through selective cognition (subconsciously) to avoid the dissonant information.

... and (subconsciously) try to avoid the dissonant information through selective cognition.



The term cognition (Latin: cogito, "to think") is used in several loosely-related ways to refer to a facility for the human like processing of information. In psychology, and in artificial intelligence it is used to refer to the mental functions, processes and states of intelligent entities (humans, human organizations, highly autonomous robots), with a particular focus toward the study of such mental processes as, comprehension, inferencing, decision-making, planning and learning ( see also cognitive science and cognitivism).

My dissertation

Actually there are three phases in neurological processing: sensory intake, perception and cognition. The organs of perception are the eyes, ears, skin, skeleton, etc. The ears do auditory, the eye visual, skin tactile and the skeleton kinetic perception. From there the information is passed onto integration centers where it is reprocessed and sent to the brain for cognitive processing into images, which are compared with past images stored in memory -or, the information is new, then compared with stored information via a process of mapping. Once processed the information is stored and used to constitute a response, sending signals back to initiate speech, movement, etc.
The perceptual organs are multifunctional. For example, the ear governs auditory perception but it also governs (along with the skeleton) spatial perception via its vestibular system (those fluid-filled canals in the inner ear which are arranged in a 3-dimensional grid). The sloshing around of the fluid in the inner ear tells you how you are positioned in space. Neat system all around and very efficient. No computer can match it yet.