Cognitive Systems

Cognitive systems (one of six domains in the Research Domain Criteria/ RDoC) includes these cognitive processes:

• Attention regulates access to awareness, higher perceptual processes, and motor action. Concepts of capacity limitation and competition are inherent to concepts of selective/divided attention.
• Perception uses sensory data—visual, auditory, olfactory/somatosensory perceptions—to construct, predict, and transform representation of external environment—to guide action.
• Declarative memory is acquiring, encoding, storing, and retrieving representations of events (episodic memory) and factual knowledge (semantic memory)—to infer/extract new information.
• Language: Language is a system of shared symbolic representations of the world, the self, and abstract concepts that supports thought and communication.
• Cognitive control modulates operation of cognitive/emotional systems to guide goal-directed behavior (goal selection), especially in new situations where we need to select appropriate responses (response selection) from competing alternatives (performance monitoring).
• Working memory is active maintaining and flexible updating of relevant information (tasks, goals, strategies) where there’s limited capacity and a resistance to interference (interference control).