Psychology Article One: Understanding Mind and Cognition:


 Psychology typically is study of human mind, emotions and responses. This scientific study encompasses modelling, association, decision making. While there are myriad concepts related to psychology – we would prefer to talk about a few key concepts. These typically include innovation, creativity, happiness, positivity, depression, etc. These are manifested in different ways. There are different facets of emotions and hence modelling of mind becomes a very interesting and equally challenging aspect of Psychology. The psychologist from 18th century have first made a bold statement about mind that it can be modelled as a machine. They have moved ahead to establish psychology is a science and can be used to solve some of the pressing problems. Probably when the mind will unfold there will be more questions and less answers. But it is still OK. The quest is about understanding the mind and relating it to various issues. Another important concept is cognition. Cognition is about acquiring knowledge through various means. Any living-being acquires knowledge through senses, thinking and experience. Hence cognition encompasses everything we do. Continuously generating new knowledge using existing knowledge comes under cognition. Let us take a simple example – we see a train moving fast on the track – we sense it – we think about it – register in mind and build knowledge. It could be like train moves fast. Or it could be that it makes shrill sound while moving. This process of cognition can be studied from different perspectives. It can be studied from medical perspective, philosophical perspective and computing perspective. What is most important is studying and using this process to understand overall relationship between events and actions related to cognition. The theory and application related to this study comes under cognitive sciences.


In short mind and cognition are two pillars of psychological study. This study, modelling and association about them fall under this discipline. While this blog gives you basic idea about this concept in next blog we will talk about a few more concepts like meta-cognition.

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