Cognitive science is a large field that covers a wide array of topics in cognition. However, it should be recognized that cognitive science has not always been equally concerned with every topic that might bear relevance to the nature and operation of minds. Classical cognitivists have largely de-emphasized or avoided social and cultural factors, embodiment, emotion, consciousness,
animal cognition, and
comparative and
evolutionary psychologies. However, with the decline of
behaviorism, internal states such as affects and emotions, as well as awareness and covert attention, became approachable again. For example, situated and
embodied cognition theories take into account the current state of the environment and the body's role in cognition. With the newfound emphasis on information processing, observable behavior was no longer the hallmark of psychological theory, but the modeling or recording of mental states. Below are some of the main topics that cognitive science is concerned with; see
List of cognitive science topics for a more exhaustive list.
Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) involves the study of cognitive phenomena in machines. One of the practical goals of AI is to implement aspects of human intelligence in computers. Computers are also widely used as tools for studying cognitive phenomena.
Computational modeling uses simulations to study how human intelligence may be structured. (See .) There is some debate in the field as to whether the mind is best viewed as a vast array of small but individually feeble elements (i.e., neurons) or as a collection of higher-level structures such as symbols, schemes, plans, and rules. The former view uses
connectionism to study the mind, whereas the latter emphasizes
symbolic artificial intelligence. One way to view the issue is whether it is possible to accurately simulate a human brain on a computer without accurately simulating the neurons that make it up.
Attention Attention is the selection of important information. The human mind is bombarded with millions of stimuli, and it must have a way of deciding which of this information to process. Attention is sometimes seen as a spotlight, meaning one can only shine the light on a particular set of information. Experiments that support this metaphor include the
dichotic listening task (Cherry, 1957) and studies of
inattentional blindness (Mack and Rock, 1998). In the dichotic listening task, subjects are bombarded with two different messages, one in each ear, and are told to focus on only one. At the end of the experiment, when asked about the content of the unattended message, subjects were unable to report it. The psychological construct of attention is sometimes confused with the concept of
intentionality due to some degree of semantic ambiguity in their
definitions. At the beginning of experimental research on attention,
Wilhelm Wundt defined this term as "that psychical process, which is operative in the clear perception of the narrow region of the content of consciousness." His experiments showed the limits of attention in space and time, which were 3-6 letters during an exposition of 1/10 s. While intentionality is the power of minds to be about something, attention is the concentration of awareness on some
phenomenon during a period of time, which is necessary to elevate the clear
perception of the narrow region of the content of
consciousness and which is feasible to control this focus in
mind. The ground of this statement is that the more details (associated with an event) the mind may grasp for their comparison, association, and categorization, the closer the apprehension, judgment, and reasoning of the event are in accord with reality. According to Latvian professor Sandra Mihailova and professor Igor Val Danilov, the more elements of the phenomenon (or phenomena ) the mind can keep in the scope of attention simultaneously, the greater the number of reasonable combinations within that event it can achieve, enhancing the probability of better understanding the features and particularity of the phenomenon (phenomena). to posture, motor control,
proprioception, and kinaesthesis, to autonomic processes that involve heartbeat and respiration, to the role of the enteric gut microbiome. It also includes accounts of how the body engages with or is coupled to social and physical environments.
4E cognition includes a broad range of views about brain-body-environment interaction, from causal embeddedness to stronger claims about how the mind extends to include tools and instruments, as well as the role of social interactions, action-oriented processes, and affordances. 4E theories range from those closer to classic cognitivism (so-called "weak" embodied cognition) to stronger extended and enactive versions that are sometimes referred to as radical embodied cognitive science. A hypothesis of pre-perceptual multimodal integration supports embodied cognition approaches and converges two competing naturalist and constructivist viewpoints about cognition and the development of emotions. According to this hypothesis, supported by empirical data, cognition and emotion development are initiated by the association of affective cues with stimuli responsible for triggering the neuronal pathways of simple reflexes. The study of language processing in
cognitive science is closely tied to the field of linguistics. Linguistics was traditionally studied as part of the humanities, alongside history, art, and literature. In the last fifty years or so, more and more researchers have studied knowledge and use of language as a cognitive phenomenon, with the main problems being how language knowledge can be acquired and used, and what precisely it consists of.
Linguists have found that, while humans form sentences in ways apparently governed by very complex systems, they are remarkably unaware of the rules that govern their own speech. Thus, linguists must resort to indirect methods to determine what those rules might be, if indeed rules as such exist. In any event, if rules indeed govern speech, they appear to be opaque to any conscious consideration.
Learning and development Learning and development are the processes by which we acquire knowledge and information over time. Infants are born with little or no knowledge (depending on how knowledge is defined). Yet, they rapidly acquire the ability to use language, walk, and
recognize people and objects. Research in learning and development aims to explain the mechanisms underlying these processes. A major question in the study of cognitive development is the extent to which certain abilities are
innate or learned. This is often framed in terms of the
nature and nurture debate. The
nativist view emphasizes that certain features are innate to an organism and are determined by its
genetic endowment. The
empiricist view, on the other hand, emphasizes that certain abilities are learned from the environment. Although clearly both genetic and environmental input is needed for a child to develop normally, considerable debate remains about
how genetic information might guide cognitive development. In the area of
language acquisition, for example, some (such as
Steven Pinker) have argued that specific information containing universal grammatical rules must be contained in the genes, whereas others (such as Jeffrey Elman and colleagues in
Rethinking Innateness) have argued that Pinker's claims are biologically unrealistic. They argue that genes determine the architecture of a learning system, but that specific "facts" about how grammar works can only be learned through experience.
Memory Memory allows us to store information for later retrieval. Memory is often thought of as consisting of both a long-term and short-term store. Long-term memory allows us to store information over prolonged periods (days, weeks, years). We do not yet know the practical limit of long-term memory capacity. Short-term memory allows us to store information over short time scales (seconds or minutes). Memory is also often grouped into declarative and procedural forms.
Declarative memory—grouped into subsets of
semantic and
episodic forms of memory—refers to our memory for facts and specific knowledge, specific meanings, and specific experiences (e.g. "Are apples food?", or "What did I eat for breakfast four days ago?").
Procedural memory allows us to remember actions and motor sequences (e.g., how to ride a bicycle) and is often referred to as implicit knowledge or memory. Cognitive scientists study memory just as psychologists do, but tend to focus more on how memory relates to
cognitive processes and the interrelationship between cognition and memory. One example of this could be: what mental processes does a person go through to retrieve a long-lost memory? Or, what differentiates between the cognitive process of recognition (seeing hints of something before remembering it, or memory in context) and recall (retrieving a memory, as in "fill-in-the-blank")?
Perception and action , an example of an optical illusion . Perception is the ability to take in information via the
senses and process it in some way.
Vision and
hearing are two dominant senses that allow us to perceive the environment. Some questions in the study of visual perception, for example, include: (1) How are we able to recognize objects?, (2) Why do we perceive a continuous visual environment, even though we only see small bits of it at any one time? One tool for studying visual perception is by looking at how people process
optical illusions. The image on the right, a Necker cube, is an example of a bistable percept; that is, the cube can be interpreted as oriented in two different directions. The study of
haptic (
tactile),
olfactory, and
gustatory stimuli also fall into the domain of perception. Action is taken to refer to the output of a system. In humans, this is accomplished through motor responses. Spatial planning and movement, speech production, and complex motor movements are all aspects of action.
Consciousness ==Research methods==