[8 Pillars of METACOGNITION] II. Operational knowledge about the functionality of cognitive abilities
What are the cognitive functions and how do they work? What do you have control over?
[The 8 Pillars of METACOGNITION]
I. Academic & theoretical knowledge of cognition and cognitive abilities
III. Self-monitoring
IV. Self-regulation
V. Adaptation
VI. Recognition — Anagnorisis
VII. Discrimination — Diakrisis
VIII. Meta-awareness — Mnemosyne
[TLDR]
[Basic cognitive functions]
1. Attention
2. Long-term memory
3. Working memory
4. Perception
5. Perceptual speed
6. Action
7. Association
8. Pattern recognition
9. Mental imagery
10. Problem solving/ conflict resolution
11. Language
Keep reading for descriptions and organization of these cognitive abilities.
How well do you know your brain and all of its individual functions that work together to come up with action plans and implement them to solve problems and complete your goals?
It is necessary to learn the functionality of our cognitive abilities within ourselves through education and experience to understand their scope and limitations.
Most people underestimate or overestimate their cognitive abilities.
Human cognitive abilities are limited by nature, especially in people who do not exercise them systematically.
Our perceptual abilities are limited when we do not have access to the thing itself. Without an object present to be perceived, you would have to manufacture the perceptual experience using your imagination [mental imagery] in order to engage your perceptual circuitry. Perceptual abilities are otherwise also limited to the quality of processing and general specifications of the perceptual system and the neurobiological machinery it relies on.
While the human capacity for storing information [long-term memory] is large, the amount of information that can be actively maintained and manipulated [working memory] tends to be much smaller.
Our attention span has limits as well. etc.
[Basic functionality of cognitive abilities:]
[Attention]
“[attention is] the gateway to human cognition. The prerequisite for awareness and consciousness”
-Aristotle [paraphrased]
Attention is a cognitive mechanism that selects relevant information from incoming sensory data.
Voluntary attention [top-down, goal oriented]
Involuntary attention [bottom-up, ]
External attention focuses on the selection and modification of data coming through the senses.
Internal attention involves cognitive control over the information that is being represented in the mind,
recalled from long-term memory,
or being maintained in working memory
Types of attention from multiple different models:
focused attention
sustained attention
selective attention
alternative and divided attention
Attention and memory work closely together: Attention guides what information gets encoded in memory and memory guides what information should be attended to.
[Memory]
Memory refers to an array of interacting systems, each capable of encoding information, storing it, and making it available for retrieval.
It is the nervous systems capacity to acquire and retain usable knowledge and assemble skill sets.
Personality and self-identity are products of memory.
The memory system has three parts
sensory memory
short-term or working memory
long-term memory
[Working memory]
working memory is differentiated from short term memory in that short term memory refers to temporary storage of information whereas working memory refers to both storage and manipulation of information
Components of working memory:
Central executive
phonological loop
visuospatial sketchpad
episodic buffer
[the latter 3 are slave systems]
Working memory is an active form of memory. It is more than 'remembering'. It is a core executive function connecting our attention, perception, and language abilities.
Working memory reflects a general ability to control attention and exert top-down control [goal-oriented] over cognition.
The central executive is the master component of working memory. It is a function of the prefrontal cortex that controls the performance of other components by allocating a limited capacity of memory resource to each component based on its demands.
The visuospatial sketchpad and phonological loop manipulate visual and auditory information, connecting working memory to perception.
Working memory impacts higher level tasks such as reading, following instructions, incorporating new knowledge and action plans, identifying relations, and abstracting general principles from particular observations.
[Perception]
Perception is the causal and informational foundation of our higher cognitive functions since it guides our thinking, believing, and action planning.
It comprises a complex sequence of cognitive processes by which we identify, organize, and interpret the detected signals of sensations that results in internal representations of the stimuli, compiling a conscious experience of the world.
Perception is shaped by learning, memory, expectations, and attention.
Perception involves bottom-up and top-down processes
bottom-up processes transform low-level information into higher-level information
[sounds → words → meaning, lines and edges → object recognition]
top-down processes refer to a persons expectations [function of knowledge] and selective mechanisms [function of attention]
Theories of perception:
[structuralism, Gestalt theory, Gibson's theory, the ecological approach, the computational theories, the cognitive theories.]
[Association]
Association is a particular cognitive process that causes connections between mental representations.
It is through processes of association that we connect information in mind, move from one thought to another, and build mental concepts.
Association is the root of metacognitive learning because it relies on our ability to connect previous knowledge to new knowledge.
[Pattern recognition]
Pattern recognition can be considered a process of perception that relies on previously learned information.
The process is generally one of inputing stimulus information [pattern information] and matching it to information from long-term memory.
[Perceptual speed]
Perceptual speed refers to someones speed in comparing visual patterns or identifying a visual pattern among distracting patterns. [Perceptual speed is not limited to visual perception]
[Action]
According to Cognitive Action Theory: action represents our behavior as a product of a hierarchically organized network system.
Behavior is organized into levels:
Nodes at the lowest level control patterns of muscular and neuroendocrine activity.
Nodes at higher levels represent abstractions of these behaviors that generalize over functionally equivalent specific patterns of movement.
Nodes at the highest levels represent plans, intentions, motivations, and so on.
[Mental imagery]
Constitutes a multimodal cognitive simulation process that enables us to represent perceptual information in the absence of actual sensory input.
Mental imagery, voluntary or involuntary can induce emotional experiences by triggering perceptual and memory system components of affective states.
It is a considered a fundamental cognitive ability because it can modulate a range of mechanisms such as goal directed self-regulation.
Exercising mental imagery has shown to improve verbal comprehension, visual-perceptual reasoning, and working memory in intellectually disabled individuals.
There is a relationship between mathematical giftedness and mental imagery. Gifted students show exceptional abilities in mental imagery, in combination with logical reasoning, creative thinking, and problem solving.
[Problem solving]
Problem solving is one of the most fundamental human cognitive processes that interacts with other processes such as abstraction, decision making, analysis, and synthesis.
It can be perceived as a search process in the memory space for finding a relationship between a set of solution goals and a set of alternative paths.
In the tri-archic theory of intelligence, problem solving includes processes such as:
recognizing the existence of a problem,
defining the nature of the problem,
allocation of mental and physical resources to solving problems,
deciding how to represent information about the problem,
generating the set of steps needed to solve the problem,
combining these steps into a workable strategy,
monitoring the problem solving process while it is ongoing,
evaluating the solution after problem solving is completed.
[Language]
Language plays a direct role in human cognition more abstract than its obvious communicative function.
Language allows us to variously and endlessly combine information into relational units and correlational networks.
This combinatorial power requires working memory.
Conscious thinking requires a deep involvement of language and working memory since it involves processes like the transformation of the object of thought and the episodic construction of new conscious experiences from earlier ones.
Language requires the use of semantic memory which is involved when constructing temporal and spatial experiences.
It is an important function of the working memory's phonological loop to process novel speech input, supporting language learning and specifically vocabulary acquisition.
Language structure seems to reflect aspects of human attention mechanisms and attention deficits often lead to impairments in language performance.
[This is not an exhaustive list of cognitive operations. It will require a deeper literature dive, more than one paper lol, to identify the current models and systems of cognitive operations. However, this list is useful as well.]