To incorporate insights from diverse disciplines, cognitive science relies on a unified conceptualization of minds as information processors. This means that mental processes are understood as computations that retrieve, transform, store, and transmit information. For example, perception retrieves sensory information from the environment and transforms it to extract meaningful patterns that can be used in other mental processes, such as planning and decision-making. Cognitive science relies on different levels of description to analyze cognitive processes. The most abstract level focuses on the basic problem the process is supposed to solve and the reasons why the organism needs to solve it. The intermediate level seeks to uncover the algorithm as a formal step-by-step procedure to solve the problem. The most concrete level asks how the algorithm is implemented through physiological changes on the level of the brain. Another methodology is to analyze the mind as a complex system composed of individual subsystems that can be studied independently of one another.
To incorporate insights from diverse disciplines, cognitive science relies on a unified conceptu.alization of minds as information processors. This means that mental processes are understood as computations that retrieve, transform store, and transmit information. For example, perception retrieves sensory information from the environment and transforms it to extract meaningful patterns that can be used in other mental processes, such as planning and decision-making. Cognitive science relies on different levels of description to analyze cognitive processes. The most abstract level focuses on the basic problem the process is supposed to solve and the reasons why the organism needs to solve it. The intermediate level seeks to uncover the algorithm as a formal step-by-step procedure to solve the problem The most concrete level asks how the algorithm is implemented through physiological changes on the level of the brain. Another methodology is to analyze the mind as a complex system composed of individual subsystems that can be studied independently of one another