Cognitive Framework

The human brain is capable of perceiving and interpreting information or stimuli received through the sense organs (i.e., eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin) (Weiten, 1998). This ability to perceive and interpret stimulus allows the human being to make meaningful sense of the world and environment around them. However, even as the human being is able to perceive and interpret stimuli information through all sense organs, stimuli is most often or primarily interpreted using the visual (eyes) and auditory (ears) sense organs (Anderson, 2009). However, for the purpose of this paper, the visual information process will be examined.

The system consists of the eyes where the information is collected, geniculate lateral nucleus and visual cortex. The visual cortex could be subdivided into the primary visual cortex and the striate cortex. This sensory system is located at the back of a brain parts of which are located in both hemispheres. Recent studies obtained a sufficient amount of information in order to construct the two-stream hypothesis, which describes the ventral and dorsal streams. The ventral stream begins at the primary visual cortex and goes to the inferior temporal cortex. Main functional responsibilities of this area include identification of objects and the emergence of the long-term memory the origins of which are placed in this area (Rauschecker, Josef P and Sophie K. Scott 722). Dorsal stream also begins at the primary visual cortex and ends at the posterior parietal cortex. It is mainly responsible for the body part control required in order to manipulate an object. The research shows that these "what" and "why" systems are not directly related, and the damage in one affect the other only to a certain extent. It could be explained by the fact that that input is transformed differently via action and

This supports the idea of an immediate memory store for items that are neither visual nor phonological and that draw on long-term memory to link the related words. It is used as both the Phonological Loop and the Visuo-Spatial Sketch Pad have specific roles and the Central Executive has very limited storage capacity so as a result there was no where to store both visual and acoustic information. The Episodic Buffer is an extra storage system that has in common with all working memory units, a limited capacity. It is handy and can integrate information from the Central Executive, The Phonological Loop, The Visuo-Spatial Sketch Pad and also information from the Long-Term Memory.

The Thalamus receives most of the incoming sensory information (excluding smells) and then relays that information to the cortex.

The visuo-spatial sketchpad when planned a spatial task and it saves memory temporarily. The episodic buffer is the general store, it integrates info from the central executive, the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad and forms long term store.

Baddeley and Hitch determined that this working memory should be divided into three parts based on the type of information it processes. The first part, deemed the central executive area, acts as a boss sending data to the other areas while dealing with cognitive tasks such as problem solving on its own. The visuo-spatial area stores and processes visual information and is responsible for navigation. Finally, the phonological loop stores and processes written and spoken materials and would be responsible for memorizing a telephone number. The phonological loop is further broken down into two parts, the phonological store, which holds spoken information, and the articulatory control process, which is used to store verbal information from the phonological store. In 2000, based on a failure to explain experimental results, Baddeley decided to add the fourth part called the episodic buffer. This component is responsible for communication between long-term and episodic (short-term) memory and serves as a backup (Mcleod, 2008). Working memory and short-term memory are often interchanged, however working memory commonly includes the active processes in the brain that make up the short-term memory, while the term short-term memory solely refers to the brain’s ability to temporarily store

The thalamus, which is located above the brainstem, sorts and distributes data. It sorts sensory information as being visual, tactile, auditory, or gustatory, then sends it to different locations within the cortex.

Another deep structure within the brain is the thalamus. The thalamus is the relay station for all of the signals that come into the cortex. The thalamus identifies the signals that are being sent to the brain that include senses from vision, hearing, touch, and taste. Once the signal is identified the thalamus then directs it to the particular lobe necessary for the brain to process it. If the thalamus were to become damaged the processing of senses would become impaired and confusion would occur often when ever one was trying to process something.

Thalamus- The thalamus is in the inner part of the brain. Sensory information goes through the thalamus, where some processing might be performed, before the thalamus sends it to the cortex. The thalamus deals with hearing, sight, touch, and taste, but not

The ability to supersede sensory capture differs greatly between individuals, but working memory typically has a functional capacity of seven “chunks” of information (plus or minus two) (Miller, 1956).

Effortful control comes from the basis of explicit processing, which is defined as a conscious, controllable, relatively slow, and overall sequential mechanism limited by attentional and working memory resources. Additionally, this process is as well established as a cortex-free area of logical thought, planning, and cognitive control. Furthermore, as mentioned in the prior, explicit processing, regarded as effortful control, involves functions which regulate specifically thought and action; thus, executive control permits goal-directed efforts to override primitive and inflexible reactions to environmental stimuli one cannot simply control. All in all, executive control is associated with the prefrontal cortex enabling top-down suppression

Sensory registers relate to the memory formation in the following ways. By looking slowly around the room, each glance takes in an enormous amount of visual information, including colors, shapes, texture, relative brightness, and shadows. At the same time, you pick up sounds, smells, and other kinds of sensory data. All of this raw information flows from your senses into the sensory registers, which are like waiting rooms in which information enters and stays for only a short time. Whether we remember any of the information depends on which operations we perform on it (Morris & Maisto p. 192).

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 3 VISUAL SENSORY SYSTEM ..................................................................................... 4 AUDITORY, TACTILE AND VESTIBULAR SYSTEM...................................................... 6 COGNITION........................................................................................................... 8 DECISION MAKING................................................................................................ 9 DISPLAYS AND CONTROLS................................................................................... 10 ANTHROPOMETRY AND WORKSPACE DESIGN ..................................................... 11

The concept of a ‘unitary mechanism’ has been recurrently mentioned in the text, although little has been said about what it means and implies. This is a term coined by Stephen Kosslyn (2005), he provided a model of visual imagery in which a single visual buffer is used “bottom-up” to display visual percepts and “top-down” to display internally generated images. The main claim is that the brain areas that implement the

The information that is stored briefly in sensory memory consists of representations of raw sensory stimuli it is not meaningful to us. If we are too make sense of it and possibly retain it the information must be transferred to the stage of memory. Short term memory is the memory store in which information first has meaning although the maximum length of retention there is relatively short… (Hamilton & Martin, 2007; prime & jolicoeur 2010).