Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive psychology is the study of the mind and how it processes information as well as the role it plays in emotion, behavior, and physiology (allpsych, 2007.) It is necessary to make certain assumptions to effectively study the mind. Daniel Willingham’s (2007) states three questions that will help explain the cognitive theory of psychology are as follows; “why do we make assumptions?”, “how did philosophers and early psychologists study the mind?”, and “how do cognitive psychologists study the mind?” These are important questions to answer before going to deep into the cognitive field.

The first question addresses “why it is important to make assumptions” when studying the mind. Dividing this question into two parts as it pertains to cognitive psychology, one must look at what one is going to attempt to explain or study. This will be biased on the assumptions the psychologist has of the mind, but it will establish a starting point. The second part of the assumption involves the foundations that influence the first part. The Willingham text (2007) uses visual perception as an example of this first perception. The first part of the assumption is that the retina inverts images for the brain to translate into perception. The second part of this example addresses how the brain translates the “up-side-down” information to the “right-side-up” translation. Even though the conclusion to this particular example is irrelevant the workings of visual perception, the example does demonstrate well how a cognitive psychologist studies the mind.

The second question is to ask how early philosophers and psychologist studied the mind. There were three major periods of discover that lead to the establishment of cognitive psychology.

The first period started over 2000 years ago with the consideration of philosophers to understand how knowledge was acquired. This included questions that are focused on even now and are the base of modern psychology including perception, memory and nurture or nature, which basically explains how knowledge is gained, retained for later use, and whether the origin of the knowledge is innate to the being or learned through experience. Where many of these ancient philosophers’ conclusions were wrong, it is more important to see their questions lead to the establishment of major assumptions that are taken for granted today. These assumptions are that the world can be understood in a systematic way, humans are part of this world thus under the systematic assumption, and that events happening in this world are indeed of this world and not a magical or divine source.

Where prior to the introduction of the scientific method in the 18th century, all knowledge was analyzed using reason without observation. The second period was ushered in with a new attitude towards learning with the primary focus being on proving observations and focusing on conscious experience. This method focused on observation and the physical confirmation of assumptions. The scientific method personified the ideas that humankind, though complex, is predictable. That humankind will react to, and follow, a standard set of rules consistently. This view is considered “deterministic” and divided the scientific view from the religious belief, “nondeterministic,” that humans had souls that allowed for free will and could vary in behavior. Throughout this time, many fields rose and were replaced with modified theories. These included; structuralism, functionalism, introspectionism, evolutionary, until in 1913 John Watson published his paper titled “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.”

This ushered in the Behaviorism theory, the third period, and instead of being focused on consciousness, focus was again placed on the way the mind worked and gauged it by observable measurements