Cognitive+Psychology

The major emphasis in cognitive psychology is mental functions. Cognitive psychologists want to attempt to understand why it is that humans think and process things the way they do. Also of interest to cognitive psychologists are the topics of learning and memory. The driving force behind this discipline is discovering how individuals get, process, and retain information.

Cognitive psychology covers a broad range of topics that include but are not limited to perception, language, memory, problem solving, and intelligence. This has very practical applications to real life. For example, school atmospheres and classroom designs are set up in a way that should encourage learning (at least in theory) and the person who would have been consulted for that job would be a cognitive psychologist. Also whenever an individual takes an intelligence test they are also utilizing the work of a cognitive specialist.

The questions cognitive psychologists attempt to answer center around, big surprise, the brain. They want to know things like how our “sensory and perceptual systems acquire information about he world” or how does the mind process and understand language. A real world example could be studying infants to see how they process information compared to how an adult does. A cognitive psychologist would want to look for differences in neural connections and see if different areas of the brain were incorporated in infants versus adults.

Cognitive psychology is one of the most recent additions to the psychological field and took a group effort to bring it into being. This paradigm’s origins can be traced as far back as Descartes (17th century) and can be followed up to Alan Turing (1940s-50s). This field developed in many different areas at different times. As our understanding of the world around us grew, so did our need to understand our own bodies. With this came the development of cognitive psychology. Essential questions like how do we come to remember things or how do we process information needed to be answered.

There are several “big names” that we recognize from the very beginnings of psychology who contributed to what is now known as cognitive psychology. Edward Titchener, Wilhelm Wundt, Jean Piaget, and Wolfgang Kohler were all involved in this field. Wundt is credited with creating the first psychology laboratory but it’s not so common knowledge that his work has made up some of the foundations of cognitive psychology. Jean Piaget, who gave us one of the leading theories of children’s cognitive development, is another major contributor to this field. Cognitivists have had many great psychologists add to their knowledge bank over the years that have allowed cognitive psychology to become one of the leading disciplines in psychology.

Works Cited

Cherry, K. (n.d.). //What is Cognitive psychology?//. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/f/cogpsych.htm

//Cognitive psychology//. (2010, February 13). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_psychology

//Cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience/cognitive psychology and the brain//. (2009, October 14). Retrieved from http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cognitive_Psychology_and_Cognitive_Neuroscience/Cognitive_Psychology_and_the_Brain

//Iowa// //state university: cognitive//. (2005). Retrieved from http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/index.php?id=21