Describe what is meant by the terms “embedded cognition” and “cognitive overload.”
Embedded cognition is a new addition of cognitive psychology. It acknowledges that there are physical aspects of cognition that are revealed in the activity of the brain and it is also revealed in the perception and the sensation. This means that the cognitive process in the mind is affected by the motor response.
Hence, the mind must be studied as the part of the physical body, which interacts with the outside world. For example, the individuals, holding the hot cups analyzed the personality of the other persons in the different way as compared to those, holding the cold cups. Also, the students who held the heavier clip boards regarded the foreign currency as highly valuable.
However, the students holding the lighter clip boards regarded the foreign currency as less valuable. Thus, it might be concluded that physical cues influence the thought process. This provides support to the thought process, which involves not only the mind but also the body. Cognitive overload is another important part of the cognitive psychology.
This is related to the multitasking. In the experiments, conducted on the college students, it was observed that those students who were exposed to different types of electronic images performed very poorly as compared to those who were not multitaskers. The multitaskers were not able to concentrate on a particular thing and got distracted very easily. However, the non-multi taskers were more focused.