Features of information extraction and approaches to understanding information: psychological aspect

The article presents the results of a theoretical analysis of the main scientific approaches to the study of the concepts of «information» and «understanding» in psychology and related disciplines. It is shown that the question of the nature of information, the process of extracting it from data and understanding it by the subject remains relevant today. It is suggested that information be understood as any messages regardless of the form of their presentation, but accessible to human perception. In turn, a message is understood as a sequence of signals of various nature presented in certain formats. The paper considers the process of converting data into information. The formation of data as the basis for the extraction of information occurs, firstly, from recorded signals from the outside world; secondly, from already published data which are presented in an inaccessible form for interpretation by the subject himself. Data are subject to processing by appropriate methods. Depending on the method of data processing chosen by the subject, information with different levels of objectivity, completeness, reliability or adequacy can be obtained. Information becomes available for understanding only after its interpretation. It has been revealed that for the process of extracting information from data and understanding it the subject needs to own certain volumes of procedural and declarative knowledge. Procedural knowledge describes the sequence of actions that a subject must use to process data. Declarative knowledge is knowledge that the subject already possesses and which represents some kind of «ground» for the process of understanding the information received. Understanding is subjective and is always based on the interpretation of the material's content from various points of view of the subject. Therefore, in a psychological sense, interpretation is always an essential component of understanding. At the same time, interpretation is not a logical procedure. Under the semantic approach, understanding is the result of semantic processing of the information received by the subject on the basis of representation.