Hello awesome student! 😎 Let's dive deep into this ocean of cognitive processes, specifically focusing on thinking and decision-making. We promise it'll be a fun swim!

Cognitive processes are like computer software running in the brain, processing info at different stages.

Perception: It's like your brain's camera. It snaps pictures of your surroundings to register information.

Memory: Your brain's storage device. It encodes (saves), stores and retrieves (opens) information.

Thinking: This one's your brain's editing software! It breaks down information (analysis), combines different bits of information (synthesis), and sorts info into categories (categorization). It also draws conclusions and makes inferences. Cool thing about thinking? It produces new info! 🎉

And, to visualize it, consider playing Minecraft. Perception is when you spot a creeper, memory is when you remember the best way to defend against it, and thinking helps you strategize and come up with a new plan.

Thinking and decision-making are like puzzles. They're complex, and it takes many kinds of people (psychologists, philosophers, computer scientists, linguists and more) to piece them together. They're implicit processes - you can't directly see them, but you can definitely see their effects.