Cognition

The way in which individuals process information. It is also defined as the mental processes that mediate between a stimulus and a response, including perception, memories, expectations, abstract reasoning, judgment, or intelligence. The concept of cognition did not gain popularity in the United States until the 1960s, although European psychologists like Wilhelm Max Wundt and William James had introduced the concept of cognition years earlier. The invention of the computer greatly contributed to the increased interest in mental processes, and the way in which humans process information has been compared with the computer processing strategies. The human brain and computers alike receive information from the outside, convert that information into meaningful components, store the information, and retrieve information from memory when necessary.