Defining Core Cognitive Functions and Psychological Concepts

Long-Term Memory Classification

Long-term memory is divided into the following types:

• Episodic Memory: Storing facts and personal experiences.
• Semantic Memory: Storing information related to our knowledge of the world, often associated with language.
• Procedural Memory: Storing information related to skills that, once learned, are performed almost unconsciously.

Information Retrieval

Information retrieval is the process of accessing and recalling stored information.

Space-Temporal Orientation

This corresponds to the ability of a person to orient themselves with respect to objects, places, and time at a given moment.

It is divided into:

• Temporal Orientation: The ability to place ourselves in time and understand the timeline of events (e.g., parts of the day, dates, time).
• Spatial Orientation: Refers to the ability to know our location and relative position (e.g., up, down, left, right).

The Cognitive Function of Thought

Thought is an extremely complex cognitive function through which we process and order ideas and concepts to generate conclusions.

Key Aspects of Thought

• Reasoning: The mental process by which conclusions are drawn from more or less explicit assumptions.
• Creativity: The ability a person has to generate novel, original, or brilliant approaches that others might not access through conventional thought.

Types of Thinking

• Convergent Thinking: Oriented toward finding a conventional solution to a problem.
• Divergent Thinking: Seeks to resolve problems through original ideas and solutions that not everyone has the ability to discover.

Language

Language is a symbolic and structured code of oral and written signs endowed with a meaning understood by all persons belonging to a linguistic community.

Feelings and Emotions

• Feelings: These are states or moods of low intensity and long duration that occur in response to how a person perceives and reacts to daily life events.
• Emotions: These are impulsive or intense emotional reactions that appear as an automatic response to certain stimuli. Emotions are generally more intense than feelings.

Personality

Personality is the set of emotional characteristics, thought patterns, and behaviors that a person expresses, defining the individual as a whole. It encompasses the way a person thinks, feels, behaves, and interprets reality.

Self-Concept and Self-Esteem

• Self-Concept (The Self): The perception a person has of themselves (self-image).
• Self-Esteem: The value we attach to the image we have of ourselves.