20 August 1955 University – Skikda

English Department
3rd year
Cognitive Psychology
Miss Laiche Sara
Introduction of Cognitive Psychology
1.1 Definition

Cognitive psychology is a relatively branch of psychology where it has quickly grown to become
one of the most popular subfields. The subfield of psychology is a relatively modern approach to human
behaviour that studies mental processes including how people think, perceive, remember, and learn. It is
also related to other disciplines including neuroscience, philosophy, and linguistics.

The core focus of cognitive psychology is on how people acquire, process, and store information.
There are numerous practical applications for cognitive research, such as improving memory, increase
probability of decision-making accuracy, and structuring educational curricula to enhance learning.

Cognition encompasses the act of processing knowledge. For example, if you are reading a web
based article and you come to find an underlined blue coloured text, you will reasonably think it a “link”.

1.2 General View

Between 1950 and 1970, the wave of change and focus shift against behavioural psychology to
topics such as attention, memory, and problem solving. The term “cognitive psychology” was first used in
1967 by American psychologist Ulric Neisser in his book named Cognitive Psychology. According to
Neisser, cognitive involves “all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated,
stored, recovered, and used”. It is concerned with these processes even when they operate in the absence
of relevant stimulation, as in images and hallucinations…,Given such a sweeping definition, it is apparent
that cognitive is involved in everything a human being might possibly do; that every psychological
phenomenon is a cognitive phenomenon.”

The cognitive approach began to revolutionize psychology in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, to
become the dominant approach in psychology by late 1970’s. Studied in mental processes had been
gradually restored through the work of Piaget and Tolman. The cognitive psychology became of great
importance and the acceptance of this field was spurred by dissatisfaction with the behavioural approach
in its simple emphasis on external behaviour rather than internal processes, the development of better
experimental methods, and the development of the computer.

1
2. What is cognitive psychology?

As mentioned in the introduction of the topic, the term cognitive psychology came into use with the
publication of the book Cognitive Psychology by UlricNeisser in 1967. Cognitive science is the
interdisciplinary study of mind, intelligence, embracing philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence,
neuroscience, linguistics, and anthropology. It was began with researchers develop theories of mind based
on complex representations and computational procedures in mid of 1950s. Cognitive psychology is the
scientific study of the human mind with the objective to know and understand of human reaction and
behaviour. In the other words, behaviour is the reflexion of mental processes. Cognitive (meaning
“knowing”) psychologists attempt to create rules and explanations of human behaviour and eventually
generalise them to everyone’s behaviour.

According to Willington (2007, p.35), cognitive psychology is a study of the processes in

Back to earlier day, K.S. Lashley (1930), who was a student of Watson’s, challenges behaviourism
as being inadequate to explain cognitive function. He studies point out that behavioural explanations fall
short in explaining the interconnectivity of different parts of the brain in cognitive functions. Lashley’s
objections led others in the fields of psychology to question the limitations of the traditional behavioural
approach.

Watson’s student named Donald Hebb (1949) proposes that the cognitive functions of the brain are
like electrical hardware, which is an analogy to a computer (Willingham, 2007). Willingham (2007,
p.412) explains that one of the most significant was Norm Chomsky’s disagreement with Skinner’s
behaviourist theory refers to language. Skinner believed children’s acquisition of language could be
explained by classical conditioning, however Chomsky pointed out that language could be generated or
changed by each individual which meant that the mind creates language not controlled by certain form.
This challenge was significant in establishing cognitive psychology as a science.

Willingham (2007, p.153) agreed to George A. Miller’s 1956 writing on the magical number seven
as a milestone for cognitive psychology. Miller’s study of memory was showing the ability of the brain to
retain information. This work in primary memory is an abstract construct. An abstract is difficult for
behaviourists because an abstract is a function of though and therefore it is unobservable. Willington
(2007) says that the computer was a new metaphor for cognitive scientists because the computer interprets
information from symbols just as the human brain does.
2
 Willington (2007) explains cognitive psychology has the goal to explain that behaviourism the
reflexion of mental processes. In this way, cognitive science is not a break from behavioural observation
but rather an extension of behavioural psychology. The invention of the computer is the perfect way to
show the importance of thought in behaviour. Using the computer as an analogy of the human brain was a
breakthrough for cognitive psychologists. The metaphor of the computer being like the brain led to the
information-processing model. This model shows that the human brain processes information just as a
computer and does so in stages as a computer. This model helps to a much deeper understanding of
behaviour.

According to Willington (2007, p.49) the most important function of the brain that is useful for
cognitive psychologists is the aspect of localization, which means a particular part of the brain for a
particular function. When a part of the brain is identifiable as having relation to a certain function of
thought processing the area can be manipulated to show why a particular though occurs and what causes a
change in that processing.

3. Conclusion.

There are a few basic assumptions that come with cognitive psychology. First off, it is a pure
science based on mostly laboratory experiments. This is a form of deductive reasoning. Another basic
assumption is that behaviour can be explained for the most part by how the mind operates and process
information. The brain is also similar to a computer in its functions. The brain inputs, stores, and retrieves
data much the same way a computer does. The other basic assumption is that mediational processes occur
between the stimulus and the response to the stimulus.

One of the reasons the cognitive perspective has become so popular is because it can be applied to
so many fields in psychology. This includes gender role development, eyewitness testimony, memory,
attention, child development, therapy, problem solving, and moral development.