Psychology is the study of mind, emotion and behaviour

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Cognitive Psychology

Essay By Susan Zhuang

Introduction to Psychology

  Psychology is defined as the study of mind, emotion and behaviour. One major perspective within psychology is known as cognitive psychology, which is primarily concerned with the explanation of thought processes through the development of theoretical mental systems. Cognitivism is somewhat broad in it’s approaches to psychology and only linked in it’s goal to create hypothetical mental structures to explain behaviour (“History & Scope Of Psychology”).

 

  The exact origins of cognitivism are difficult to pinpoint. Ideas that make up the perspective have been traced back to ancient Greece; however it is in modern times that it has developed to it’s prominent status of today. This period of time is referred to as the “cognitive revolution” of the 1960’s, lead by the work of those such as Piaget and Chomsky. Prior to this revolution, behaviourism (the study of cause and effect; environmental factors and their effect upon behaviour) was considered to be the dominant school of thought in psychology; however cognitivism soon emerged as the new dominant perspective. (“The History & Scope of Psychology”). It was in the 1967 publication of Cognitive Psychology by Neisser that a name was coined for the rising field of psychological science, and an outline of major research-to-date and significant concepts was offered. (Maclin & Solso, 2000)

  The goals of cognitivism are to attempt to understand the way in which the many processes of our minds work, through use of the scientific research method. It emphasises the importance of the mind in behaviour, something was virtually disregarded in perspectives such as behaviourism. Focus is placed upon thinking, memory, perception, attention, pattern recognition, consciousness, decision-making, language and attention. It aims to understand the mental accompaniment of everyday perceptions and actions (Barber, 1988). By devising mental structures of mental functions and the way in which information is processed, it could then be possible to explain observable behaviour.  

   

  The most significant concept of cognitivism is the computer or information processor metaphor. It underlies the majority of theoretical and empirical research in the field (Frensch, 2001). This analogy related the mind to a computer with sequences of computational processes. A Mathematical Theory of Communication was an influential paper written by Claude Shannon (published in 1948) which first presented the idea that to be communicated; information had to travel via signals through a sequence of stages and transformations. Such theories gave a substantially more complicated view of human behaviour, especially in comparison to simpler stimulus-response theories formed in behaviourism, by adding the important dimension of the mind. This concept gave a mechanical view of the human mind and behaviour, implying that the brain works similarly to piece of computer software programmed to perform pre-defined functions.

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  Cognitivism also introduced the concept of an intervening process between stimuli and responses, and that associative relations were not as significant in learning as the learning of concepts and categories (Bruner, Goodnow & Austin, 1956). It was further stated that stimulus value can actually assessed by the brain. This was shown in experiments by Kamin (1969) who found that rats noticed and were conditioned to anticipate an electric shock from a certain cue, however in other experiments chose to ignore a different cue. Other concepts in cognitivism tend to be extremely specific, especially in comparison to the information ...

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