**4. The integrative and iterative nature of emotional processing**

Emotional feelings arise from internal sources as well as from external sources. The limbic regions of the forebrain are in an anatomical position to integrate information from both the internal milieu and the external world and indeed these structures combine information from parallel cortical and subcortical processing pathways. Subcortical afferent pathways that carry information about sensory features of the world and visceral activity can rapidly initiate emotional reactions. Cortical pathways simultaneously elaborate the meaning of such input and compare it to stored knowledge and prior experiences with similar behavioral significance. Afferent sensory pathways converge on particular forebrain structures-including the amygdala, insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex-and the processing in these regions integrates the relevant information and signals the executive control and premotor regions of the brain to select appropriate behavioral responses. These forebrain structures also send projections back to the sensory and associations cortices involved in pertinent cognitive functions. This interplay between cognitive and emotionalmotivational functions is thus a dynamic process [13].

#### **4.1 The central role of the amygdala**

Among the key forebrain structures that mediate emotions, the amygdala has been given a special focus of research on emotion-cognition interactions because of its widespread anatomical connections to subcortical structures that control autonomic functions and to cortical areas involved in processing cognitive and emotional information. The amygdala also has extensive interconnections with medial temporal and ventral frontal lobe structures that provide a substrate for emotional enhancement of memory and indirect connections with the dorsal frontoparietal attentional control network via prefrontal cortex (PFC) interfaces, including the anterior cingulate, ventrolateral PFC, and orbitofrontal cortex. The amygdala can thus be thought of as center shuttles information back and forth from subcortical and cortical pathways to initiate and coordinate emotional reactions, including output to the hypothalamus and brainstem autonomic control centers that modulate the visceral changes accompanying various emotional states. The amygdala modulates activity in specific sensory and higher-order cognitive sectors of the cortex in response to biologically significant events that often have emotional consequences. The following paragraphs describe how emotion influences several domains of cognition such as perception, attention, memory, learning, decision making and social cognition [14, 15].

*Perspective Chapter: Emotive Cognition Strategies on Enhancing Meaningful Learning… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111885*

#### **4.2 Emotional influences on perception**

Processing sensory information that has potential emotional significance take priority over processing inconsequential sensory information. Such emotional prioritization is accomplished either by automatic (involuntary) or by a voluntary attentional bias. The involuntary perception occurs when information positively or negatively affects the individual. Voluntary attention towards the perception happen according to individuals' need and interest. The negative emotion such as anxiety, nervousness, fright and panic influence the perception negatively. Positive emotions such as joy, thrill, enjoyment and gratification influence the perception positively. The amygdala obviously overrides a capacity-limited perceptual encoding mechanism that allow emotional stimuli to reach awareness more readily. The anatomical connections between the amygdala and sensory cortices provide one avenue by which emotion might influence perception [16].

#### **4.3 Emotional influence on attention**

A first step in the allocation of attention is to alert and orient an individual to the emotional trigger. Emotions arrest ongoing behavior by engaging the autonomic nervous system. Attention of visual and auditory influenced by emotions. For example, in crowded visual scenes or when multiple visual stimuli compete for attention, emotional stimuli bias both the initial direction of eye movement (overt attentional orienting) and the distribution of eye movements over time (sustained attention). These changes in visuospatial exploration ensure that the stimuli of greatest importance at any particular time are preferentially processed. Dichotic listening studies have shown similar effects of emotion on attention in the auditory domain. In these studies, emotional words or words associated with aversive outcomes presented in an unattended audio stream triggers autonomic responses.

#### **4.4 Emotional influence on memory**

When we reflect on our lives, we tend to recall that are personally meaningful and emotionally salient. Emotions associated with events or circumstances may have different consequences at different stages of memory processing, including encoding, consolidation and retrieval. Each emotional dimension or emotion category can drive distinct aspects of memory processing. Most research on emotional memory emphasize the transient influence of emotional stimulus content on autonomic physiology, brain activity and behavior that has consequences on memory performance. Two related concepts that are relevant for understanding mood effects on memory are mood-congruent memory and mood-dependent memory. Mood-congruent memory refers to the phenomenon whereby one's current mood biases the encoding and retrieval of events according to the valence of the mood. Mood-dependence memory refers to the phenomenon whereby material is remembered better when there is a match between the mood at encoding and the mood at retrieval than when mood differs across these two memory stage [17, 18]. All memories have an emotional component associated with them. Consequently almost all thoughts are emotionally based and when we recall them, we are also associating the emotions stored with them. As we recollect our combined memories related to people, place, things, time and events each with its own emotional association [19]. Emotions stimulates every thought process and it also plays an important role in association of memory.

#### **4.5 Emotional influence on learning**

Learning from emotional experiences is fundamental to well-being and survival. It is important not only to retain information about emotional events themselves but also to determine which features of the environment predict desired emotional outcome [15]. Emotional states induced by fear or stress directly affect learning and memory. Feelings and emotions have a strong influence on learning [20]. Positive emotions in learning makes the neural network stronger, thicker, faster and more stable. Negative emotions in learning makes the neural network feebler, slow and unstable. The amygdala is an emotional maker of the contents on their way to longterm memory and it has essential functions with anxiety, fear, and joy. It plays a role in recognizing emotional signals in mimic expressions [20] and it also influences learning process of the learner.

### **4.6 Emotional influence on decision making**

Essentially, a decision is a choice among possibilities. It involves deep thinking and actions towards selecting or choosing needed one and neglecting or avoiding unwanted matters. A "good" decision is one that leads to the outcome that best satisfies the decision maker's goals at the time the decision was made. The central role of emotions in decision making is doubtless in the valuation process, when we evaluate how much we want a consequence to occur. Three categories of emotions-anticipatory, expected and immediate can act on decision making. Anticipatory emotions occur prior to the decision and can help guide decision making by influencing risk and reward valuation. In contrast, expected emotions results from the outcome of decisions, leading to future expectations of feelings based on responses to similar outcomes. Immediate emotions influence decision making simply because they occur at the same time the objective perspective [15].

#### **4.7 Emotional influence on social cognition**

Emotions serve important social functions. Indeed, emotions evident in facial expressions, body language and by which we interpret the actions of others. Successful social interactions require that individual map perception to action in order to interpret and predict the behavior of others and respond appropriately. Empathy and sympathy play an important role in social cognition. A better descriptor of emotion understanding is empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and resonate with another individual's emotional experiences, which leads to a sharing of that person's feelings. Once an empathetic feeling arises, individual distinguishing their own emotional response from that of the other individual and regulate their responses accordingly [15].

Empathy has both automatic and controlled components and builds on basic social cognitive and emotional processing mechanism. Recognizing emotions in others generates empathy to others. It is a kind of self-regulation process to realize and recognize others feelings and moods. This understanding makes interpersonal relationship with others. "You need to understand your own feelings to understand the feelings of others," [21]. This emotional behavior important for social cognition. Sympathy is the feelings of pity or concern for another individual's plight [15]. Sympathy creates to understand another person difficulties but it not give the other person actual emotional feelings.

*Perspective Chapter: Emotive Cognition Strategies on Enhancing Meaningful Learning… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111885*

## **5. Emotive cognition strategies**

The skill of teaching and learning required appropriate usage of emotive cognition strategies. Purves et al. says "Emotive cognition refers to emotions modulate information processing in brain regions that mediate various cognitive functions, focusing on perception and attention, learning and memory, and decision making" [15]. Emotive cognition strategies stimulates joy, hope and pride as well as cognition of the learner. In same way cognition have strong influence on emotional functions. Application of these strategies in classroom teaching and learning reduce the students' negative emotions and increase positive emotions. This process canalize cognitive functions to achieve the goal. Systematic interaction and connections of affective and cognitive domains while teaching produce high quality of teaching and learning among learns.

Usually, cognition and emotion are understood to be independent systems; however, research in the cognitive and neurobiological sciences has shown that the relationship between cognition and emotion is both interdependent and extensive [1]. Recent advances in neuroscience suggest that attention and memory, the two important cognitive components of learning, are profoundly affected by emotions [22]. The balanced emotional state of the mind concentrate on cognitive aspects of thinking and actions. This condition cognitive scientists call "working memory". It enables the mind to a particular task to be proficient. It also functions quality in mental life, effort in intellectual activity and logical plan [23]. Working memory interacts closely with cognitive functions; for instance, it is intimately linked to perception and long term memory, which provide most of its input and content [15]. In this way the strategies of emotive cognition function while teaching and learning. Moreover, it enhances the teaching methods of the teacher and learning behaviors of the learner.

## **6. Cognitive functions in meaningful learning**

Learning is the process of acquiring knowledge, skill and behavior modification of the individual according to the environment. The world in the 21st century insists that teaching and learning should be modified according to the need of the society. In these circumstances the learners have to practice their learning strategies like, higher-order thinking skills, deeper learning habits, complex thinking, emotive cognition, metacognition, communication skills and creative thinking in the learning of every concept. The teacher and the student have to understand the learning concepts in a scientific way. The science behind these concepts is that how learning occurs meaningfully.

Scientist Koizumi defines learning as a "process by which the brain reacts to stimuli by making neuronal connections that act as an information processing circuit and provide information storage" [24]. The meaningful learning process consists of cognitive functions such as perception, attention, learning, memory, problem solving and social cognition. The teacher as well as the leaners have to follow all these steps in their learning both inside as well as outside the classroom. If the teaching-leaning process fulfills all the necessary steps in learning, then the learning will become meaningful.

#### **6.1 Cognitive functions**

Cognition plays a vital role in processing the information network function in the brain. Information is received and attended by our five senses. Depending upon the nature of information it is transmitted to visual, auditory, smell, taste and somatic-sensory organs for recognition. It is processed for cognition, then it is stored in short-term or long-term memory. This process is significantly required in every learning activity. The cognitive perspective on learning is based on the assumption that knowledge acquisition lies at the very heart of learning. Once learners acquire new information in learning environments, they are supposed to use that information in completely different situations later in life. This is only possible if they have understood it correctly and stored it in a well-organized manner in their long-term memory (OECD) [25]. Cognitive functions such as decision making, problem solving ability, inductive and deductive reasoning and social cognition enhance learning ability.

Cognition encompasses the individual to sense himself and the world, through mental actions and language. Meaningful learning is a systematic cognitive process to understand the difficult concept for mental execution and representation, rather than storage and retrieval of information. Thinking, language (verbal or sign) and doing things are thus intimately inter-twined National Council of Educational Training and Research (NCERT) [26].
