14 - Cognitive Topics I

Cognition

awareness, thinking and specific mental acts such as perceiving, interpreting, remembering, believing, anticipating.

Perception

Process of imposing order on information received by our sense organs

Perception: Field independent

a form of perception where people have the ability to focus on details despite the clutter of background information.

Rely more on internal cues, more interpersonally detached.

Embedded Figures Test (EFT)

a field independent test where the objective is to find as many of the smaller figures hidden in a larger figure as possible.

Perception: Field dependent

a form of perception where people have more difficulty blocking out the main image to see hidden details.

Relies more on external cues, attentive to social cues, oriented toward other people.

Pain Tolerance: Augmenters

People with low pain tolerance and a nervous system that amplifies or augments subjective impact of sensory input.

Pain Tolerance: Reducers

People with high pain tolerance and a nervous system that is dampened and reduces the effects of sensory information.

Interpretation

The process of making sense of, or explaining, events in the world.

Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory

People hold theories (constructs) about how the world works in an attempt to understand, predict, and control events. When events happen, it puts their constructs to the test and if the event can’t be explained, it causes people to revise their constructs.

Personal Construct

Beliefs or concepts that summarize a set of observations or version of reality, which that person routinely uses to interpret and predict events.

Bipolar: Two extremes; can be one option or the other (e.g., boring or interesting)

Locus of control

How one goes about explaining events in their life: Do you tend to accept or deny personal control or responsibility?

Generalized expectancies

A person’s expectations of reinforcement across a variety of situations. If they feel more in control, they may take more initiative.

External locus of control

Generalized expectancies that events are outside of one’s control.

Internal locus of control

Generalized expectancies that reinforcing events are under one’s control, and that one is responsible for major life outcomes,

Learned helplessness

Animals (including humans) when subjected to unpleasant and inescapable circumstances become passive and accepting of a situation, in effect learning to be helpless.

Learned helplessness explanatory styles

–      is cause Stable Vs Unstable? (it’s not going to change or it will)

–      is cause Internal Vs External? (it’s my fault or someone else’s)

–      is cause Global Vs Specific? (every part of my life or just one thing?)

Pessimistic explanatory style

If the answers for negative events are: Stable, Internal, Global, then feelings of helplessness and poor adjustment occur

Personal Projects Analysis Theory

Personality structures a person’s daily life through the selection of goals and desires, that then determine specific behavioural actions that people use to achieve the goal they have selected.

A person’s well-being is also influenced by how well they are progressing towards personal goals.

Critical aspects of goals for well-being

–       goal importance

–       personal control over goals

–       difficulty of goals

–       supported by others

–       conflict among goals

Self-Efficacy Theory

The confidence one has in their ability to perform the actions needed to achieve some specific outcome.

Also a feedback loop; If you do well, you have more confidence that you’ll do well again and vice versa.

Fixed Mindset Theory of Intelligence

Believe that abilities are mostly innate and interpret failure as the lack of necessary basic abilities.

Growth Mindset Theory of Intelligence

Believe that they can acquire any given ability provided they invest effort or study.

Cognitive schema

A mental concept that helps a person to process incoming information, organize that information, and interpret daily experiences.