Cognition, cognitive development and issues | Making sense of the environment | Psych/soc

Understanding mental processes and cognitive development

Our perception of the world is constructed by our awareness, thoughts, and memories, alongside our problem-solving, decision-making, judgment, and communication skills. These mental functions are shaped by psychological, sociocultural, and biological influences that collectively form our reality. Cognitive science examines key areas such as consciousness, cognitive development, problem solving, decision making, intelligence, memory, and language.

Information-processing model

The information-processing model likens the brain to a machine that receives, interprets, and stores information for future use. This framework explains how we focus on specific environmental stimuli and retain relevant data in our memory.

Cognitive development and Piaget’s theory

Piaget proposed that children build mental frameworks, known as schemata, to understand the world. As they encounter new experiences, children either:

Assimilate new information into existing schemata, or
Accommodate by adjusting their schemata to incorporate the new data.

Piaget identified four developmental stages:

Sensorimotor (birth to 2 years): Learning through senses and actions, such as developing object permanence and experiencing stranger anxiety.
Preoperational (2 to 7 years): Using symbols and language, though still limited by egocentrism and an inability to perform mental operations like conservation.
Concrete operational (7 to 11 years): Gaining logical thinking about tangible events, mastering conservation and reversibility.
Formal operational (11 years to adulthood): Developing abstract thinking and the ability to consider hypothetical situations.

Piaget’s stages of cognitive development

Age (years)	Stage	Description	Developmental issues
0-2	Sensorimotor	World experienced through senses and actions	Object permanence Stranger anxiety
2–6	Preoperational	Use words and images to represent things, but lack logical reasoning	Pretend play Egocentrism Language development
7–11	Concrete operational	Understand concrete events and analogies logically; perform arithmetical operations	Conservation Mathematical transformations
12–	Formal operational	Formal operations Utilize abstract reasoning	Abstract logic Moral reasoning

Table adapted from OpenStax

Cognitive changes in adulthood

Cognitive abilities, such as intelligence, remain relatively stable until the mid-30s to mid-50s. However, fluid intelligence—which includes reasoning, memory, and information processing—tends to decline in later years. This decline is partly due to the gradual degeneration of brain connections and may be influenced by factors such as reduced physical and mental activity. In some cases, aging can lead to dementia, with Alzheimer’s disease being a prime example, where brain plaques and cell death result in severe cognitive impairments.

Influence of culture and environment

Culture plays a critical role in shaping how we interpret and organize our experiences. For example, the way people greet one another or follow social routines can differ dramatically across cultures, influencing their cognitive scripts, or event schemata. Furthermore, the longstanding nature versus nurture debate highlights that our cognitive development is the result of an intricate interplay between genetic predispositions and environmental factors—such as socioeconomic status, education, and parenting style.

Biological underpinnings of cognition

Biological factors, such as the functioning of the frontal lobe and the limbic system, are crucial for cognitive processing. The frontal lobe is responsible for planning, reasoning, and impulse control, while the limbic system—including structures like the hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus—plays a key role in memory, emotion, and basic bodily regulation.

Problem solving and decision making

When faced with challenges, people employ different strategies:

Trial and error: Experimenting with various approaches until a solution is found.
Algorithms: Following systematic, step-by-step procedures, often aided by computers.
Heuristics: Using mental shortcuts based on previous experiences to make quick decisions.

However, these processes are subject to biases and barriers such as confirmation bias (seeking information that confirms preexisting beliefs), fixation (being unable to consider alternative perspectives), and functional fixedness (viewing objects as having only one purpose).

Additional heuristics can further influence our judgments and decision-making:

Representative and availability heuristics- tending to connect to conclusions we expect or information that was most recently available
Belief perseverance- clinging to beliefs despite evidence to the contrary
Framing- positive or negative presentation of information.

Overall, our cognitive processes are a complex interplay of mental operations influenced by biological mechanisms, cultural contexts, and environmental factors, all of which determine how we learn, solve problems, and interact with the world.