Quotes About Cognition

The Zeigarnik Effect, as it has come to be known today, states simply that the brain naturally remembers and holds on to anything that is interrupted or incomplete. These interruptions and incompletions are called open loops.

the focus we hold in our minds affects what we perceive and how we perform.

There is no reason ever to have the same thought twice, unless you like having that thought.

There is a simple but profound principle that emerges from understanding the way your perceptive filters work: you won't see how to do it until you see yourself doing it.

At least for most people. The way I'm wired I remember pretty much everything as it actually happened

inside his head. It was said that savants

think we've all

The apes are, after all, behind the bars of their cages, and we are not. Eager for the experiments to begin, they are also impatient for their food to be served, and they seem impatient for little else. After undergoing years of punishing trials at the hands of determined clinicians, a few have been taught the rudiments of various primitive symbol systems. Having been given the gift of language, they have nothing to say. When two simian prodigies meet, they fling their placards at each other.

Pribram has given evidence backing up his suggestion that memories are generally recorded all over the brain in such a way that information concerning a given object or quality is not stored in a particular cell or localized part of the brain but rather that all the information is enfolded over the whole.

That's not how human psychology works. No, we tend to do lots of things without knowing why. We need excuses, though, so we rationalize! If an obvious reason for our behavior isn't readily available, we invent one, preferably one that helps us think better of ourselves.

one of the most fascinating and effective kinds of lying is self-deception.

Concepts that had eluded him because they could not be shaped with images and feelings alone, but needed the rich subtlety of abstract language to shape and anchor them with a webbery of symbols.

We are primarily the products of thinking that happens below the level of awareness.

I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants-silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.

Because the eye has seen, thoughts are structured upon images and not upon ideas.

The moment you have a certain thought and believe it, you will experience an immediate emotional response. Your thought actually creates the emotion.

For example, if you feel sad or depressed, you're probably telling yourself that you've lost someone you love or something important to your sense of self-esteem. If you feel guilty or ashamed, you're telling yourself that you're bad or that you've violated your own personal values. If

This isn't a new idea. Nearly two thousand years ago the Greek philosopher, Epictctus, stated that people are disturbed "not by things, but by the views we take of them." In the Book of Proverbs (23: 7) in the Old Testament you can find this passage: "For as he thinks within himself, so he is." And even Shakespeare expressed a similar idea when he said: "for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2).

Anxiety results from the perception of danger. You can't feel anxious unless you tell yourself that something terrible is about to happen.

you can change your mood by changing how you think.

I suspect you will find that a great many of your negative feelings are in fact based on such thinking errors.

Mental Filter. You pick out a negative detail in any situation and dwell on it exclusively, thus perceiving that the whole situation is negative.

Every time you feel depressed about something, try to identify a corresponding negative thought you had just prior to and during the depression. Because these thoughts have actually created your bad mood, by learning to restructure them, you can change your mood.

your thoughts create your feelings.