Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific investigation of human cognition, that is, all our
mental abilities perceiving, learning, remembering, thinking, reasoning, and
understanding. The term cognition stems from the Latin word cognoscere or "to
know". Fundamentally, cognitive psychology studies how people acquire and apply
knowledge or information. It is closely related to the highly interdisciplinary cognitive
science and influenced by artificial intelligence, computer science, philosophy,
anthropology, linguistics, biology, physics, and neuroscience.
Contents
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1 History
2 Assumptions
3 Approaches
4 Sub-domains of Cognitive Psychology
5 Applications
6 References
7 External Links
8 See Also
History
Cognitive psychology in its modern form incorporates a remarkable set of new
technologies in psychological science. Although published inquiries of human cognition
can be traced back to Aristotles De Memoria (Hothersall, 1984), the intellectual
origins of cognitive psychology began with cognitive approaches to psychological
problems at the end of the 1800s and early 1900s in the works of Wundt, Cattell, and
William James (Boring, 1950).
Cognitive psychology declined in the first half of the 20th century with the rise of
behaviorism" - the study of laws relating observable behavior to objective, observable
stimulus conditions without any recourse to internal mental processes (Watson, 1913;
Boring, 1950; Skinner, 1950). It was this last requirement, fundamental to cognitive
psychology, that was one of behaviorism's undoings. For example, lack of
understanding of the internal mental processes led to no distinction between memory
and performance and failed to account for complex learning (Tinklepaugh, 1928;
Chomsky, 1959). These issue led to the decline of behaviorism as the dominant branch
of scientific psychology and to the Cognitive Revolution.
The Cognitive Revolution began in the mid-1950s when researchers in several fields
began to develop theories of mind based on complex representations and computational
procedures (Miller, 1956; Broadbent, 1958; Chomsky, 1959; Newell, Shaw, & Simon,
1958). Cognitive psychology became predominant in the 1960s (Tulving, 1962;
Sperling, 1960). Its resurgence is perhaps best marked by the publication of Ulric
Neissers book, Cognitive Psychology, in 1967. Since 1970, more than sixty
universities in North America and Europe have established cognitive psychology
programs.
Assumptions
Cognitive psychology is based on two assumptions: (1) Human cognition can at least in
principle be fully revealed by the scientific method, that is, individual components of
mental processes can be identified and understood, and (2) Internal mental processes
can be described in terms of rules or algorithms in information processing models.
There has been much recent debate on these assumptions (Costall and Still, 1987;
Dreyfus, 1979; Searle, 1990).
Approaches
Very much like physics, experiments and simulations/modelling are the major research
tools in cognitive psychology. Often, the predictions of the models are directly
compared to human behaviour. With the ease of access and wide use of brain imaging
techniques, cognitive psychology has seen increasing influence of cognitive
neuroscience over the past decade. There are currently three main approaches in
cognitive psychology: experimental cognitive psychology, computational cognitive
psychology, and neural cognitive psychology.
Experimental cognitive psychology treats cognitive psychology as one of the natural
sciences and applies experimental methods to investigate human cognition.
Psychophysical responses, response time, and eye tracking are often measured in
experimental cognitive psychology. Computational cognitive psychology develops
formal mathematical and computational models of human cognition based on symbolic
and subsymbolic representations, and dynamical systems. Neural cognitive psychology
uses brain imaging (e.g., EEG, MEG, fMRI, PET, SPECT, Optical Imaging) and
neurobiological methods (e.g., lesion patients) to understand the neural basis of human
cognition. The three approaches are often inter-linked and provide both independent and
complementary insights in every sub-domain of cognitive psychology.
Applications
Cognitive psychology research has produced an extensive body of principles,
representations, and algorithms. Successful applications range from custom-built expert
systems to mass-produced software and consumer electronics: (1) Development of
computer interfaces that collaborate with users to meet their information needs and
operate as intelligent agents, (2) Development of a flexible information infrastructure
based on knowledge representation and reasoning methods, (3) Development of smart
tools in the financial industry, (4) Development of mobile, intelligent robots that can
perform tasks usually reserved for humans, (5) Development of bionic components of
the perceptual and cognitive neural system such as cochlear and retinal implants.
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Internal references
External Links
Zhong-Lin Lu's lab website
Zhong-Lin Lu's website
See Also
Cognitive Neuropsychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Neuropsychology
Sponsored by: Eugene M. Izhikevich, Editor-in-Chief of Scholarpedia, the peer-
reviewed open-access encyclopedia
Reviewed by: Anonymous
Reviewed by: Dr. Max Coltheart, Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie
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Accepted on: 2007-08-11 00:47:35 GMT