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What Is Cognitive Psychology?

What exactly is cognitive psychology? In short, cognitive psychology is the study of how we think, or the study of thought. Since thoughts serve many different purposes, cognitive psychology has many different subbranches that we will examine throughout this course. As we move through these different subbranches, we will begin to understand how the human mind works in relation to concepts such as memory, attention, language, and decision making.

Because the field of cognitive psychology is experimental in nature, it is important to understand research methods used by cognitive psychologists. An understanding of the scientific method is foundational to understanding experimental research on cognition. As you learned in earlier coursework, the scientific method is a procedure for testing hypotheses, gathering data, and forming theories. It is a procedure used throughout science to ensure that problems are examined in an organized way. Following the scientific method allows cognitive psychologists the opportunity to use many different types of experimental designs and different research methods. This week, you will learn about the different types of experimental design that exist in cognitive psychology. Understanding these ideas will help you evaluate and interpret research within the field of cognitive psychology. It will also help you develop your own research for future education and career purposes.

The field of cognitive psychology began to develop in the 1950s. It grew out of a desire to understand mentalistic processes, or human thought processes, that occur when we pay attention, make decisions, and so on. Before the study of cognitive psychology existed, the field of psychology was dominated by behaviorism, or the study of observable behavior. While behaviorism can tell us many things about where behavior comes from, it does not necessarily address what goes on inside people’s heads as they are performing that behavior. Grown from a desire to understand the cognitive processes driving human behavior, cognitive psychology offered psychologists the opportunity to bring the study of the mind back into experimental psychology by incorporating information from different disciplines, including neuroscience, linguistics, and computer science (Miller, 2003).

Early approaches to cognitive psychology looked at cognition and mental activity occurring similarly to the way that computers function. Early cognitive psychologists thought of humans as symbol processors that follow rules. For example, in language, the words would be like symbols and the syntax of the language would serve as the rule for how to use those symbols (Glenberg et al., 2013). However, more recently, cognitive psychologists have become more interested in the concept of embodied cognition. In embodied cognition, our cognitive thoughts and the body are connected. Glenberg et al. (2013) describe embodied cognition as thinking influenced by interactions between the body, the brain, and the environment. They also suggest that cognition exists to guide action and that our perceptions are influenced by what we intend to do (Glenberg et al., 2013). For example, Sugovic and Witt (2013) found that older adults perceive distances as being farther away, especially when the walking surface is more difficult (e.g., a carpeted walkway vs. a plastic walkway). The results of this experiment illustrate how perception (a cognitive process) is influenced by our body and our environment. When our body is older and we have a more difficult time walking on a slippery surface, we perceive distance as being greater than it actually is. This research and view of cognitive psychology are important because they help us understand that our cognitive processes do not work like a computer and that human cognition is not a simple and consistent process of manipulating symbols and navigating specific rules. Rather, cognition is affected by our bodies and our intended actions.

Current research in the field of cognitive psychology encompasses a wide variety of topics, including artificial intelligence, language acquisition, eyewitness testimony, and motivation. Despite the diversity of these areas, the field of cognitive psychology is unified by several underlying ideas. At the heart of many of these ideas is that cognitive processes and cognition, in general, is a field of study that seeks to incorporate many different ideas to increase understanding. For example, eyewitness testimony can be understood by looking at biological changes as well as behavioral measures. This allows psychologists to incorporate several types of information to make good predictions about how behavior will occur (Sternberg & Sternberg, 2016). As a result, throughout the course, you will see that a construct (or idea) is studied using a variety of methods. Additionally, you will see that cognitive psychology can be applied to many different real-world scenarios and problems.

As you begin your study of cognitive psychology, it is a good idea to examine your own ideas and thoughts on the subject. For example, do you see it as a field that primarily examines brain function or a field that uses computers to generate models of brain function? Do you believe that you have control over your cognition? How do you think your brain or your body influences your cognition? Do you believe that all of your cognition is conscious? Many diverse influences affect one’s biases. These can include family, friends, peers, social media, education, and information we read about, to name a few. Recognizing the ideas you have about the field can help you eliminate any bias you might have toward the course concepts. It can also help you find ways to organize and learn new information. By using your own introspection (a term you will soon learn more about), you can begin to appreciate what you already know and what you can potentially learn through the study of cognitive psychology and cognitive processes.

References

Glenberg, A. M., Witt, J. K., & Metcalfe, J. (2013). From the revolution to embodiment: 25 years of cognitive psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(5), 573–585.

Miller, G. A. (2003). The cognitive revolution: A historical perspective. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 141–144.

Sternberg, R. J., & Sternberg, K. (2016). Cognitive psychology (7th ed.). Wadsworth.

Sugovic, M., & Witt, J. K. (2013). An older view on distance perception: Older adults perceive walkable extents as farther. Experimental Brain Research, 226(3), 383–391.