Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive development can be defined as a field of study in neuroscience and psychology revolving around the growth of the brain (Schacter & Woods 2009). This development is the evolution of skills such as, information processing, perceptual skills, conceptual resourcing, language knowledge and other brain development traits (ibid).

Cognitive Psychology is the study of the human mind; it is how we reason, decide, and produce and comprehend language. In order achieve this we use both mental representations and mental processes. Like in any other situation, much of these cognitive functions are being used in the Sherlock’s Holmes YouTube video “Dinner with Mary Morstan and Watson”.

‘’Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that studies mental processes including how people think, perceive, remember, and learn’’ and with that said I think my mental action process of acquiring knowledge and understanding was developed massively through previous educational experience. For example;

Hume’s ultimate source was empiricism, which states that knowledge is based on experience, so everything that is known is learned through experience but nothing is ever truly known. His belief is that it is impossible to know anything about how the world outside on our own mind is without relying on sense perception. Hume also states words like lively, strong experiences, perception, belief and thoughts are all different words, which meant different concepts. Meaning that these words and concepts meant different to other people due to knowledge or any kind of experience they have encountered. Not everyone has been through the same experience which meant it left a different impact on an individual.

Cognition is a person’s ability to think, learn, and attain knowledge or information (Cherry, "What Is Cognition?"). In fact, you are doing it right now as you read this paper. Some papers, books, lessons, etc. are easier to understand and retain than others. Ulric Nessar has been known as the “father of cognitive psychology” since 1967 when his researched was made public on such topics as perception, problem solving, and remembering (Hyman, "Remembering the Father of Cognitive Psychology"). However, in my opinion the start of cognition began much earlier with Greek philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates ("History of Philosophy"). They started schools and groups devoted to thinking and talking about life and other

The significance of Kant’s thoughts was that until the time of Kant, we were expected to believe the teachings of Hume and Locke. They taught that from birth our minds were simply blank tablets. Over time we would etch onto these tablets all the knowledge we had determined through sense experiences. However, Kant had a different opinion. He believed the mind was an evolving mechanism that outlines and translates the constant sensations the brain receives. The brain is not a blank tablet, but rather a machine that is continually learning. It can determine cause and effect as well as, understand simply logic. In addition to that, Kant taught that it was no longer the world that formed our brains, but our brains that formed the world. What he meant by that, is the world and the knowledge cannot cause us to perceive the world in a different light. Yet how we choose to interpret all the information will determine our perception of reality.

Professor Rhodes talked about Cognitive psychology and how it influences our attention and decisions. Cognitive psychology is broadly, the study of the mind and mental processes. The four requirements that Professor Rhodes talked to us about were Perception and Attention, Learning and Memory, Language, and Thought and Metacognition. There were also so many perspectives he brought up, which were the Computational/Representational Perspective, Neurophysiological perspective, and Dynamical systems perspective. The computational perspective consisting of the mind as a symbol of manipulating machine, neurophysiological perspective as signals combined/refined to emphasize certain properties, and lastly the dynamical systems perspective that shows

The advance in the cognitive reform of psychology began in the later years of the 1950’s and early years of 1960’s. By the year of 1970 the leading approach within psychology. There were several important and historical milestones in the development of Cognitive Psychology. Beginning with the year 1948, Norbert Wiener released a book, which brought out new phrases. Another historical moment, which occurred in 1948, was the work, which was done on cognitive maps researched by Tolman. This further research and work assisted in the development of cognitive psychology. The birth year of cognitive psychology is said to have been in 1956 when George Miller published a book, “The Magical Number 7 Plus or Minus 2.” In 1960 Miller also established the

It is impossible to know anything for certain, but asserting something in terms of probability is acceptable. Consequently, Hume added skepticism to the empiricist thinking. Hume’s conclusions, particularly regarding the concepts of self and causality, were unacceptable to a German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. He sought to combine the two highly divergent doctrines, rationalism and empiricism. Kant began with distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge. A priori knowledge is obtained solely through reasoning, whereas a posteriori knowledge is attained through experience alone. Kant argued that both a priori and a posteriori knowledge are required for us to understand the external world. The physical world supplies us with the objects that we sense, while our mind actively processes and converts those sensory perceptions into semantically meaningful model of the world. While he acknowledged the existence of mental operations such as reason, feeling, and cognition, he believed that mind has no substance. Thereby, mental operations cannot be scientifically assessed, and psychology cannot be an experimental

Cognitive Psychology focuses on cognitive aids psychologists use to deal with any issue. It "investigates all aspects of cognition-memory, thinking, reasoning, language, decision making, and so on" (Baron & Kalsher, 2008 p. 11). To solve a problem using the cognitive aspect, psychologists need to explore people's attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, perceptions, and storing and recalling information at certain times. For example, as a social worker, I have different needy people to process their papers and help them with monthly benefits; therefore, I have to make a judgment about them based on the information sent to the brain to process. Cognitive Psychology includes cognitive dissonance theory, which creates harmony among people. More importantly, when people are under a dissonance behavior, they behave differently. The function of Cognitive Psychology is reducing one's inner psychological pain through investigating elements of discomfort. For instance, cognitive mapping helps to create a scenario of what the brain is processing reflected by people's life.

The changes in how different psychological processes were identified and understood in the 1950s and 1960s is what many refer to as the “cognitive revolution.” The introduction of research in problems that have already been met - for instance, studying problems of memory and decision making - led to the new approach of theorizing. The cognitive revolution focused on just a couple of key concepts. One idea that stemmed during the cognitive revolution is that the science of psychology cannot direct study the mental world. Another idea that grew during the cognitive revolution was that in order to understand behavior, the science of psychology has to study the mental world (Cognition, pg. 8).

Cognitive psychology is the study of mind and mental function. This includes learning, memory, perception, reasoning, and decision making. Human brains are like computers but

A question that has plagued psychologists for decades is why do humans behave the way that they do? In order to get closer to finding out this answer, researchers have turned to experimentation. Experiments in psychology are used in order to gain new insight into the human mind and observe behaviors in a controlled environment. The four experiments that follow are perhaps some of the most influential experiments in psychology that is still referenced when discussing the history of cognitive psychology.

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 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.