3.

BASIC COGNITIVE
PROCESSES.
SUMMARY

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 • Cognitive processes are the mental operations performed by the brain to process information.
• Cognitive processes, also called cognitive functions, include basic aspects, such as sensation,
perception, attention or memory, and more elaborate ones, such as thought, language and
intelligence.

• ATTENTION: The cognitive process of selectively focusing attention on one aspect of the
environment while ignoring other stimuli.

• PERCEPTION: The cognitive process of organising, identifying and interpreting sensory information
to represent and understand the environment.
• MEMORY: The cognitive process through which information is encoded, stored and retrieved.

They serve to:

o They are the basis of other more complex cognitive processes, such as learning.
o They allow the interpretation of a situation.
o They allow us to form the experience we have in a situation (pleasure, surprise, stress,
anxiety, fear...).
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 1. SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

SENSATION is the process of receiving, converting and transmitting information from the
outside world to our body. It occurs when a stimulus activates a sensory receptor.

PERCEPTION is the process by which the brain organises and interprets sensory information
into meaningful experiences.
DETERMINANTS OF PERCEPTION

INDIVIDUAL FACTORS
§ Biology (such as colour blindness)
§ Motivation
§ Emotion (mood)
§ Cognitive aspects: memory, learning processes, expectations
§ Previous experiences
EXTERNAL FACTORS
§ Nature of the stimulus: novelty, olfactory, visual, etc...
§ Context: amount of stimulus

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 ESTIMATION OF PERCEPTUAL THRESHOLDS

ABSOLUTE THRESHOLD: The lowest intensity at which a stimulus can be detected 50% of the time.

DIFFERENTIAL THRESHOLD: Minimum difference necessary to detect the change in a stimulus (discriminative
ability).

WEBER'S LAW: the increase in the intensity of a stimulus that is necessary to detect the change in sensation is
proportional to the initial stimulus (the greater it is, the greater the intensity needed to detect the change).

SIGNAL DETECTION THEORY (Tanner and Swets)

SDT considers that a detection task involves a process related to the functioning of the sensory system, the
outcome of which is a sensation of a certain intensity, and another process related to the cognitive process or
decision process, the outcome of which is the response.

PARALLEL PROCESSING
• Bottom-up processing: the perception of a stimulus is constructed through its components.
• Top-down processing: perception is constructed from the influence of previous conceptual maps,
beliefs and expectations.

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 SELECTIVE ATTENTION
• The brain selects some information from the environment.
• It avoids information overload through attentional filtering (Broadbent, 1957).
PAIN

Sensory receptors in the skin allow the sensation of touch:

• - Pressure
• - Temperature
• - Pain
Our perception of pain is different. This difference depends on:

INPUT CONTROL THEORY:

Defends the existence of a "neurological gateway" in the spinal cord that controls the transmission of pain
impulses to the brain.

BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL THEORY:

Argues that pain is a dynamic process involving biological, psychological and social mechanisms.

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 CONSIDERATIONS IN DENTISTRY

• Moods can influence perception

• situational factors can influence perception
• Not everyone perceives things in the same way.
• Make sure that patients understand you correctly.
• Tailor your message to the receiver (content and form).
• Be careful with the sensation of pain

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 2. ATTENTION
ATTENTION is the human capacity to be aware of what is going on inside and outside
ourselves (concentration).
FUNCTIONS:
• Control cognitive capacity.
• To prevent information overload.
• Stimulate the organism when faced with new or unfamiliar situations (e.g.
driving).
• To structure human activity, orienting motivation towards relevant aspects.

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 TYPES OF ATTENTION
CRITERIA ATTENTIONAL TYPES

ACCORDING TO THE ORIGIN OF Internal Attention External Attention

THE STIMULI

ACCORDING TO THE ATTITUDE Voluntary (Active) Non-voluntary (Passive)

OF THE SUBJECT

ACCORDING TO PHYSICAL AND Overt Covert

PHYSIOLOGICAL
MANIFESTATIONS
ACCORDING TO THE INTEREST Divided Selective/Focused
OF THE SUBJECT

ACCORDING TO SENSORY Visual/Spatial Auditory/Temporal

MODALITY

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 INTERNAL The subject pays attention to his own mental processes or to sensations coming from
internal organs.
EXTERNAl The subject pays attention to external stimuli.

NON-VOLUNTARY The environment draws the person's attention to a stimulus without them realising it.
VOLUNTARy The person decides to pay attention to the stimulus (requires motivation).

OVERT Presence of physiological responses and movement.

COVERT No response observed in the individual.

DIVIDED Between several stimuli.

FOCALISED Effort is concentrated on a single stimulus.

VISUAL/SPATIAL Involves vision.

AUDITORY/TEMPORAL Involves hearing.

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DETERMINANTS OF ATTENTION

INDIVIDUAL FACTORS
• Biology: capacity
• Motivation
• Emotion (mood)
• cognitive aspects: memory, learning processes, previous experiences
EXTERNAL FACTORS
• Nature of the stimulus: novelty, intensity, importance, repetition of the stimulus
• Context: amount of stimulus
STROOP EFFECT

Our attention is selective, we control it according to our interests, so we may voluntarily pay more attention
to some things than others at any given time, but sometimes we suffer interference.

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FACTORS THAT DECREASE ATTENTION
• Substance use
• Fatigue
• Distraction (intentional or unintentional)
• Low motivation

CONSIDERATIONS IN THE DENTAL SETTING

• Mood can affect attention.
• Situational factors can affect attention.
• Use distraction or other techniques to avoid or attract the attention of your patients
according to your objectives.
• Adjust the message to your recipient (content and form).
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 3. MEMORY

HOW IT WORKS?

CODING MAINTENANCE RECOVERY

Organisation/sorting Storage of memories: Retrieval of

of information into influenced by our information
"boxes" within the expectations, previously stored in
memory. prejudices and our our brain.
mental schemas.

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 FACTORS AFFECTING MEMORY RETRIEVAL
• Motivation and emotion.
• Our preferences and interests.
• The encoding process (and tricks).
• The learning context: Knowledge is best retrieved in the same place where it
was acquired.
• Other individual factors (capacity).

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 TYPES OF MEMORY
SENSORY MEMORY:
• Iconic memory: processes visual information. It has a duration of 1 s.
• Echoic memory: processes auditory stimuli. It has a duration of 5/10 s.
SHORT-TERM MEMORY (Active or Working Memory):
• Structures and processes used temporarily to store and manipulate information.
• Lasts less than 20 s. After this time, the memory deteriorates or there is interference.
• In 1956, George A. Miller published an article on the limited capacity of working memory
(The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for
Processing Information), in which he stated that our limit in immediate memory was a
number of units of information ranging between 5 and 9, or as it has always been said, 7±2.

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 LONG-TERM MEMORY:
• Part of memory that is more or less permanent.
• It consists of large amounts of information stored over many years.
Types:
• Explicit or declarative: semantic and episodic memory. (When was World War II?
When did you start university?)
• Implicit: procedural and emotional (previous experiences help in the execution of a
task, without you being aware of the existence of those previous experiences).
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SHORT TERM AND LONG TERM MEMORY
• Number of stimuli that can be retained
• Storage time
• Types of error: Acoustic in CCM, Semantic in LTM.
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 CAN WE TRUST ON MEMORY?
We can create or interfere with our memory. Context can affect memory. In addition, memory is
subject to our individual traits (Capacity, Mood, Experiences).

THE SEVEN CAPITAL SINS OF MEMORY (Daniel Schacter)

TRANSIENCE Memories tend to weaken over time.

DISTRACTIBILITY OR By not paying attention, information has not been stored in memory or has been stored
CARELESSNESS incorrectly.
BLOCK Temporary inaccessibility.

MISATTRIBUTION Remembering the source incorrectly.

SUGGESTIBILITY Remembering something that has not happened by suggestion.

RESTRICTIVE BIAS Memories distorted by current knowledge, feelings and beliefs.

PERSISTENCE Recalling unwanted disturbing information.

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 OMISSION
Retrograde amnesia: loss of memory of events prior to the trauma.
Anterograde amnesia: inability to form new memories after traumatic brain injury.

WAYS TO IMPROVE MEMORY

• Schemes or concept maps
• Mnemonics
• Associate concepts with: Experiences, things you like, visual elements.
• Practice: Repetitions to improve maintenance, elaborative repetition
• Exercises

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 CONSIDERATIONS IN THE DENTAL FIELD
• Limited capacity.
• Context can affect memory.
• Mood can affect memory.
• Meaningful learning is best remembered (tailoring the message).
• Emphasise important information.
• Primacy effect (information provided at the beginning) and recency effect
(information provided at the end).

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