COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive Psychology

Introduction

This paper will be discussing key milestones in the development of cognitive psychology. It will also, discuss the importance of behavioral observation in cognitive psychology (Sun, 2008). The core focus of cognitive psychology is the way in which people acquire process and keep information. Cognitive psychology is concerned with internal mental states-as opposed to behaviorism, which is based on observable criteria. Cognitive psychology, contrary to popular belief did not originate in the sixties, but much earlier as a discipline of experimental psychology and evolutionary psychology (Sun, 2008).

Cognitive psychology is a school of psychology that deals with the study of cognition, i.e., the mental processes involved in knowledge. Aims to study the basic mechanisms by which deep knowledge is produced, from the perception, the memory and learning, to the formation of concepts and logical reasoning. By cognitive, we understand the act of knowledge in their actions to store, retrieve, recognize, understand, organize and use information received through the senses. Modern cognitive psychology has been formed under the influence of related disciplines such as management of information, the intelligence artificial and science of language.

Key Milestones in the Development of Cognitive Psychology

The key milestones in the development of cognitive psychology we will be discussing are:

The Crumbling of Behaviorism

Neuroscience

Information Processing and The Computer Metaphor

Construction of Artificial Intelligence

The Crumbling of Behaviorism

Crumbling of behaviorism is first key milestone in the development of cognitive, behavioral psychology. Numerous problems have been concerned in the fall of behaviorism, especially in accounting for reasoning in language and memory (Wickens, 2005). Although entrenched in a scientific method exclusively designed for observing overt behavior, most behaviorist observations were on animals, which many thought could not possibly explain human language and other abilities. Behaviorism could not account for internal mental processes; and intrinsic drives such as those addressed by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, or Wundt's and James' introspection. Ultimately, psychology had to embrace all aspects of the human psyche, which definitively included that which transpires within the individual, yet remains unseen. Behaviorism could not accommodate this need.

Neuroscience

Neuroscientists became advance prepared to study and determine the mind in an orderly manner by using hypothetical constructs to piece together definitive links between function and brain structure. Behaviorists adamantly believed that only studying behavior was scientific but neuroscientists observed brain-damaged individuals and associated damaged areas to specific, observable cognitive problems, which helped them further define functions. Observations, such as that of the ...