Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
retrieving
information - covers remembering, recognising, understanding and
re-learning specific skills. Retrieval is the moment at which the acquired
knowledge and wisdom resulting from it may manifest itself in the individual's
behaviour.
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Useful knowledge, which among other functions facilitates generalising the in-
formation learned usually takes the form built at the memorising stage.
The retrieval stage is the measure of the human memory processes: the remem-
bering, recognising, understanding and possibly learning anew. Another differen-
tiation consists in linking memory as a characteristic of the nervous system to in-
dividual analysers. Memory dependent on the analyser type can be called a
peripheral ability. For the essence of mental processes it is important that memory
also exists as a general ability, working when complex stimuli act, achieved as a
result of the operation of many analysers. The most important features of memory
used to assess this mental process are:
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permanence - a criterion related to the storage stage;
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speed - defined as the ease of recording new facts and links between them; this
criterion belongs to the memorization stage;
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accuracy or reliability - defines the relations between the retrieved information
and what constituted the contents of the memorization stage;
readiness - adequate to the retrieval stage - determines whether remembering
occurs without major problems or whether additional activating stimuli are
necessary;
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range or capacity - refers to the coding phase.
Recognition, which is one of the indications that memory works, is inseparably
linked to perception and decision-making. When perceiving objects in their sur-
roundings, individual either recognize them as known (they can name them and
associate them with a specific action), or find that they do not recognize them,
which also plays an important role as the so-called detector of novelty.
Both if the specific object is recognised and if it is detected as a novelty, the
human brain assigns a specific mental category to this perception situation, and
thus takes the decision whether the stimulus acting upon it is old or new, known to
it or unknown.
This mechanism is of fundamental importance in the entire psychology of per-
ception. The sensory threshold - of susceptibility and sensitivity - is determined
by reference to the recognition process. A threshold stimulus is received or recog-
nized as a stimulus in 50% of cases, and in 50% of cases it is not. Similarly, the
difference threshold is set at that value of the stimulus which in 50% of cases is
recognized as equal in value to the standard stimulus, and in 50% as different.
The neurophysiologic model of cognitive analysis is based on the operation and
behaviour of the brain which can be described by studying attractors resulting
from the dynamics of great groups (in the order of millions) of neurons. These
attractors are defined in the stimulation space of such neurons. Even though the
surface states of the brain (e.g. their activity examined using the EEG) are not
