Cognition as Memory Recall and Hierarchical Decomposition
Life is fill of problems and challenges. The moment we open our eyes we begin work to decipher the information around us/ incoming stimuli.
Deciphering Incoming Stimuli is a problem. We have finite cognitive resources, so we use heuristics to help us cut down our cogload and allocate more time to problem solving vs. scanning incoming stimuli.
Making Sense of the World involves an endless Search Process (Memory Recall)
Herbert Simon said that human cognition is a "satisficing process," if an input is able to be categorized (whether correctly or not is irrelevant), then the search process stops.
Everyone's problems are uniquely theirs
Because our cognitions and mental models are uniquely constructed, our problems are uniquely ours, and our solutions are also uniquely ours.
How do our brains categorize incoming stimuli?
Our brain searches for the largest-level context and finds a mental model to match. It then uses that result to start a new search one-level deeper. (herbert Simon, 1947, 56, 59)
What's the likelihood of a cognitive schema being recalled?
A. Cumulative # of times the connections have been activated (Hayek)
B. How Recently the connections have been activated
C. My own contribution here is also how closely associated those connections are to a survival response. Our sets of experiences determine what is salient to us.
Stereotyping - Hierarchical Decomposition
High-level Taxonomical/categorizational information will be used to categorize a person.
Once an initial categorization has been made, the searcher will drop into a secondary-level categorization based on the rules of the initial top-level contextual categorization.
Basicamente, COMO TE VEN, TE TRATAN! and there's little one can do about this once the inital categorization has been made!