What is the difference between learning, memory, and cognition? What benefits do we derive from studying this?

-- Virginia Rice (tvrice@lakeozark.net), June 04, 2004

Answers

Hi Virginia, You asked some interesting questions about the relation of learning, memory, and cognition (as well as the value of studying them). I am not a cognitive psychologist, but I will try to answer your questions. These concepts you mention originated in part to divide psychological structures or processes into several smaller, but still meaningful parts to help analysis and improve understanding. We may need to be reminded that while the concepts you mention have been used for a long time and are still popular in psychology today, there may be even better ways to divide psychological activities still waiting to be identified or discovered. A good mnemonic (memory) device from General Sematics, that may help us remember that human concepts are typically just a rough characterization of the real world, is the following saying: "The map is not the territory." This means that maps (or our psychological concepts in this case) do not perfectly match reality or capture its entire complexity. With this caution, I will name some of the commonly used mental categories in psychology. The well known Three-part theory of the mind is composed of the following three basic processes: conation (an old term similar to will, activation, and motivation), affect (an old term used for emotion), and cognition (various types or aspects of information gathering and processing like sensation, perception, attention, learning, memory, retrieval, categorization, imaging, deciding, wisdom, etc.). For example, some modern brain researcher's look for what parts of the brain are involved with each of these three types of mental processing. However, this three-part theory is open to challenges or at least questions, like just how distinct are these three basic mental processes and their underlying physiological underpinning. Also, it might be asked if all conscious mental activity or behaviors always involve all three basic processes going on at about the same time? As for the terms learning and memory, they are often used to describe the acquisition of new information and it's retrieval respectively. However, in the real world learning and memory may sometimes use some of the same brain areas and a type of "learning/memory" may be involved when memory retrieval leads to memory modification. In summary, while there are often problems distinguishing different psychological phenomena from each other, and typically problems defining basic concepts in psychology, we need to start somewhere and the concepts you mentioned have been quite useful. As for what benefits are derived from studying learning and cognition, I would say there are many. Almost every human activity that people are typically concerned about involves various cognitive processes, frequently learning. For example, knowledge of the world and ourselves, making good choices, and understanding the somewhat unique human experience (particularly certain types of higher-level consciousness that may be unique to humans). I hope this helps. Paul

-- Paul Kleinginna (pkleinginna@georgiasouthern.edu), June 04, 2004.

In psychology, "learning" and "memory" have (for fairly arbitrary historical reasons) come to be associated with two quite different approaches to the topic. "Learning" is a term associated with behaviorism and "memory" is a term associated with cognitivism. For behaviorists, the emphasis was on whether the organism could repeat a behavior it has "learned" (and under what external conditions) whereas for cognitivists, the emphasis is on the nature of the "mental representation" and the mental encoding and retrieval processes involved.

Speaking more colloquially, however, in order to have a "memory" of something, it is obvious that one has to have "learned" it in some sense. "Cognition" is a very general term, of which "learning" and "memory" are but two (overlapping?) species.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.yorku.ca), June 05, 2004.