Psychology

Psychology is a discipline derived from philosophy which is

the parent discipline. The word psychology is derived from
two greek words – ‘psyche’ meaning mind and ‘logos’
meaning study. According to the American Psychological
Association psychology is defined as the scientific study of
mind and behavior. Behavior stands for responses and
actions that are directly observed and mind is defined as the
internal state and processes that aren’t observable yet can
be inferred through measurable responses

Psychology helps us to comprehend how are brain and body

connected. As a scientific discipline, it provides a very
systematic approach without creating any possible biases
which leads to faulty observations.

Cognitive Psychology
The term ‘cognition’ means knowing. Cognitive psychology is
a branch of psychology dedicated to the study of how people
perceive , learn, remember and think about information.
Cognitive psychology shares many research interests with
‘cognitive science’. Cognitive processes are continuously
taking place in our mind and in the mind of people around us.
Cognitive psychology is concerned with internal mental state
as it uses scientific research methods to measure mental
processes. The term scientific study means it is based on
experimental methods, empirical and observative. Cognitive
psychology concerned with how people acquire, store,
transform, use and communicate information (Neisser,1967)
Cognitivism adopts precise quantitative analysis to study how
people learn and think like behaviorism ;emphasizing internal
mental processes like gestaltism. Tolman (1948) work on
cognitive maps-training rats in mazes; showed that animals
had internal representation of behavior.

Cognitive psychology hopes to learn how people think by

studying how people have thoughts about thinking. It
involves a progression of ideas referred to as a Dialectic.
In a dialectic:
1) A thesis is proposed which is a statement of belief
2) An antithesis emerged which is counter statement to
thesis
3) Synthesis wherein some ideas from thesis and some
ideas from antithesis are merged to formulate a theory.
The dialectic may tempt us to think if one view is right the
other might be wrong. For example; in the intelligence is
either completely genetically defined or environmentally
defined. But ultimately both the views were synthesized to
form a new viewpoint that both nature and nurture plays an
important role. Thus characteristic of different approaches
are often integrated into a newer and more encompassing
approach.

HISTORY OF COGNITIVE
PSYCHOLOGY
The roots of cognitive psychology lie in two disciplines:
1)Philosophy: It seeks to understand many aspects of the
world through inspection
2) Physiology: It is the scientific study of life sustaining
functions.
The history of cognitive psychology has developed from two
main ideologies. Rationalist’s ideologies where they believe
that knowledge comes through thinking and logical analysis
and empiricist who believed that knowledge is acquired
through empirical evidence and observations. Empiricism
therefore leads directly to empirical investigations of
psychology while rationalism is important for theory
development thus these two ideologies maintain a synthesis
or balance. Renaissance philosophers considered that
knowledge was acquired not only through physical senses
but also from divine sources. During eighteenth century
when philosophic psychology was brought to the point where
scientific psychology could assume a role and British
empiricists suggested internal representation is of three
types:
1)Direct sensory events
2)Faint copy of percepts
3)Transformation of these faint copies
During the nineteenth century early psychologists like
Feshner,Helmholtz,Wundt and others started to drift from
philosophers and theories to more empirical results. By the
end of nineteenth century there was a clear dichotomy in the
knowledge that emphasized structure of mental
representation (Wundt,Titchner) and process or
acts(Bretano).
Only in recent times did psychology emerged as a new and
independent field of study. Cognitive psychology has its roots
in many different ideas and approaches. An early dialectic is
structuralism (Leahey,2003; Morawski ,2000) which seeks to
umderstand the structure of mind and its perception by
analyzing those perceptions into their constituent
components. Wilhem Wundt contributed to this field of
structuralism through the method of introspection.
Functionalism developed after the criticism of structuralism
which seeks to understand what people do and why they do
it . Functionalists believed in using methods that best
answered researcher’s questions lead to Pragmatism
(Knowledge is validated by its usefulness). William James was
leading contributor to the development of pragmatism.
There was an emergence of an integrative school of thought
named Associationism which examines how elements of the
mind like events or ideas can become associated with one
another in the mind to result in form of learning.
Associationism may result from: contiguity, similarity,
contrast. In late 1800’s Hermann Ebbinghaus first applied the
theories of associationism.

During the beginning of 1900’s Behaviorism replaced the

ideas of associationism. It focused on relationship between
observable behavior and environmental stimuli. Ivan pavlov
(1849-1936) studied involuntary learning behavior. Pavlov’s
landmark work paved the way for the development of
behaviorism. As of the failure of behaviorism it generally
studied overt responses to stimuli, it failed to account for
diversity of human behavior as in the case of language. They
missed topics which were profoundly related to human
psychology like attention, thinking and imagery. Of many
critics of behaviorism Gestalt was most avid. Gestalt
psychology states that we best understand psychological
phenomenon when we view them as organized, structured
and whole.

In the early 1950’s a movement named ‘cognitive revolution’

took place. Cognitivism is the belief that human behavior
should be understood in the way how people think. New
professional group were founded as psychologists rejected
the notions that mental processes cannot be studied as they
are unobservable. As cognitive psychology developed with
greater clarity it was plain that this branch of psychology was
different from that vogue during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Like
behaviorism it adopted precise quantitative analysis to study
how people learn and think; like gestalt it emphasizes
internal mental processes.

Areas of study in Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive Neuroscience: Only within the past few years have
cognitive psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists formed
a close working relationship. Thus far, this union has
produced some of the most provocative developments in the
study of our mental character. Cognitive psychologists are
seeking neurological explanations for their findings, and
neuroscientists are turning to cognitive psychologists to
explain observations made in their laboratories. Every part of
the cognitive process from sensation to memory is supported
by basic electrochemical processes taking place in the brain
) Perception: The branch of psychology directly involved with
the detection and interpretation of sensory stimuli is
perception. From experiments in perception, we have a good
understanding of the sensitivity of the human organism to
sensory signals and more important to cognitive psychology
of the way we interpret sensory signals. The experimental
study of perception has helped identify many of the parts of
this process. However, the study of perception alone does
not adequately account for the expected performance; other
cognitive systems are involved, including pattern recognition,
attention, consciousness, and memory
iii) Pattern Recognition: Environmental stimuli rarely are
perceived as single sensory events; they usually are
perceived as part of a more meaningful pattern. The things
we sense – see, hear, feel, taste, or smell—are almost always
part of a complex pattern of sensory stimuli. Think about the
problem of reading. Reading is a complex effort in which the
reader is required to form a meaningful pattern from an
otherwise meaningless array of lines and curves. By
organising the stimuli that make up letters and words, the
reader may then access meaning from his or her memory.
The entire process takes place in a fraction of a second, and
considering all the neuroanatomical and cognitive systems
involved, this feat – performed daily by all sorts of people – is
wondrous.
iv) Attention: Although we are information-gathering
creatures, it is evident that under normal circumstances we
are also highly selective in the amount and type of
information to which we attend. Our capacity to process
information seems to be limited to two levels – sensory and
cognitive. If too many sensory clues are imposed upon us at
any given time, we can become overloaded; if we try to
process too many events in memory, we can become
overloaded, which may cause a breakdown in performance.
All of us have felt the same way at one time or another.
v) Consciousness: Consciousness is defined as “the current
awareness, of external or internal circumstances.” Rejected
as being “unscientific” by the behaviourists, the word
consciousness and the concept it represents simply did not
fade away. For most people, consciousness and unconscious
thoughts (such as you might have on a first date) are very
real. For example, when you glance at your watch while
studying and it reads “10:42 (P.M.),” you are conscious, or,
aware, of that external signal. However, your reading of the
time also brings up another conscious thought, one that was
initially activated by reading the time but is from “inside.”
That conscious thought might be, “It’s getting late: I’d better
finish this chapter and go to bed”. Consciousness has gained
new respectability recently and now is a concept studied
seriously in modern cognitive psychology.
vi) Memory: Memory and perception work together. The
information available to us comes from our perception,
short-term memory, and long-term memory. Most obvious
long-term storage is the knowledge of the language. We
draw words from LTM and more or less use them correctly.
In a fleeting second, we are able to recall information about
an event of years before. Such information does not come
from an immediate perceptual experience; it is stored along
with a vast number of other facts in the LTM.
vii) Representation of Knowledge: Fundamental of all human
cognition is the representation of knowledge: how
information is symbolised and combined with the things
stored in the brain. This part of cognition has two aspects:
the conceptual representation of knowledge in mind and the
way the brain stores and process information. The
conceptual representation in different individuals can be
considerably different. In spite of these inherent
dissimilarities between representations of knowledge, most
humans do experience and depict experience in similar
enough ways to get along well in the world. The content of
this information is also hugely different. But our neurological
web entraps information and experiences and holds them in
structures that are similar in all human brains. 11
viii) Cognitive Psychology Imagery: Cognitive psychologists
are especially interested in the topic of internal
representations of knowledge. The mental images of the
environment are formed in the form of a cognitive map, a
type of internal representation of the juxtaposed buildings,
streets, street signs, spotlights, and so on. From the cognitive
maps, we are able to draw out significant cues. Although the
experimental study of mental imagery is relatively new to
psychology, some significant research has recently been
reported.
ix) Language: One form of knowledge shared by all human
societies is the knowledge of language. Language is the
principal means by which we acquire and express knowledge;
thus, the study of how language is used is a central concern
of cognitive psychology. Human language development
represents a unique kind of abstraction, which is basic to
cognition. Language processing is an important component of
information processing and storage. Language also influences
perception, a fundamental aspect of cognition.
x) Developmental Psychology: Developmental psychology is
another important area of cognitive psychology that has
been intensely studied. Recent studies and theories in
developmental cognitive psychology have greatly expanded
our understanding of how cognitive structures develop. As
adults, we have all lived through childhood and adolescence
and we share maturational experiences with all members of
our species.
xi) Thinking and Concept Formation: Thinking is the crown
jewel of cognition. Thinking is the process by which a new
mental representation is formed through the transformation
of information. Advances in cognitive psychology have led to
a formidable arsenal of research techniques and theoretical
models. An ability to think and form concepts is an important
aspect of cognition. Similar concepts help in the
understanding and processing of information. There is a
considerable body of knowledge about the laws and
processes of concept formation.
xii) Human and Artificial Intelligence: Human intelligence
includes the ability to acquire, recall, and use knowledge to
understand concrete and abstract concepts and the
relationships among objects and ideas, to understand a
language, to follow instructions, to convert verbal
descriptions into actions, and to behave according to the
rules, and to use knowledge in a meaningful way. The
specialty within the computer science called artificial
intelligence has had a major influence on the development of
cognitive science, especially since the design of programs
requires knowledge of how we process information.
Cognitive psychology also addresses to find out whether a
perfect robot can simulate human behaviour.