Seven Perspectives Of Cognitive Psychology

In terms of human behaviour, psychology provides alternative perspectives, known as approaches, which give explanation to human behaviours. What makes each approach unique is that they all have their own focal points for how to explain behaviour. For example, the biological approach looks to the evolutionary processes and gene mutations/hormone levels, whilst the cognitive approach looks at how behaviour is influenced

Psychology has five branches that are based off of nature vs. nurture. First, we have the biological approach which focuses on the relationships between the brain, hormones, heredity, and evolution (pg. 12). Next, there is the psychoanalysis perspective which focuses on the study of the unconscious mind and mental illnesses. Then, cognitive psychology focuses on mental processes to understand human nature. (pg. 13) Lastly, behaviorism focuses on the importance of personal experiences and the effect they have on human characteristics.

Psychology is the study of the behavior and mind of all living organisms. Perspectives are made in psychology in order for us to be able to have a better understanding of human behavior. These “theories” help contribute to studying how people think, feel, and behave. Three of the main perspectives include behaviorism, which is the study of people’s behavior, humanistic, which is the study of the potential good in everyone, and cognitive, the study of mental processes.

There are eight theoretical perspectives in contemporary psychology. Any topic in psychology has many approaches that have a variety of perspectives for each that is given. Starting with the biological perspective, it is noted that physiology has played a major role in psychology. The organ systems such as the nervous system, endocrine system, immune system, and genetics are greatly emphasized in studying physical bases of human and animal behavior. Neuroscience more specifically studies the nervous system, particularly the brain. The next theoretical perspective is the cognitive perspective, which is a relatively modern approach. It focuses on the important role of mental processes in how people process and remember information, develop language,

Researchers can examine an MRI result to see how personality is created by neurons in the brain. In the evolutionary perspective of psychology, behaviour is adaptive,hereditary, and cultural due to the way we have evolved and natural selection. A researcher in this field could observe a flock of birds to see how behaviors change from one generation to another. The behavioral field states that all behaviour is learned through the environment rather than from ourselves. A behavioral researcher could possibly train a dog to see how fast it can learn certain behaviors. Psychologists of the psychodynamic perspective believe that our actions are influenced by unconscious motives. A researcher in this field may examine a person’s dream and compare the meaning of the dreams to the patient’s everyday life. The developmental perspective focuses on the change that happens within our lifespans and how that affects us. A researcher of this perspective could follow two children, one with both parents and one that had a single parent (due to divorce or death), to see how that change impacts the child’s life compared to the one with two parents. The cognitive perspective believes that the way we act and our actions is due to how we process information from our environment; a possible experiment that a researcher might conduct

Psychology can be defined as the systematic study of mental processes, couple with behaviors, and experiences (Kalat, 2011). There are many ways in examining, mental processes and behaviors among people, and therefore psychologist uses different perspectives to understand how human beings, think, act, and behave. Some psychologist uses one perspective to analyze behaviors, and other uses a multidimensional approach. Carter & Seifert (2013) identified 7 major perspectives that are used to study people’s behavior, and mental processes. These perspectives are the biological, evolutionary, psychodynamic, behavioral, humanistic, cognitive, and the sociocultural perspective.

To analyze the human mind is a treacherous endeavor, as we are cognitively complex creatures with minds entirely unique from one another. To even begin to understand the way humans behave is a marvelous feat; understanding the human mind is certainly not as simple as taking one psychology class; even earning a respectable degree in behavioral psychology or cognitive neuroscience does not constitute that one truly understands the human mind. Can the general human mind even be understood on a basic level? After all, we are a diverse species with unlimited potential. One of the most spectacularly enigmatic human qualities is our ability to produce unique thoughts and insights, making analysis of the human brain on a cognitive and

The understanding of aspects of the human mind that was produced in twentieth century is lacking what is needed to describe and explain psychological experiences. To get a complete and full understanding of any phenomena, each perspective must be looked at collectively and not individually. I do support an integrative approach to understanding the human mind. Cacioppo and Freberg (2013, pg. 33) suggested, “merging the seven perspectives mind” as an approach to understanding the human mind. The seven perspectives of psychology are biological, evolutionary, cognitive, social, developmental, clinical, and individual perspective and personality (Cacioppo & Freberg, 2013).

Another key milestone of cognitive psychology is the development of neuroscience. Neuroscience is the study of how the brain and nervous system work together to determine behaviors. This was a big step for cognitive psychology. The ability to be able to study of the brain works during certain behaviors was a great start. Neuroscientists found that there are links between different structures of the brain and different functions. Donald Hebb thought that some functions were constructed of connections over time by sets of cells in the brain. Later Hebb and Wiesel did a study on cats and found that specific cells, in the visual cortex of their brains, were made to respond to specific stimuli (Galotti, 2014, p. 10). This shows that localization of different functions in the brain exists.

Although, I think I am able to keep my cool under certain situations I do happen to have some anger. I think this trait developed in many ways. According to the Cognitive Approach it, “explains anger to be because of fault reasoning and a reliance on irrational beliefs” (Burger, 2015, p. 416). I believe that my anger is related to relying on a group of irrational beliefs. I have the tendency to believe that I must be competent, adequate and achieve in all important respects. I tend to believe that when a situation arrives it triggers these irrational beliefs and the emotional consequence of being anger comes about. This irrational way of thinking brings a rage of anger and frustration because I believe that I must meet those irrational beliefs. On the other

I find it more important to be able to have certain or at least statistical understanding of how mind/brain works just to understand how people operate, as so many people have no idea how their own mind works, even at relatively obvious levels and that is why psychology is very exciting to me. I am very interested in studying human behavior and cognitive processes; basically anything about psychology interests me because I am interested in human body and brain development. I had and I still have a real interest in people, why

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

Psychology evolved in the 1800’s from philosophy and physiology because Wilhem Wundt argued for it to be in its own discipline. He established the first psychology lab in America and after that schools sprang up all around the country. As more schools were established new ways of thinking were introduced to psychology. The first two introduced were functionalism and structuralism. These two focused on consciousness in different way, they somewhat battled for attention. After these ideas died out, behaviorism and psychoanalytic ideas became the new ways of thinking. They were influential to the field, but faced opposition from other psychologists. They claimed they were dehumanizing and believed that they should focus more on the uniqueness of human qualities, this idea lead to the new way of thinking called behaviorism. For some time majority of the attention was focused on the behavior instead of the mind. This is why around the 1950’s psychologists began to work to put the psyche back into psychology introducing the cognitive psychology. From the 1980’s on these are the perspectives that were introduced and people are still working towards today; evolutionary psychology, egocentrism, and cultural diversity in psychology. Today the field is expanding as we find more information about the mind in research. More people are joining the American Psychological Association as the field expands.

Throughout long history of psychology, there are many brilliant and remarkable psychologists who grew psychology longing as 21st century, today. They have contributed many theories, ideas, and experiments that made study of human mind and behavior much more noble and interesting. As psychology grow older and older, there are many different types of branches that were created, such as psychoanalysis, behavior, cognitive, evolutionary, and developmental. Each branches have changed way society works and people think and behave. However, fact that psychology falls into science and philosophy, many psychologist still have more things to discover and learn. Also, fact that people change every day, years, decades, and centuries, it is never ending work for current and future generations.

The theory of Cognitive psychology looks at any individual as the source of processing the information just any computer which perceives the input in the form of information and then processing it with the help of already installed information related to it and then it is given out as an output by following the program. It is still possible to study the mental position of the mind through meditational processes involving attention, perception and memory. These are the stages in processing the information in a human mind. Objects, information, scenarios are always present here in our environment and we respond to them through several actions and reactions of our mind capability. Whenever a person looks at an object through his eyes, he will look at it only when he will pay attention to that object. (Hugenberg, 2010)