Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive psychology is the study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and
think about information. A cognitive psychologist might study how people perceive
various shapes, why they remember some facts but forget others, or how they learn
language.

The term "cognition" refers to 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... (Ulric Neisser, 1967)
 Philosophical Antecedents
Historians of psychology usually trace the earliest roots of psychology to two approaches to
understanding the human mind:
• Philosophy seeks to understand the general nature of many aspects of the world,
in part through introspection, the examination of inner ideas and experiences
(from intro-, “inward, within,” and -spect, “look”);

• Physiology seeks a scientific study of life-sustaining functions in living matter,

primarily through empirical (observation-based) methods.

Two Greek philosophers, Plato (ca. 428–348 B.C.) and his student Aristotle (384–322 B.C.),
have profoundly affected modern thinking in psychology and many other fields. Plato and
Aristotle disagreed regarding how to investigate ideas.
 Philosophical Antecedents
Plato was a rationalist. A rationalist believes that the route to knowledge is through
thinking and logical analysis. That is, a rationalist does not need any experiments to
develop new knowledge. A rationalist who is interested in cognitive processes would appeal
to reason as a source of knowledge or justification.

Aristotle (a naturalist and biologist as well as a philosopher) was an empiricist. An empiricist

believes that we acquire knowledge via empirical evidence—that is, we obtain evidence
through experience and observation. In order to explore how the human mind works,
empiricists would design experiments and conduct studies in which they could observe the
behavior and processes of interest to them. Empiricism therefore leads directly to empirical
investigations of psychology.
 Philosophical Antecedents
In contrast, rationalism is important in theory development. Rationalist
theories without any connection to observations gained through empiricist
methods may not be valid; but mountains of observational data without an
organizing theoretical framework may not be meaningful. We might see the
rationalist view of the world as a thesis and the empirical view as an antithesis.
Most psychologists today seek a synthesis of the two. They base empirical
observations on theory in order to explain what they have observed in their
experiments. In turn, they use these observations to revise their theories when
they find that the theories cannot account for their real-world observations.
The contrasting ideas of rationalism and empiricism became prominent with the French
rationalist René Descartes (1596–1650) and the British empiricist John Locke (1632–1704).
Descartes viewed the introspective, reflective method as being superior to empirical
methods for finding truth. He maintained that the only proof of his existence is that he was
thinking and doubting. Descartes felt that one could not rely on one’s senses because those
very senses have often proven to be deceptive (think of optical illusions, for example).
Locke, in contrast, had more enthusiasm for empirical observation (Leahey, 2003). Locke
believed that humans are born without knowledge and therefore must seek knowledge
through empirical observation. For Locke, then, the study of learning was the key to
understanding the human mind. He believed that there are no innate ideas.

In the eighteenth century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) dialectically

synthesized the views of Descartes and Locke, arguing that both rationalism and empiricism
have their place. Both must work together in the quest for truth. Most psychologists today
accept Kant’s synthesis.
 Psychological Antecedents of
Cognitive Psychology
The approaches that will be examined include early approaches such as structuralism and
functionalism, followed by a discussion of associationism, behaviorism, and Gestalt
psychology.

Understanding the Structure of the Mind: Structuralism

An early dialectic in the history of psychology is that between structuralism and
functionalism (Leahey, 2003; Morawski, 2000). Structuralism was the first major school of
thought in psychology. Structuralism seeks to understand the structure (configuration of
elements) of the mind and its perceptions by analyzing those perceptions into their
constituent components (affection, attention, memory, sensation, etc.)
Consider, for example, the perception of a flower. Structuralists would analyze
this perception in terms of its constituent colors, geometric forms, size
relations, and so on.
In terms of the human mind, structuralists sought to deconstruct the mind
into its elementary components; they were also interested in how those
elementary components work together to create the mind.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) was a German psychologist whose ideas

contributed to the development of structuralism. Wundt is often viewed as
the founder of structuralism in psychology (Structuralism, 2009).Wundt used
a variety of methods in his research. One of these methods was introspection.
Introspection is a deliberate looking inward at pieces of information passing
through consciousness. The aim of introspection is to look at the elementary
components of an object or process.
 Psychological Antecedents of
Cognitive Psychology
The introduction of introspection as an experimental method was an important change in
the field because the main emphasis in the study of the mind shifted from a rationalist
approach to the empiricist approach of trying to observe behavior in order to draw
conclusions about the subject of study.
The method of introspection has some challenges associated with it.
• First, people may not always be able to say exactly what goes through their mind or may
not be able to put it into adequate words.
• Second, what they say may not be accurate.
• Third, the fact that people are asked to pay attention to their thoughts or to speak out
loud while they are working on a task may itself alter the processes that are going on.
 Psychological Antecedents of
Cognitive Psychology
Wundt had many followers. One was an American student, Edward Titchener (1867–1927).
Titchener (1910) is sometimes viewed as the first full-fledged structuralist.

In any case, he certainly helped bring structuralism to the United States. His experiments
relied solely on the use of introspection, exploring psychology from the vantage point of the
experiencing individual. Other early psychologists criticized both the method (introspection)
and the focus (elementary structures of sensation) of structuralism. These critiques gave rise
to a new movement—functionalism.
 Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive
Psychology
Functionalism suggested that psychologists should focus on the processes of thought rather
than on its contents.
Functionalism seeks to understand what people do and why they do it. This principal
question about processes was in contrast to that of the structuralists, who had asked what
the elementary contents (structures) of the human mind are. Functionalists held that the key
to understanding the human mind and behavior was to study the processes of how and why
the mind works as it does, rather than to study the structural contents and elements of the
mind. They were particularly interested in the practical applications of their research.
Pragmatists are concerned not only with knowing what people do; they also want to know
what we can do with our knowledge of what people do. For example, pragmatists believe in
the importance of the psychology of learning and memory. Why? Because it can help us
improve the performance of children in school. It can also help us learn to remember the
names of people we meet.
 Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive
Psychology
A leader in guiding functionalism toward pragmatism was William James (1842–1910). His
chief functional contribution to the field of psychology was a single book: his landmark
Principles of Psychology (1890/1970). Even today, cognitive psychologists frequently point to
the writings of

James in discussions of core topics in the field, such as attention, consciousness, and
perception. John Dewey (1859–1952) was another early pragmatist who profoundly
influenced contemporary thinking in cognitive psychology. Dewey is remembered primarily
for his pragmatic (dealing with problem in a practical way, rather than by ideas or principles)
approach to thinking and schooling.

Although functionalists were interested in how people learn, they did not really specify a
mechanism by which learning takes place. This task was taken up by an other group,
Associationists.
 Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive
Psychology
Associationism:
Associationism examines how elements of the mind, like events or ideas, can become
associated with one another in the mind to result in a form of learning. For example,
associations may result from:
• contiguity (associating things that tend to occur together at about the same
time);
• similarity (associating things with similar features or properties); or
• contrast (associating things that show polarities, such as hot/cold, light/dark, day/
night).
 Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive
Psychology
Associationist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) was the first experimenter to apply associationist
principles systematically. Specifically, Ebbinghaus studied his own mental processes. He made up lists
of nonsense syllables that consisted of a consonant and a vowel followed by another consonant (e.g.,
zax). He then took careful note of how long it took him to memorize those lists. He counted his errors
and recorded his response times. Through his self-observations, Ebbinghaus studied how people
learn and remember material through rehearsal, the conscious repetition of material to be learned
(Figure 1.2). Among other things, he found that frequent repetition can fix mental associations more
firmly in memory. Thus, repetition aids in learning
Another influential associationist, Edward Lee Thorndike (1874–1949), held that the role of
“satisfaction” is the key to forming associations. Thorndike termed this principle the law of effect
(1905): A stimulus will tend to produce a certain response over time if an organism is rewarded for
that response. Thorndike believed that an organism learns to respond in a given way (the effect) in a
given situation if it is rewarded repeatedly for doing so (the satisfaction, which serves as a stimulus to
future actions). Thus, a child given treats for solving arithmetic problems learns to solve arithmetic
problems accurately because the child forms associations between valid solutions and treats. These
ideas were the predecessors of the development of behaviorism.
 From Associationism to Behaviorism
Other researchers who were contemporaries of Thorndike used animal experiments to
probe stimulus–response relationships in ways that differed from those of Thorndike and his
fellow associationists. These researchers straddled the line between associationism and the
emerging field of behaviorism.
Behaviorism focuses only on the relation between observable behavior and environmental
events or stimuli. The idea was to make physical whatever others might have called “mental”
(Lycan, 2003). Some of these researchers, like Thorndike and other associationists, studied
responses that were voluntary (although perhaps lacking any conscious thought, as
in Thorndike’s work). Other researchers studied responses that were involuntarily
triggered in response to what appear to be unrelated external events.
 From Associationism to Behaviorism
Nobel Prize–winning physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) studied involuntary learning
behavior of this sort.
Classically conditioned learning
Pavlov’s landmark work paved the way for the development of behaviorism. His ideas were
made known in the United States especially through the work of John B. Watson.
Classical conditioning involves more than just an association based on temporal contiguity
(e.g., the food and the conditioned stimulus occurring at about the same time. Effective
conditioning requires contingency (e.g., the presentation of food being contingent on the
presentation of the conditioned stimulus; Rescorla & Wagner, 1972; Wagner & Rescorla,
1972). Contingencies in the form of reward and punishment are still used today, for example,
in the treatment of substance abuse.
 Proponents of Behaviorism
The “father” of radical behaviorism is John Watson (1878–1958). Watson had no use for
internal mental contents or mechanisms. He believed that psychologists should concentrate
only on the study of observable behavior.
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), a radical behaviorist, believed that virtually all forms of human
behavior, not just learning, could be explained by behavior emitted in reaction to the
environment. He rejected mental mechanisms. He believed instead that operant
conditioning—involving the strengthening or weakening of behavior, contingent on the
presence or absence of reinforcement (rewards) or punishments—could explain all forms of
human behavior.
 Criticisms of Behaviorism
• First, although it seemed to work well to account for certain kinds of learning,
behaviorism did not account as well for complex mental activities such as language
learning and problem solving.
• Second, more than understanding people’s behavior, some psychologists wanted to know
what went on inside the head.
• Third, it often proved easier to use the techniques of behaviorism in studying nonhuman
animals than in studying human ones.
• Some psychologists rejected radical behaviorism. They were curious about the contents of
the mysterious black box. Behaviorists regarded the mind as a black box that is best
understood in terms of its input and output, but whose internal processes cannot be
accurately described because they are not observable.
 Criticisms of Behaviorism
• First, although it seemed to work well to account for certain kinds of learning,
behaviorism did not account as well for complex mental activities such as language
learning and problem solving.
• Second, more than understanding people’s behavior, some psychologists wanted to know
what went on inside the head.
• Third, it often proved easier to use the techniques of behaviorism in studying nonhuman
animals than in studying human ones.
• Some psychologists rejected radical behaviorism. They were curious about the contents of
the mysterious black box. Behaviorists regarded the mind as a black box that is best
understood in terms of its input and output, but whose internal processes cannot be
accurately described because they are not observable.
 Gestalt Psychology
The school of Gestalt psychology began in 1911 in Frankfurt, Germany, at a
meeting of three psychologists: (Murray, 1988).
As the name Gestalt (a German word that loosely translates to “configuration”
or “shape”) suggests, these psychologists’ central assumption was that
psychological phenomena could not be reduced to simple elements but rather
had to be analyzed and studied in their entirely.
Gestalt psychologists, who studied mainly perception and problem solving,
believed an observer did not construct a coherent perception from simple,
elementary sensory aspects of an experience but instead apprehended the
total structure of an experience as a whole.
Gestalt Psychology
 Gestalt Psychology
They believed that the mind imposes its own structure and organization on stimuli and, in
particular, organizes perceptions into wholes rather than discrete parts. These wholes tend
to simplify stimuli. Thus, when we hear a melody, we experience not a collection of
individual sounds but larger, more organized units: melodic lines.
 Emergence of Cognitive Psychology
In the early 1950s, a movement called the “cognitive revolution” took place in response to
behaviorism.
Cognitivism is the belief that much of human behavior can be understood in terms of how
people think. It rejects the notion that psychologists should avoid studying mental processes
because they are unobservable.
it adopts precise quantitative analysis to study how people learn and think; like Gestaltism, it
emphasizes internal mental processes.
 Psychobiology
Psychobiological is the study the relationship between cognitive performance and cerebral
events and structures.
These techniques generally fall into three categories:
• techniques for studying an individual’s brain postmortem (after the death of an
individual), relating the individual’s cognitive function prior to death to observable features
of the brain;
• techniques for studying images showing structures of or activities in the brain of an
individual who is known to have a particular cognitive deficit;
• techniques for obtaining information about cerebral processes during the normal
performance of a cognitive activity.
 Early Role of Psychobiology
- Watson’s former students, Karl Spencer Lashley (1890–1958), brashly challenged the
behaviorist view that the human brain is a passive organ merely responding to
environmental contingencies outside the individual.
Instead, Lashley considered the brain to be an active, dynamic organizer of behavior. Lashley
sought to understand how the macro-organization of the human brain made possible such
complex, planned activities as musical performance, game playing, and using language.
- Donald Hebb (1949) proposed the concept of cell assemblies as the basis for learning in the
brain.
Cell assemblies are coordinated neural structures that develop through frequent
stimulation. They develop over time as the ability of one neuron (nerve cell) to stimulate
firing in a connected neuron increases.
 Early Role of Psychobiology
In fact, behaviorist B. F. Skinner (1957) wrote an entire book describing how language
acquisition and usage could be explained purely in terms of environmental contingencies.
Linguist Noam Chomsky (1959) wrote a scathing review of Skinner’s ideas.
Chomsky stressed both the biological basis and the creative potential of language. He
pointed out the infinite numbers of sentences we can produce with ease. He thereby defied
behaviorist notions that we learn language by reinforcement.
Even young children continually are producing novel sentences for which they could not
have been reinforced in the past.
 Add a Dash of Technology: Engineering, Computation, and Applied
Cognitive Psychology
By the end of the 1950s, some psychologists were intrigued by the pursuading notion that
machines could be programmed to demonstrate the intelligent processing of information.
Turing (1950) suggested that soon it would be hard to distinguish the communication of
machines from that of humans.
He suggested a test, now called the “Turing test,” by which a computer program would be
judged as successful to the extent that its output was indistinguishable, by humans, from the
output of humans (Cummins & Cummins, 2000).
In other words, suppose you communicated with a computer and you could not tell that it
was a computer.
 Add a Dash of Technology: Engineering, Computation, and Applied
Cognitive Psychology
By 1956 a new phrase had entered our vocabulary. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the attempt
by humans to construct systems that show intelligence and, particularly, the intelligent
processing of information (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 2003). Chess-playing
programs, which now can beat most humans, are examples of artificial intelligence.

Many of the early cognitive psychologists became interested in cognitive psychology through
applied problems.
For example, During World War II, many cognitive psychologists, including one of the senior
author’s advisors, Wendell Garner, consulted with the military in solving practical problems
of aviation and other fields that arose out of warfare against enemy forces. Information
theory, which sought to understand people’s behavior in terms of how they process the
kinds of bits of information processed by computers (Shannon & Weaver, 1963), also grew
out of problems in
 Add a Dash of Technology: Engineering, Computation, and Applied
Cognitive Psychology
Applied cognitive psychology also has had great use in advertising.
John Watson became an extremely successful executive in an advertising firm and applied
his knowledge of psychology to reach his success.
Indeed, much of advertising has directly used principles from cognitive psychology to attract
customers to product.
Early cognitivists argued that traditional behaviorist accounts of behavior were inadequate
precisely because they said nothing about how people think.
One of the most famous early articles in cognitive psychology was, oddly enough, on “the
magic number seven.”
George Miller (1956) noted that the number seven appeared in many different places in
cognitive psychology, such as in the literature on perception and memory, and he wondered
whether there was some hidden meaning in its frequent reappearance.
For example, he found that most people can remember about seven items of information. In
this work, Miller also introduced the concept of channel capacity, the upper limit with which
an observer can match a response to information given to him or her.
 Add a Dash of Technology: Engineering, Computation, and Applied
Cognitive Psychology
In the 1970s, Jerry Fodor (1973) popularized the concept of the modularity of mind. He
argued that the mind has distinct modules, or special-purpose systems, to deal with
linguistic and, possibly, other kinds of information.
Modularity implies that the processes that are used in one domain of processing, such as the
linguistic (Fodor, 1973) or the perceptual domain (Marr, 1982), operate independently of
processes in other domains.
Modular approaches are useful in studying some cognitive phenomena, such as language,
but have proven less useful in studying other phenomena, such as intelligence, which seems
to draw upon many different areas of the brain in complex interrelationships.
Curiously, the idea of the mind as modular goes back at least to phrenologist Franz-Joseph
Gall (see Boring, 1950), who in the late eighteenth century believed that the pattern of
bumps and swells on the skull was directly associated with one’s pattern of cognitive skills.
 Different Approaches
The Information-Processing Approach:
- The information-processing approach dominated cognitive psychology in the 1960s and
1970s and remains strong and influential today (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968).
- draws an analogy between human cognition and computerized processing of information.
Central to the information-processing approach is the idea that cognition can be thought of as
information (what we see, hear, read about, think about) passing through a system (us or,
more specifically, our minds).
- information is processed (received, stored, recoded, transformed, retrieved, and
transmitted) in stages and that it is stored in specific places while being processed
- people’s cognitive abilities can be thought of as “systems” of interrelated capacities.
- We know different individuals have different cognitive capacities—different attention
spans, memory capacities, and language skills, to name a few.
- Information-processing theorists try to find the relationships between these capacities, to
explain how individuals go about performing specific cognitive tasks
 Different Approaches
The Information-Processing Approach:
Information-processing theorists assume that people, like computers, are general-purpose
symbol manipulators.
In other words, people, like computers, can perform astonishing cognitive feats by applying
only a few mental operations to symbols (such as letters, numbers, propositions, or scenes).
Information is then stored symbolically, and the way it is coded and stored greatly affects how
easy it is to use it later (as when we want to recall information or manipulate it in some way).
Various memory stores where information is held for possible later use and the different
processes that operate on the information at different points or that transfer it from store to
store.
Certain processes, such as detection and recognition, are used at the beginning of
information processing; others, such as recoding or retrieval, have to do with memory
storage; still others, such as reasoning or concept formation, have to do with putting
information together in new ways.
 Different Approaches
The Connectionist Approach
Alternatives to the information-processing approach that could explain cognition.
The framework they established is known as connectionism (sometimes also called parallel-
distributed processing, or PDP). I
Models depicting cognition as a network of connections among simple (and usually
numerous) processing units (McClelland, 1988).
Because these units are sometimes compared to neurons - the cells that transmit electrical
impulses and underlie all sensation and muscle movement, connectionist models are
sometimes called neural networks.
 Different Approaches
The Connectionist Approach
 Each unit is connected to other units in a large network.
 Each unit has some level of activation at any particular moment in time.
 The exact level of activation depends on the input to that unit from both the environment
and other units to which it is connected.
 Connections between two units have weights, which can be positive or negative.
 A positively weighted connection causes one unit to excite, or raise the level of activation
of units to which it is connected; a negatively weighted connection has the opposite effect,
inhibiting or lowering the activation of connected units.
 Different Approaches
The Connectionist Approach

One major difference between the information-processing and the connectionist approaches
is the manner in which cognitive processes are assumed to occur.
In information-processing models, cognition is typically assumed to occur serially—that is, in
discrete stages (first one process occurs, feeding information into the next process, which
feeds information into the next process, and so on).
In contrast, most (but not all) connectionist models assume that cognitive processes occur in
parallel, many at the same time.
 Different Approaches
The Evolutionary Approach

Evolutionary psychologist Leda Cosmides (1989) notes that the environments our ancestors
experienced were not simply physical, but ecological and social as well.

The idea here is that humans have specialized areas of competence produced by our
evolutionary heritage. Cosmides and Tooby (2002) argue that people have “a large and
heterogeneous set of evolved, reliably developing, dedicated problem-solving programs, each
of which is specialized to solve a particular domain or class of adaptive problems (e.g.,
grammar acquisition, mate acquisition, food aversion, way finding).” In other words, people
have special-purpose mechanisms (including cognitive mechanisms) specific to a certain
context or class of problems.
Cosmides and Tooby (2000, 2002) believe that some of the most significant issues our
ancestors faced involved social issues, such as creating and enforcing social contracts. To do
this, people must be especially good at reasoning about costs and benefits, and be able to
detect cheating in a social exchange. Therefore, evolutionary psychologists predict that
people’s reasoning will be especially enhanced when they are reasoning
 Different Approaches
The Evolutionary Approach
In general, evolutionary psychologists believe we understand a system best if we understand
the evolutionary pressures on our ancestors.
 Different Approaches
The Ecological Approach

A fourth major approach to the study of cognition comes from both psychologists and
anthropologists, and overlaps much more with the evolutionary approach than it does with
either the information-processing or connectionist approach.
The central tenet of this approach is that cognition does not occur in isolation from larger
cultural contexts; all cognitive activities are shaped by the culture and by the context in which
they occur.
Jean Lave, a current theorist in this tradition, has conducted some fascinating work that
illustrates the ecological approach.
Lave (1988) described the results of the Adult Math Project as “an observational and
experimental investigation of everyday arithmetic practices” (p. 1). Lave, Murtaugh, and de la
Rocha (1984) studied how people used arithmetic in their everyday lives.
 Different Approaches
The Ecological Approach

A major proponent of this viewpoint was J. J. Gibson, whose work on perception.

Ulric Neisser, a friend and colleague of Gibson, wrote a book in 1976 aimed at redirecting the
field of psychology toward studying more “realistic” cognitive phenomena.

We can see the influences of both the functionalist and the Gestalt schools on the ecological
approach. The functionalists focused on the purposes served by cognitive processes, certainly
an ecological question. Gestalt psychology’s emphasis on the context surrounding any
experience is likewise compatible with the ecological approach. The ecological approach
would deny the usefulness (and perhaps even the possibility) of studying cognitive
phenomena in artificial circumstances divorced from larger contexts. Thus this tradition relies
less on laboratory experiments or computer simulations and more on naturalistic observation
and field studies to explore cognition
 Conclusion
Each of these four paradigms makes an important contribution to cognitive psychology, and in
some ways the four offer complementary perspectives on how the underlying principles of
cognition ought to be investigated and understood.
The information-processing paradigm, for example, focuses researchers on the functional
aspects of cognition—what kinds of processes are used toward what ends.
The connectionist approach, in contrast, focuses on the underlying “hardware”—how the
global cognitive processes described by an information-processing model are implemented in
the human brain.
The evolutionary approach centers on questions of how a cognitive system or function has
evolved over generations.
The ecological approach stresses the need to consider the context of any cognitive process to
understand more completely how that process functions in the real world.