Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system, which in turn result from physical or chemical stimulation of the sensory system. Vision involves light striking the retina of the eye; smell is mediated by odor molecules; and hearing involves pressure waves.
Attention is the concentration of awareness on some phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli. It is a process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective. William James (1890) wrote that "Attention is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence." Attention has also been described as the allocation of limited cognitive processing resources. Attention is manifested by an attentional bottleneck, in terms of the amount of data the brain can process each second; for example, in human vision, only less than 1% of the visual input data can enter the bottleneck, leading to inattentional blindness.
Gestalt psychology, gestaltism, or configurationism is a school of psychology and a theory of perception that emphasises the processing of entire patterns and configurations, and not merely individual components. It emerged in the early twentieth century in Austria and Germany as a rejection of basic principles of Wilhelm Wundt's and Edward Titchener's elementalist and structuralist psychology.
Psychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of human mental functions and behavior. Occasionally, in addition or opposition to employing the scientific method, it also relies on symbolic interpretation and critical analysis, although these traditions have tended to be less pronounced than in other social sciences, such as sociology. Psychologists study phenomena such as perception, cognition, emotion, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. Some, especially depth psychologists, also study the unconscious mind.
In psychology, schizotypy is a theoretical concept that posits a continuum of personality characteristics and experiences, ranging from normal dissociative, imaginative states to extreme states of mind related to psychosis, especially schizophrenia. The continuum of personality proposed in schizotypy is in contrast to a categorical view of psychosis, wherein psychosis is considered a particular state of mind, which the person either has or does not have.
A sensorium (/sɛnˈsɔːrɪəm/) is the apparatus of an organism's perception considered as a whole, the "seat of sensation" where it experiences, perceives and interprets the environments within which it lives. The term originally entered English from the Late Latin in the mid-17th century, from the stem sens- ("sense"). In earlier use it referred, in a broader sense, to the brain as the mind's organ. In medical, psychological, and physiological discourse it has come to refer to the total character of the unique and changing sensory environments perceived by individuals. These include the sensation, perception, and interpretation of information about the world around us by using faculties of the mind such as senses, phenomenal and psychological perception, cognition, and intelligence.
Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen is a British clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge. He is the director of the university's Autism Research Centre and a Fellow of Trinity College.
Hyperfocus is an intense form of mental concentration or visualization that focuses consciousness on a subject, topic, or task. In some individuals, various subjects or topics may also include daydreams, concepts, fiction, the imagination, and other objects of the mind. Hyperfocus on a certain subject can cause side-tracking away from assigned or important tasks.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to autism:
The University of North Carolina TEACCH Autism Program creates and disseminates community-based services, training programs, and research for individuals of all ages and skill levels with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), to enhance the quality of life for them and their families across the lifespan.
"Focus Phrase" is a term traditionally used in cognitive-therapy and awareness-management discussions, and now in more general use to describe elicitor statements that evoke a desired refocusing of attention. Psychologically related terms are elicitor phrase or statement of intent.
The weak central coherence theory (WCC), also called the central coherence theory (CC), suggests that a specific perceptual-cognitive style, loosely described as a limited ability to understand context or to "see the big picture", underlies the central issue in autism and related autism spectrum disorder. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, repetitive behaviours, restricted interests, and sensory processing issues.
Michael John Lesser was a mathematical philosopher and political activist.
Anna Jean Ayres was an American occupational therapist, educational psychologist and advocate for individuals with special needs. She became known for her work on sensory integration (SI) theory.
Images and other stimuli contain both local features and global features. Precedence refers to the level of processing to which attention is first directed. Global precedence occurs when an individual more readily identifies the global feature when presented with a stimulus containing both global and local features. The global aspect of an object embodies the larger, overall image as a whole, whereas the local aspect consists of the individual features that make up this larger whole. Global processing is the act of processing a visual stimulus holistically. Although global precedence is generally more prevalent than local precedence, local precedence also occurs under certain circumstances and for certain individuals. Global precedence is closely related to the Gestalt principles of grouping in that the global whole is a grouping of proximal and similar objects. Within global precedence, there is also the global interference effect, which occurs when an individual is directed to identify the local characteristic, and the global characteristic subsequently interferes by slowing the reaction time.
Empathy quotient (EQ) is a psychological self-report measure of empathy developed by Simon Baron-Cohen and Sally Wheelwright at the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge. EQ is based on a definition of empathy that includes cognition and affect.
The principle of creative synthesis was first mentioned by Wilhelm Wundt in 1862. He wanted to identify the different elements of consciousness and to see what laws govern the connections of these different elements. It started with the fact that colors, touches, and the spoken were not seen as the decoding of stimuli or the reception and storage of the things that are received into the brain from the external world. Wundt believed that instead, these factors are seen as the brain's subjective reactions to external stimuli that enter into our sensory systems. This is the concept of creative synthesis.
Caetextia is a term and concept first coined by psychologists Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell to describe a chronic disorder that manifests as a context blindness in people on the autism spectrum. It was specifically used to designate the most dominant manifestation of autistic behaviour in higher-functioning individuals. Griffin and Tyrell also suggested that caetextia "is a more accurate and descriptive term for this inability to see how one variable influences another, particularly at the higher end of the spectrum, than the label of 'Asperger's syndrome'".
Dinah Karen Crawshay Murray was a writer, educator and campaigner for autistic people. She collaborated in developing the theory of monotropism as a way of explaining autism in terms of a tendency to focus intensely on a subject.
