Abstract:

Motivation and cognition are commonly modelled as distinct processes: motivation as some form of initiating and directing—pushing and pulling—behaviour, and cognition as the manipulation of encoded representations in memory. This produces grave difficulties in understanding the interrelationships between them, and their interactions in behaviour and development. I argue for a model of representation and motivation in which they emerge as different aspects of one underlying organization of interactive process. This natural integration yields an equally natural model of the joint development of higher-order motivation and cognition, as interactions with learning and emotional processes are taken into account.

Document Type: Research article