Cognitivisms

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Theories or approaches emphasizing mental processes like perception, memory, and reasoning in understanding behavior or phenomena ; beliefs in the primacy of cognition in shaping knowledge and actions ; perspectives focusing on how the mind processes information to explain learning and decision-making
2. Conceptual frameworks that prioritize internal mental activities such as thought, understanding, and problem-solving in various disciplines ; schools of thought that consider cognitive functions central to interpreting experience and guiding conduct ; viewpoints highlighting the role of intellectual operations in influencing human behavior and comprehension
3. Ideologies that concentrate on the mechanics of thought and awareness as foundational to behavior and knowledge acquisition ; positions that stress the importance of mental faculties like attention and language in explaining actions and learning ; outlooks that attribute a key role to information processing within the mind in forming responses and judgments

Etymology: "Cognitivisms" is the plural of "cognitivism", which names a family of theories that explain the mind by comparing it to information processing. The noun is built from "cognitive" and the suffix "-ism", which forms nouns denoting a doctrine, system or school of thought. So the plural refers to several such schools, such as the different accounts of mental representation and computation that researchers have proposed. "Cognitive" comes from Latin "cognitivus", from "cognitus", the past participle of "cognoscere", meaning "to get to know", a verb built from "com-" (together) and "gnoscere" (to know). The modern word "cognitive" carries that sense of knowing into the study of the mind, and "cognitivism" was formed from it by adding "-ism" to name a theoretical stance rather than a single fact about thinking.

Synonyms: cognitivism