cognition

cog·ni·tion

C0461200 (kŏg-nĭsh′ən)n.1. The mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.2. That which comes to be known, as through perception, reasoning, or intuition; knowledge.

[Middle English cognicioun, from Latin cognitiō, cognitiōn-, from cognitus, past participle of cognōscere, to learn : co-, intensive pref.; see co- + gnōscere, to know; see gnō- in Indo-European roots.]

cog·ni′tion·al adj.

cognition

(kɒɡˈnɪʃən) n1. (Psychology) the mental act or process by which knowledge is acquired, including perception, intuition, and reasoning2. the knowledge that results from such an act or process[C15: from Latin cognitiō, from cognōscere from co- (intensive) + nōscere to learn; see know] cogˈnitional adj

cog•ni•tion

(kɒgˈnɪʃ ən)

n. 1. the act or process of knowing; perception. 2. something known or perceived. [1375–1425; late Middle English < Latin cognitiō <cogni-, variant s. of cognōscere to get to know (co- co- + (g)nōscere to get to know) + -tiō -tion] cog•ni′tion•al, adj.

Thesaurus

Noun

cognition - the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoningknowledge, noesispsychological feature - a feature of the mental life of a living organismmind, psyche, nous, brain, head - that which is responsible for one's thoughts and feelings; the seat of the faculty of reason; "his mind wandered"; "I couldn't get his words out of my head"place - an abstract mental location; "he has a special place in my thoughts"; "a place in my heart"; "a political system with no place for the less prominent groups"general knowledge, public knowledge - knowledge that is available to anyoneepisteme - the body of ideas that determine the knowledge that is intellectually certain at any particular timeability, power - possession of the qualities (especially mental qualities) required to do something or get something done; "danger heightened his powers of discrimination"inability - lack of ability (especially mental ability) to do somethinglexis - all of the words in a language; all word forms having meaning or grammatical functionlexicon, mental lexicon, vocabulary - a language user's knowledge of wordspractice - knowledge of how something is usually done; "it is not the local practice to wear shorts to dinner"cognitive factor - something immaterial (as a circumstance or influence) that contributes to producing a resultequivalent - a person or thing equal to another in value or measure or force or effect or significance etc; "send two dollars or the equivalent in stamps"cognitive operation, cognitive process, mental process, process, operation - (psychology) the performance of some composite cognitive activity; an operation that affects mental contents; "the process of thinking"; "the cognitive operation of remembering"unconscious process, process - a mental process that you are not directly aware of; "the process of denial"perception - knowledge gained by perceiving; "a man admired for the depth of his perception"structure - the complex composition of knowledge as elements and their combinations; "his lectures have no structure"cognitive content, mental object, content - the sum or range of what has been perceived, discovered, or learnedinformation - knowledge acquired through study or experience or instructionhistory - all that is remembered of the past as preserved in writing; a body of knowledge; "the dawn of recorded history"; "from the beginning of history"attitude, mental attitude - a complex mental state involving beliefs and feelings and values and dispositions to act in certain ways; "he had the attitude that work was fun"

cognition

noun (Formal) perception, reasoning, understanding, intelligence, awareness, insight, comprehension, apprehension, discernment processes of perception and cognition

Translations

Kognitioncognitioncognizioneкогниция

cognition

the mental act or process by which knowledge is acquired, including perception, intuition, and reasoning

Cognition

The internal structures and processes that are involved in the acquisition and use of knowledge, including sensation, perception, attention, learning, memory, language, thinking, and reasoning. Cognitive scientists propose and test theories about the functional components of cognition based on observations of an organism's external behavior in specific situations.

Cognition throughout life can be broadly described as an interaction between knowledge-driven processes and sensory processes; and between controlled processes and automatic processes. Over time, there is a trade-off between the amount of surface information that is retained in the internal representation of objects or events (bottom-up processing) and the amount of meaning that is incorporated (top-down processing). Following exposure to a stimulus, a sensory representation (sometimes called an image, icon, or echo) is constructed that encodes nearly all the surface characteristics of the stimulus (for example, color, shape, location, pitch, and loudness). The information is short lived, lasting less than a second. Much evidence suggests that extraction of information from this representation takes place in two stages, a feature analysis stage and an object recognition stage. It is during the latter stage that attention (controlled processing) and previous knowledge come into play. See Memory, Perception

Conceptual knowledge is needed to classify objects and events in the world. Some aspects of conceptual knowledge are innate or emerge very early in development, while others are acquired through learning and inference.

A primary cognitive function of all social species is communication, which can be accomplished by a combination of vocal, gestural, and even hormonal signals. Of all species on Earth, only humans have developed a communication system based on abstract signs. This evolutionary development is closely tied to the greater reasoning capacity of humans as well. All reasoning can be broadly described as pattern recognition and search. Conceptual knowledge base are searched for relevant information in order to draw a conclusion, solve a problem, or guide behavior. Thinking often takes the form of a chain of associations among concepts in long-term memory, with one thought retrieving others to which it is related. The most common reasoning strategies include direct retrieval, imaging, means-ends analysis, analogy, classification, deduction, and formal procedures.

Reasoning by direct retrieval involves retrieving a known fact from memory to solve a problem. Reasoning imagistically involves constructing or retrieving images from conceptual memory and examining or manipulating them to solve a problem. For example, individuals reason imagistically when they determine how many windows there are in their living rooms by retrieving an image of the room and counting the windows in the image.

Means-ends analysis is typically employed when solving problems in unfamiliar domains. When a solution is not immediately apparent, reasoners typically compare the goal to the current situation and select means with which to reduce the differences between the two situations.

The restructuring of a problem representation that allows an available means to be used in a novel way or a seemingly unrelated bit of knowledge to be accessed to solve the probem is called insight.

Reasoning by analogy is used when a current situation allows an individual to recall another, similar situation that has a known solution or other information relevant to the task at hand. It is a technique that is powerful but error prone.

Reasoning by classification involves making inferences about an object or event based on its category membership.

Deductive reasoning involves drawing a conclusion based on its logical relation to one or more premises. A second common use for deduction is testing hypotheses.

Formal procedures for reasoning and for solving problems include logic, mathematics, probability theory and statistics, and scientific investigation. Understanding of the behavior and properties of physical, biological, and cognitive systems has been greatly enhanced through the use of these techniques. See Psycholinguistics

By using noninvasive techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET scan), magnetic resonance imaging, electrical skin conductance, invasive surgical and chemical investigations of animal brains, and data from clinically observed syndromes associated with brain injury, cognitive neuroscientists have pieced together information concerning the role that specific brain regions play in the processing of emotional and cognitive events. High-level visual processing, such as object recognition, takes place in the occipital lobes of the cortex, although recognition of certain highly complex visual stimuli, such as faces, is handled by the right cerebral hemisphere. Auditory stimuli in general are processed by the temporal lobes of the cortex, and written and spoken word recognition and syntactical components of language processing are handled by certain regions of the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex, notably Broca's and Wernicke's areas; while emotional, idiomatic, and prosodic aspects of language are handled by corresponding regions in the right hemisphere. Higher cognition, such as reasoning and problem solving, involves the frontal lobes of the cortex. Memory and the processing of emotional stimuli are handled by the combined effort of the cortex (notably the anterior and frontal regions) and subcortical structures (notably the limbic system).

One particular subcortical structure—the hippocampus—plays a major role in the formation of new explicit memories. It is believed that an intact hippocampus is needed to temporarily bind together distributed sites of activation in the cortex that together make up a whole, explicit memory for an event. See Brain

Theories of cognition are often tested by building computer models that embody the theories and then comparing the model's performance with human performance on selected tasks. These models tend to be of two types. Rule-based models consist of a long-term memory containing rules which specify actions to take in the presence of particular input patterns, a short-term memory that encodes input patterns and temporarily stores data structures constructed by the rules, and a control structure that guides the process and resolves conflicts when more than one rule applies to the current input. Neural network models simulate cognition as a strengthening and weakening of associations among cognitive events. They consist of a network of interconnected nodes, a mathematical formula for modifying the connections, and a mathematical formula for propagating activation through the network. See Intelligence

cognition

the thinking process. Mental life can be considered as comprising both thinking and feeling elements: the cognitive and the emotional aspects of experience. Cognition is concerned with perception, memory, language, and problem solving. See also COGNITIVE SOCIOLOGY and COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY.

cognition

[käg′nish·ən] (psychology) The act or process of knowing, including comprehension, judgment, memory, perception, and reasoning.

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mini-mental test

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Patient discussion about cognition

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Synonyms for cognition

noun perception

Synonyms

Synonyms for cognition

noun the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning

Synonyms

Related Words