Question

Should models of cognitive processing try to explain general concepts, or should they focus on the processing of one type of information? For example, should a theory attempt to account for the processing of both language and music or should it focus on just one? Why or why not?

Answer 1

According to me, the cognitive processing models should be conceptualised in a way, that general concepts would be explained in the most appropriate manner. the basic idea about cognitive psychology is the manner in which information processing is taking place. there are various processes that would be accounting for cognition, which include attention, pattern recognition, perception as well as memory, followed by retrieval.

when considering cognitive processing models, it is imperative to understand that none of these processes could occur in exclusion to one another. only when a person would pay attention to a stimuli, an information would be getting transferred from the sensory memory to the short term memory. only when a person would add their perception to the information, through the process of deep processing, the memory would get encoded in the long term memory so as to be retrieved at a later stage.

in the case of language and music as well, the processing cannot occur in exclusion.. this is because, acquisition of language in itself cannot be considered as a static condition. language cannot be considered as a collection of only grammar and lexical items, but has to be seen in a more dynamic form.. similarly, music cannot be considered only as a collection of notes, there are dynamical systems that would be defining various aspects of music formation. if a person was trained in with understanding dynamical systems, there could be understanding of language as well a music (that might appear complex) such that notes or words that might be appearing in sequence could be predicted.