Understanding and Auto-Control of Cognitive Functions: Implications for the Relationship Between Cognition and Behavior

Abstract

A heightened interest in cognitive psychology for questions about the awareness and conscious control people may have of their own cognitive functioning is becoming more and more apparent, problems which, for many decades, cognitive psychologists gave no attention to or simply enclosed in parentheses. In the first part of this paper, an attempt will be made to present an integrated view of the contributions made by various sections within cognitive psychology, in which such renewed and growing concern with problems of consciousness manifests itself with increasing force. This attempt at integration includes various theoretical positions derived from quite different epistemological traditions (developmental cognitive psychology, information processing, cognitive-behavioral, and cognitive social psychology), but which have as their common denominator that they all seek to elucidate the capacity present in humans to regulate the nature of their own mental functioning and the development of their cognitive acquisitions. The second part of this paper will point out the implications, resulting from these new concerns evident in present-day cognitive psychology, for the still poorly understood relationship between cognition and behavior. It attempts to show, by considering in turn the cognitive and the behavioral aspects of this relationship, how one might hope to finally bridge the gap separating cognition from behavior.