is transcluded from Metacognition. (edit | history)
Metacognition is "cognition about cognition", "thinking about thinking", "knowing about
knowing", becoming "aware of one's awareness" and higher-order thinking skills. The term
comes from the root word meta, meaning "beyond".[24] Metacognition can take many forms; it
includes knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning or problem-
solving.[24] There are generally two components of metacognition: (1) knowledge about cognition
and (2) regulation of cognition.[25]
Metamemory, defined as knowing about memory and mnemonic strategies, is an especially
important form of metacognition.[26] Academic research on metacognitive processing across
cultures is in the early stages, but there are indications that further work may provide better
outcomes in cross-cultural learning between teachers and students.[27]
Some evolutionary psychologists hypothesize that humans use metacognition as a survival
tool.[27][need quotation to verify] Writings on metacognition date back at least as far as two works by the
Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC): On the Soul and the Parva Naturalia.[28]