components of cognitive psychology

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In modern cognitive psychology would it be correct to say that one of the components is the cognitive/emotional component, and the other component emotional/attitudinal?

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

I have just started a distance learning course in psychology and have realized that having a teacher right in front of one would have been easier for this course but work and finances didn't permit it.

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-- Mary Rohn (mrohn@onlinetel.ca), January 19, 2004

Answers

I do not think there are standardly-accepted "components" of this sort in modern cognitive psychology. Even if there are, I certainly would regard these two pairs as the main "components." Why do they *both* contain emotion?

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), January 19, 2004.

The search for components of cognition goes back well over a hundred years and the search for components of mental experience probably much longer. The goals of both searches have been elusive and the theories controversial, but continuing the search may still be useful, particularly as we try to incorporate new research and theories in the future. One trend in cognitive psychology is to recognize that emotion simultaneously (or almost simultaneously) accompanies many, most, or all cognitive processes. We often, possibly artifically, differentiate between the informational mental processes ("cognition") and the arousal and goal-related mental processes ("emotion" and "motivation" respectively). Defining and separating the mix of the three above processes is difficult, but may be aided in the future by advancing neuroscience (as well as other fields). Good luck on these difficult issues.

-- Paul Kleinginna (pkleinginna@gasou.edu), January 31, 2004.

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