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Psychological Processes

Article · January 2015

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 «Know thyself» Socrates

Psychological Processes

Kemal Ihsan Kilic(kemalihsan.1@gmail.com)

Pontificia Universitas Antonianum, Jerusalem

This article aims to present some ideas and thoughts on the possible
relationships among Psychological Processes. Preliminary definitions and concepts will
be given briefly.

Emergent changes in human behaviors can be observed in the interactions with

other human beings or in the interactions with new environment. Studies that are carried
out for understanding these changes revealed existence of «Psychological Processes».
Here the term «process» is used to describe the «algorithmic» nature of the phenomena.
It is observed that in the presence of stimuli, human response (or change in behavior,
emotion, or thought) involves certain «steps» to manifest itself.

It has been proposed in some studies that, these processes can be categorized
according to certain commonalities or according to their interactions with each other. The
well known binary classification of «basic-higher» processes, was presented by Oswald
Külpe and Wilhelm Wundt in the late 19 th century research. According to Wundt the
processes is «higher», if there is no parallel physical processes. Like learning, thought,
memory, and others. Later Vygotsky introduced another criteria for distinction. In which
he talked about higher processes only existing in human beings and being cultural in
origin but not «evolutionary»1 A recent study by Ricardo Tamayo 2, pointing out the
difficulty of defining «consciousness» as a «process» or as a «state», introduced new
way to define processes based on the four Aristotelian causes (material, efficient, formal,
1 R. VAN DER VEER, − M.H. VAN IJZENDOORN, Vygotsky's Theory of the Higher Psychological
Processes: Some Criticisms, Hum. Dev. 28, (1985), pp. 1-9.

2 R. TAMAYO, A Checklist to Define the Psychological Processes, Revista Colombiana De Psicologia,

vol. 20, no 2, Julio-Diciembre 2011, pp. 321-327.

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final), and based on the concepts of «absoluteness» and «relativeness» for the processes:

«Moreover, I suggest that psychological processes should also be characterized

by (a) their biological substrates, (b) the adaptive function they fulfill, and (c) a
formalized description of the changes in the states of the organism and the
environment. The first part of the above definition is relatively standard. it
understands a process as a series of changes in the states of an organism, and the
environmental conditions triggering those changes. In this sense, the environment
is considered the efficient cause for the psychological processes. The second part,
however, adds to the standard definition the Aristotelian idea that an explanation
also requires consideration of the material causes (the biological substrates), the
final causes (the adaptive function), and the formal causes (the abstract
description of the changes in the state of the organism). In a nutshell, I suggest
that a comprehensive conceptual characterization of a psychological process
would require formulating its corresponding efficient, material, formal, and final
causes.»2

In the light of the studies that were mentioned in the previous paragraphs,
along with the concepts that will be borrowed from Computer Science, and Philosophy,
alternative perspectives on the relationships among processes will be discussed in the
following parts of this article.

One way to look at the psychological processes can be thinking them as

«changes» and analyzing them in the framework of the Aristotelian structural analysis of
the change (form-matter, substance-accident, act-potency). One obvious example in this
framework can be regarding the act of being able to see as the potency for being able to
read and understand scripture or being able to communicate by reproducing written
words that were seen before. Here the relationship of two processes, namely sensing and
memory (or learning, language... etc) can be understood better. The framework we were
talking about, can tell us their temporal relationship and dependence among themselves.
Of course it should be remembered that some processes can go in parallel and the
dependency relationship does not need to be «immediate» in the sense of feeding the
output of one process as the input for another (next level). A visual sensing can pass
through the long chain of processes to arrive fight or fear decision.

The theory of the «tripartite» soul in the Platonic philosophy can also shed a

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bit of light on the relationship among processes. In Republic 3 Plato proposed a model on
the concept of justice by making an analogy between «just man» and «just city». Plato
divides human soul into three parts. These are, the «λογιστικόν» (logical), the
«θυμοειδές» (high-spirited) and the «ἐπιθυμητικόν» (appetitive). He also talks about
«normative» hierarchy and relationship among these parts in the «just man». In the soul
of a «just man» the logical part should rule. The appetitive part should be controlled by
logical part and the high-spirited part should enforce the convictions of the logical part.
By doing this it can be said that Plato gives us the preliminary structural and functional
analysis of the human soul. Similarly he proposes the analogy of «just city» and «just
man». The «just city», he says, is the one in which the social classes (merchants,
producers – appetitive, soldiers – high-spirited, guardians – logical) have the same
structure and relationship as in the case of the parts of the soul of a «just man». Similar
relationship and specialization exist for the psychological processes. An analogy can be
made among the parts of the soul done by Plato and the psychological processes that are
proposed by the Psychology today. Namely the logical part contains the cognition, the
appetite part are the motivations and the high-spirited part contains emotions and
passions4. So according to the Platonic theory of justice, in the «just man», cognition
rules, motivations obey cognition, and emotions and passions support cognition.

Computer Science can also suggests us, Producer-Consumer models, Agent

based systems, Master-Slave or Client-Server models with all the well studied theory
behind them. In the case of Producer-Consumer models, the relationship is one
directional, and there is no commanding. In Agent-Based models, entities are
independent and the communication is arbitrary, can be bidirectional. In Master-Slave
model slaves are in the service of the master, and the master controls all communication.
3 PLATO, Republic, II, 369a, in Id., The Republic of Plato, (English trans.) A.. Bloom,

Basic Books, 19912, pp. 45-55.

4 K. R. SCHERER, Plato's legacy: relationships between cognition, emotion, and motivation,

Paper read at Société Psychologique de Québec, at Québec (1993),

(URL=http://lep.unige.ch/system/files/biblio/1995_Scherer_Genstudies_Plato.pdf).

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Whereas in the case of Client-Server model the server serves all the other entities. The
relationships among psychological processes can be considered as in the case of the
models that are listed above. For example sensing by itself is not a process that can be
useful for the survival of the human. But its «output» is important to other processes like
in the case of Producer-Consumer model. Having a process like «memory» for retaining
information is not useful if there is no visual or auditory «sensing», where comes the
«information» to be «stored». In this case «sensing» can be thought as the «producer»,
and the «memory» as «consumer». On the other hand without «memory» one can not
think of any kind of «information processing» system. A system that is open to all kinds
of «input» has to «filter out» unnecessary information through some kind of mechanism.
The «attention» is one of the mechanism that filters out unnecessary information, other
than the physical limits of the human perception system. Without the «intelligence» there
is no meaning to perceive and to store information. Apart from the mechanisms that help
processes to communicate to each other, there is a mechanism in human beings allowing
them to communicate with other human beings. Language (speech) is the main
mechanism in the communication among human beings. While motivations and emotions
can be thought as «adaptation mechanisms» that keep humans directed to their goals or
keep them away from certain environmental conditions. In the computer science these
processes can be thought as «priority adjustments», where system has to give privilege to
one process over others depending on the state of the system, for the best performance.

According to Image Processing, Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence,

processes for acquiring images, color space processes, edge detection processes are said
to be low-level operations and processes that involves classification, learning, or
interpretation of the scene are said to be high-level operations. This classification is not
only based on the temporal order of the processes, but also on the programming
paradigms and the amount of code (complexity or simply more «intelligence») that is
required for achieving goals. Similar distinction had been made in Psychology too, based
on the requirement of the thoughts or consciousness in general.

We can also talk about the dynamism of the processes in us. A process by

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 definition is something that is dynamic. But when we talk about the dynamism of the
process we mean the change of the process, like development, adaptability to
environment. Different from the machine based system processes, we must remember
that through «Learning» which can be regarded as intellectual growth mechanism, human
psychological processes can be perfected over time. Not only from the atomistic point of
view of the psychological processes, but also from the holistic point of view one can see
the perfection of the «designer» of the human psyche. They are given to us for survival,
for life, to increase the light in the universe. It must be remembered also the marvelous
principle of «robustness» in the design of the processes. Blind people is one of the
striking examples of that principle. Not having visual sensing does not prevent blind
people to be able to read, to understand, even to write. Going a bit further it can be
discussed how the deficiencies in high-level and in low-level processes can effect the
survival of the human beings.

Like Socrates said, knowing ourselves is important. The knowledge of the

psychological processes inside of us can help us in the development of our personality
and in coping with the problems of our daily life. Detecting deficiency of a certain
psychological process is also important for helping people with such deficiencies.
Especially in education, early detection of learning disabilities originated from the
deficiency of a certain psychological process can be useful in providing specialized
education for children with learning disabilities. Psychologist are studying such aspects
of human nature for better understanding of the human psyche, for the betterment of the
life.

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