The semester is coming to end so i decided to reflect on my experience with this When I started this class roughly 12 weeks ago, I didn't think that cognition would be as complex of a topic as it is. As more elements were presented and pulled apart to explain each individual section in class, the more complicated my overall picture of cognition got. I didn't realize some parts of cognition where even parts of cognition (or that they even had their own separate categories within themselves) and that daily interactions that seemed so normal where much more complex than they appeared to be when you know how many cognitive processes happen as you go through life. Something as simple as moving my fingers across the keyboard to correctly type my choice of words out while listening to music and my roommate talking in the background has multiple different aspects of cognition being used at once. Safe to say, I was not expecting my entire idea of cognition to be flipped around, but that was pretty much what happened.
With each section of cognition that we covered in class with perception, attention, decision making and problem solving among others, I was given new ways to explain why someone may think or interact with something in the way they do. It didn’t just explain the behavior of others, it explained some of my own. Whether it was from theories presented by those in the field or by observing these moments in real life, it all gave me a new way at looking at how unbelievably complex cognition is, even on an easy day where we don’t seem to ”do anything”. Just sitting in a room and staring at a wall is using cognition. You have to use attention to perceive that there’s a wall in front of you and you could decide if you want to stay and keep looking at the wall some more or walk away to find something more entertaining. This whole act used cognition to decide on each action you make during this scenario.
One of the reasons this class was so effective and interesting for me was it’s setup as a hybrid course. Each week with the canvas discussion posts we had to make, we were able to put our ideas about the topics we were covering in class before our other classmates and vice versa. These discussions where interesting and informative with a group of people all having their own opinions on these topics. Sometimes the comments from other classmate helped me look at the topics in a new light and other times I had a moment of “ah-ha!” where the concept ‘s main point or idea clicked fully in my head where it had been unclear before. The comments that we left for each other helped each of us develop better understandings of the source material, and I think that the is a very good element have in a class like this where the focuses is on a process of the mind. Because cognition can be utilized differently for each person in the same scenarios, seeing the ways that other people processed the material and thought about the topics was an eye opener and it at times felt like a big study group was taking place in a discussion tab. By seeing how each one of us was using cognition to explain each element of cognition differently helped make the course more engaging overall and I feel that I remembered information better due to this being a part of our weekly assignments. I would definitely consider taking more hybrid classes like this in future based off of what I got out of from this class.
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| I really liked all the discussion posts that we did. Having what felt like a big roundtable talk was helpful in learning the class material. |
I also found the CogLabs and CogBlogs to be helpful with reinforcing the material from the course. The labs for the most part were fun to do and they made me think about how the different parts of cognition worked in real life (sometimes at my own pain and expense). I like to write so I had fun making my blog posts and used them to force myself to apply cognition to daily life issues such as my story about my stomach issues or what would happen if our abilities to attend to different senses at a concert where missing . Both assignments forced me to apply what I was learning to real life and by doing that I understood the material better. Whether it was the attention lab with the blink effect or researching the case of Tan, I learned more about cognition while also finding ways to remember what I was learning better.
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| The brain of Tan from one of my favorite blog posts |
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| Cognition is a complex term to understand. I'm glad I understand it a little better now. :) |
