Mental+Processes+and+Mental+Resources

The study of processes of the mind began with Physician [|F.C Donders], who tested the speed of mental processes. He provided a paragraph, in which the letters were randomly capitalized. He than asked participants to put a "C" over all capital letters, and he timed how long this process took. This process contains two steps:
 * The Origins of Mental Processes**
 * 1) Determine if a letter is capitalized or not. This is stimulus categorization
 * 2) Draw a C above capitalized letters. This is response selection.

Donders added extra steps to this experiment, such as put a C above capitalized consonants, and a V above a capitalized vowel. Donders found that the more steps added, the longer it takes to complete a task. The time taken to complete a given task is known as **Reaction Time**. More steps in a processes, means the reaction time will be longer. For example, it may take you five seconds to solve one of Donder's puzzles, but it will probably take up to ten minutes to solve an advanced Calculus problem.

Test your Reaction time!

There are two types of processing in the human mind, serial and parallel. Serial processes occur in order, from step one to step two to step three, and so on. For example, if you were trying to choose a program to watch on television, you would look at each program and decide "yes" or "no". Donder's experiment is an example of Serial processing. This is a visual representation of Serial processing.
 * Serial and Parallel Processes**

Parallel processing occurs when processes occur at the same time. For example, if you were invited over by someone to watch television, and they asked you what you wanted to watch, the processes that allow you to understand the question occur at the same time you formulate your response( "I would like to watch the Schmidt Variety hour"). This is a visual representation of Parallel processes.

Mental processes place demand on Mental resources. Your attentional processes distribute these resources. For example, many people find it easy to have a conversation with someone whilst doing a familiar task, such as cleaning the dishes. However, if a new task was presented, you would find talking to be more difficult than it was before. The attentional processes allow a person to determine which processes receive mental resources. This shows that you can only focus on one cognitive process at a time. Watch the following video to test this concept.
 * Mental Resources**

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In the video above, you are doing a controlled process, which is counting the number of passes. You probably eventually noticed the dancing bear, but you lost count of the number of passes made.

There are two types of mental processes. Controlled, and Automatic. Automatic processes require no attention, whilst controlled processes require attentional resources. Although a person can only focus on one Controlled task at a time, automatic processes occur without attention, they can occur parallel with controlled processes. For example, you can have a conversation with someone(controlled process), but during this you are also breathing, which is an automatic process.