Human cognition

Human cognition is the set of mental processes by which people take in information, keep it, transform it and use it to act: perceiving, attending, remembering, using language, and thinking, which covers reasoning, decision-making and problem solving. Textbooks of cognitive psychology agree on these five divisions but draw the boundaries between them differently (Eysenck & Keane, 2020; Sternberg, 2008; Pilegard, 2024; Gobet et al., 2011). The processes also depend on each other so closely that sources question whether they are separable at all (Chun & Turk-Browne, 2007; Awh et al., 2006). Most of the core models of each process are still contested; for every process covered here except problem solving, sources disagree on at least one central model. Several classic findings replicate only in a weaker form, and some not at all (Open Science Collaboration, 2015; Klein et al., 2018).

History

Not covered by the research: the cognitive revolution of the 1950s and 1960s and the information-processing approach.

Core concepts

How reference works divide cognition

Four textbooks share the same core divisions, but each delimits them in its own way:

None of the four gives learning its own chapter; all treat it inside memory (Eysenck & Keane, 2020; Sternberg, 2008; Pilegard, 2024; Gobet et al., 2011). Reviews of memory do the same, dividing long-term memory into declarative and nondeclarative or explicit and implicit forms that are themselves forms of learning (Reber, 2013; Schacter et al., 1993).

The processes

• Perception: how the senses give rise to experience of objects and scenes. Main dispute: whether beliefs and abilities change what is seen.
• Attention: selecting some information over the rest, dividing it across tasks and sustaining it. Main dispute: whether perceptual load controls distraction.
• Memory: keeping information over time, with working memory for the task at hand and associative learning for links between events. Main disputes: whether conscious and nonconscious memory are separate systems, and whether working-memory capacity comes in items or as a continuous resource.
• Language: producing and understanding words and sentences. Main disputes: staged or interactive processing, and the role of prediction.
• Thinking: reasoning, problem solving and judgment and decision-making. Main disputes: what standard defines correct reasoning, whether insight is a separate process, and whether biases are errors.

How the processes depend on each other

Sources describe the processes as interdependent rather than separable. Attention selects what is encoded in memory, and memory guides what is attended (Chun & Turk-Browne, 2007); the two form a cycle in which memory sets what is relevant and attention decides what becomes memory (Turner & Sloutsky, 2024). Attention and working memory are closely intertwined, but how they interact depends on the specific variety of each, so neither is a single, unitary construct (Awh et al., 2006). Language and emotion are argued to be interactive or even constitutive of each other, with the evidence favouring the constitutive view (Satpute & Lindquist, 2021).

Theories that span several processes

Some theories apply across processes rather than to one. Architecture of the mind compares the main accounts of how the mind is organised: classical computation, connectionism, embodied cognition and Bayesian models of cognition. Dual-process theory, the distinction between fast intuitive and slow deliberate processing, appears in both reasoning and decision-making.

Questions, controversies, and new developments

How well do the findings hold up?

In the Open Science Collaboration’s replication of 100 psychology studies, cognitive effects replicated about twice as often as social ones, 50 against 25 percent, partly because cognitive studies more often test each participant in every condition (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). Across all findings, replication effects were about half the size of the originals (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). The details, and the dispute over how to read these rates, are in Replicability and generality.

Whose cognition?

Most published research relies on Western samples while drawing inferences about humans in general (Rad et al., 2018), and Henrich and colleagues argue that such samples are frequent outliers, including in visual perception and spatial reasoning (Henrich et al., 2010). Many Labs 2 found little difference in its effects between more and less Western samples (Klein et al., 2018).

How can hidden processes be known?

Every process described here is inferred from behaviour, and each method of inference has documented limits, such as different models predicting the same data. These are covered in Methods of cognitive psychology.

Broader connections

Not covered by the research: links to neuroscience, artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind and education.

Further reading

• Eysenck and Keane (2020): a standard textbook of cognitive psychology.
• Pilegard (2024): an open textbook.
• Chun and Turk-Browne (2007): how attention and memory depend on each other.