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Cognitive function derives from the term cognition which refers to the internal mental processes studied in a subdiscipline of psychology termed cognitive psychology. These internal mental processes underlie how people perceive, remember, speak, think, make decisions, and solve problems. Cognitive function is a general term used to describe many different functions such as memory and attention thought to be components of the mind (Benjafield, Smilek, & Kingstone, 2010).
Description
Cognitive functions are internal and are inferred from behavior using measures such as accuracy in performing a task like recalling a list of words or the time taken to find some word on a page of text. The study of cognitive functions derives from the information processing approach which argues that these functions involve operations occurring at various processing stages. The identification of these processing stages is typically based on a...
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References and Readings
Benjafield, J. G., Smilek, D., & Kingstone, A. (2010). Cognition (4th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Hodges, J. (2007). Cognitive assessment for clinicians. New York: Oxford University Press.
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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media, New York
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Roy, E. (2013). Cognitive Function. In: Gellman, M.D., Turner, J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_1117
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_1117
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-1004-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-1005-9
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