Cognitive Psychology

I

Introduction

Cognitive Psychology, the scientific study of cognition. Cognition refers to the process of knowing, and cognitive psychology is the study of all mental activities related to acquiring, storing, and using knowledge. The domain of cognitive psychology spans the entire spectrum of conscious and unconscious mental activities: sensation and perception, learning and memory, thinking and reasoning, attention and consciousness, imagining and dreaming, decision making, and problem solving. Other topics that fascinate cognitive psychologists include creativity, intelligence, and how people learn, understand, and use language.

Over the years, cognitive psychologists have discovered that mental activities that seem simple and natural are, in fact, extraordinarily complex. For example, most children have no trouble learning language from their parents. But how do young children decode the meanings of sounds and grasp the basic rules of grammar? Why do children learn language more easily and rapidly than adults? Explaining these puzzles has proven very difficult, and attempts to duplicate true language ability in machines have failed. Even the most advanced computers have trouble understanding the meaning of a simple story or conversation. Cognitive psychologists have found similar complexity in other mental processes.

Cognitive psychology is one field within cognitive science, an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the human mind. Other fields in cognitive science include anthropology, linguistics, neuroscience (the study of the brain and nervous system), and artificial intelligence. Cognitive neuroscience, or neurocognition, combines cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

Cognitive psychology is sometimes confused with cognitive therapy, a type of psychotherapy used to treat depression and other mental disorders. Cognitive therapy falls within the realm of clinical psychology, the branch of psychology devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. See Psychotherapy: Cognitive Therapies.

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II

Origins of Cognitive Psychology

Curiosity about the nature of knowledge and the mind dates back as far as the first recorded philosophers. The Greek philosopher Plato held that the seat of knowledge was in the brain, but his pupil Aristotle believed that knowledge was located in the heart. Many others since have wondered about how we come to know and understand our world, how we remember or represent information about the world, and how we arrive at decisions.

A

Early Studies of Cognition

Although Renaissance philosophers and theologians actively debated the source of knowledge and the nature of sense perception (see Epistemology), the scientific study of cognition did not begin until the late 19th century. In 1879 German physiologist Wilhelm Wundt founded the first psychological laboratory, at the University of Leipzig in Leipzig, Germany. Reasoning that people are the best source of information about their own thoughts, Wundt set about studying consciousness through the method of introspection. This technique involved asking people to observe and report what occurred in their minds as they engaged in various mental tasks. In 1885 German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus conducted the first experiments on memory and forgetting. In the United States, psychologist William James used introspection to theorize about the structure of memory and consciousness, and in 1890 he defined psychology as “the science of mental life.” In 1896 American psychologist Mary Whiton Calkins invented an important technique for studying memory retention.

B

The Shift to Behaviorism

In the early 1900s, however, with psychology becoming more distinct from philosophy and physiology, attention shifted away from questions about mental life to questions about behavior. This shift occurred because many psychologists thought that it was impossible to study mental life using scientific methods. For example, critics of introspection labeled it subjective and speculative, and even its supporters found that people were unable to report on their own mental states in much detail. Behavior, on the other hand, could be observed, measured, and documented. American psychologist John B. Watson, considered the founder of behaviorism, contended that all human behavior could be explained without reference to a person’s thoughts, feelings, or mental states. Another leading behaviorist, American psychologist B. F. Skinner, was adamant in his belief that even the most advanced forms of human learning, such as language acquisition, could be explained in terms of the basic principles of conditioning (see Learning).

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