Human Information Processing
WHAT IS HUMAN INFORMATION PROCESSING (HIP)?
People are active, dynamic systems capable of great flexibility in the ways they choose to handle and transform information.
From the HIP perspective, the human mind is understood as a system that processes incoming information from the environment.
HIP is an abstraction of the set of processes involved in several aspects of human behavior including problem solving and decision making in both everyday and professional environments.
This system can be described as a set of memories and processors together with a set of operation principles.
Fig. 1.2.1.1 A conceptual representation of the human information processing system.
HIP can be generally divided into 3 interacting subsystems: 1. A perceptual system 2. A motor system 3. A cognitive system
Perceptual System * Consists of sensors and associated short-term memories related to the sensorial input received from the environment (visual, auditory, olfactory, etc.). Short-term memories hold input from the sensory system while it is being encoded symbolically (translated from a physical form of a signal to a symbol mental representation). * Main Function is to convert the sensations of the physical world captured by the sensory systems into internal representations that can be processed by the cognitive system. Sensory memory – holds a great deal of detailed information for a short period of time regarding the physical aspects of a sensation. This information is stored for a brief time -- less than one second -- after which it MUST ENTER WORKING MEMORY OR BE LOST. For example: The visual memory representation of the number “3” contains features of curvature and size.
Cognitive System * Receives the symbolic information from the sensory system and stores it in the working memory. This is a short-term storage that is also used to process information. * Uses previous stored information in long-term memory to process
People are active, dynamic systems capable of great flexibility in the ways they choose to handle and transform information.
From the HIP perspective, the human mind is understood as a system that processes incoming information from the environment.
HIP is an abstraction of the set of processes involved in several aspects of human behavior including problem solving and decision making in both everyday and professional environments.
This system can be described as a set of memories and processors together with a set of operation principles.
Fig. 1.2.1.1 A conceptual representation of the human information processing system.
HIP can be generally divided into 3 interacting subsystems: 1. A perceptual system 2. A motor system 3. A cognitive system
Perceptual System * Consists of sensors and associated short-term memories related to the sensorial input received from the environment (visual, auditory, olfactory, etc.). Short-term memories hold input from the sensory system while it is being encoded symbolically (translated from a physical form of a signal to a symbol mental representation). * Main Function is to convert the sensations of the physical world captured by the sensory systems into internal representations that can be processed by the cognitive system. Sensory memory – holds a great deal of detailed information for a short period of time regarding the physical aspects of a sensation. This information is stored for a brief time -- less than one second -- after which it MUST ENTER WORKING MEMORY OR BE LOST. For example: The visual memory representation of the number “3” contains features of curvature and size.
Cognitive System * Receives the symbolic information from the sensory system and stores it in the working memory. This is a short-term storage that is also used to process information. * Uses previous stored information in long-term memory to process