A Study on Cognitive Psychology

Piaget was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development. Piaget’s work includes a detailed observational study of cognition in children. Piaget showed that young children think in different ways to adults. According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent knowledge is based.

Cognitive Psychology is your thought process. Our brains work in many ways and when dealing with information theirs a process that individuals go through to store, process, retrieve, and problem solve information. Our brain is like a computer with different functioning systems that gives you direction, teach you purpose and help you to master skills. As we grow and learn we are then able to store all this information and relate it to everything we do. Going back to the history of cognitive psychology from the 18th to 19th century began with the term psychology beginning and then merging to a discipline focused in hypotheses and data.

In order to understand the interdisciplinary perspective in relation to cognitive psychology it is necessary to understand the discipline itself and its attractiveness. History shows that cognitive psychology was originally considered experimental psychology (McLeod, 2007). The term cognitive psychology came into use around 1967 with the publication of a book titled "Cognitive Psychology" by Ulric Neisser (McLeod, 2007). The Cognitive Science Society officially began in the late 1970's. Psychology was not considered a main player. The core group was formed from three main disciplines, artificial intelligence, psychology, and linguistics. While philosophy, neuroscience and anthropology played smaller roles (Gentner, 2010). Since cognitive psychologusts play a dominant role in the field of psychology, a large amount of practitioners consider themselves cognitive psychologists.

Cognitive Psychology draws the comparison between the human mind and a computer, suggesting that we like the computer process the information we acquire from around us and then react accordingly. Hearnshaw, (1987), claims that Cognitive Psychology is both one of the oldest and also one of the newest parts of Psychology, cited in ?T. Malim?, (1994). Information is collected through our senses i.e. vision, touch, smell etc and then processed through our

Piaget – Cognitive Development - Observed his own children, plus others to develop his theories. His theory is broad and runs from birth to adolescence and includes concepts of language, scientific reasoning, moral development and memory. Piaget believed that children went

Cognitive psychology is a pure science based mainly on laboratory experiments and began to revolutionize psychology in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s and became the dominant approach in psychology by the late 1970’s [ (McLeod, 2007) ] according to Saul McLeod. An example of the cognitive perspective would be when one learns to take blood pressure. First you must learn how to manipulate the blood pressure manometer, learn how to hear blood pressure sounds and understand the meaning of the sounds. As each time you practice these activity, you will gain more confidence and competence in performing the task. The strong point of this perspective is that it mostly uses rigorous scientific methods and the approach has had many practical applications. The weakness of this perspective is that it is to simplistic. It ignores the complexity of the human function, biological influences of the human function and it ignores the emotions, conscious experience and free will.

Though we may not realize it nor want to acknowledge it, Cognitive Psychology is a part of every human 's daily life. Cognitive Psychology is the scientific study of the mind as an information processor. In a simpler definition, it is the study of how our minds interpret and process things that we either are informed of or something we take into thought. Cognitive Psychology is a part of our attention process, language use, our memory for both long and short term, perception, problem solving, creativity, and the way we think. Each of these different features are a part of how we perceive information, think, remember, and use the information we gather. Through this branch of psychology, researchers are able to observe the relationship

Cognitive development is the term used to describe the construction of thought process, including remembering, problem solving and decision-making, from childhood through adolescence to adulthood. In this essay I will compare and contrast the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, both of which were enormously significant contributors to the cognitive development component to/in psychology. In addition to this I will also weigh up the strengths and weaknesses of each theory and outline how they can be applied to an educational setting.

Anderson, J.R. & Lebiere, C. (2003). The Newell Test for a theory of cognition. Behavioral and

Jean Piaget is best known for his theory that suggested children think differently than adults. His theory proposed that children’s cognitive development developed in

Cognitive psychology approach focuses on a person’s internal mental processes for example perception, attention and memory, and how theses mental processes influence a person’s behaviour. Humans differ from many other species but most importantly in terms of their cognitive abilities such as thinking, reasoning and problem solving. The Cognitive approach relates to most of the other approaches such as developmental,

Cognitive psychology is defined as “the scientific study of mental processes” (Riegler & Riegler 2008, p. 1). During the 1960s, cognitive psychology became an emerging presence in the field of psychology. During this time period, attention to the study of “how internal states, such as thoughts, feelings, and moods influence behavior” (Cherry 2010, p. 12). Cognitive psychology studies how individuals think, comprehend language, and form beliefs. Human development involves cognitive development. Researchers attempted to study thought through introspection. However, introspection was not impartial because individuals are far too complex and do not share similar thoughts and ideas.

Cognitive psychology is the segment of psychology that explores internal mental processes such as visual processing, memory, problem solving, and language. Cognitive psychology also focuses on information processing and the method of how people store, manipulate and use information (Barsalou, 2005). With an emphasis on thought processes, cognitive psychology also explores and discusses thinking and knowledge acquisition as conceptual terms. Well known contributors to the fields, such as Jean Piaget, are especially concerned with the development of cognition and formed stage theories to explain

Cognitive psychology began emerging in the 1950’s. As highlighted by Kraiger and Salas (1993), this was partially as a response to behaviorism. Critics noted that behaviorism failed to explain how some internal development processes impacted behavior. Cognitive psychology focuses on how individuals acquire process and in the long run store information. Currently, cognitive psychology concentrates on few key human characteristics which include:

“Cognitive psychology is a modern approach to the study of [processes by which people come to understand the world- such processes as memory, learning, comprehending language, problem solving, and creativity. Cognitive psychology has been influenced by developments in language, computer science, and of course, earlier work in philosophy and psychology” – Hayes (cited by Lundin)