Cognitive Psychology Definition Paper Essays - Psychology, Cognition

Cognitive Psychology Definition Paper Essays - Psychology, Cognition Cognitive Psychology Definition Paper April Barthel PSY360 October 31, 2016 Gerald Thauberger Cognitive Psychology Definition Paper What exactly is co gnitive psychology? Defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary , "a branch of psychology concerned with mental processes (as perception, thinking, learning, and memory) especially with respect to the internal events occurring between sensory stimulation and the overt expression of behaviorcompare " CITATION Edind \l 1033 (Editors, Merriam-Webster, n.d.) Cognitive psychology covers a broad range of topics like our thinking, attention, memory, language, our ability to be creative, and to solve problems. How we perceive things and ho w we think and reason are all part of the cognitive process. Cognitive psychology explores how the mind works, and also what establishes the mind. This eventually is how cognitive theory formed. A t least four key milestones that contributed to the development of cognitive psychology as a discipline are the fall in behaviorism, the information processing model and computer metaphor , artificial intelligence and neuroscience. Another important factor in Cognitive Psychology is behavioral observation. Each of these factors contributed to and formed what we know of today as cognitive psychology. The Fir st milestone that contributed to the development of cognitive psychology as a discipline is the fall of behaviorism. " There was great d issatisfaction with the behaviorist approach in its simple emphasis on external behavior rather than internal processes. " CITATION McL07 \l 1033 (McLeod, Cognitive Psychology, 2007) The cognitive approach gave people an insight into the why' aspect of different behaviors, whereas the behaviorist approach only looked as the external aspects. Behaviorism focused mostly on the observational aspect of psychology. CITATION SanND \l 1033 (San Diego Figure Skating Communications, N.D.) The behaviorist did not want to accept or come to terms with the internal part of the human mind. They also tested animals with no regards to finding out if there would be a different outcome with humans. Behavioral psychologist felt that a behavior is learned. An example of this would be Ivan Pavlov, teaching the dog to salivate when hearing the sound of a bell ringing. CITATION McL071 \l 1033 (McLeod, Pavlov's Dogs, 2007) He proved that a dog could be conditioned to learn to do things such as associate a bell with food which, in turn caused them to salivate more at the sound of a bell. The problem with this is that they did not ask the million-dollar question, Why?". With cognitive psychology, takes an internal look into the mind, not just of animals but humans also, to find out why they behave as they do. Cognitive psychologists use experiments to internally investigate the human psyche. Instead of looking at the external aspect of the behaviors, they take a more in-depth look at what happens between the input and output of the mediational process. The second milestone that contributed to the development of cognitive psychology as a discipline is t he information processing model and computer metaphor. "Thecomputergave cognitive psychologists ametaphor, oranalogy, to which they could compare human mentalprocessing. Essentially, acomputer codes (i.e. changes)information, storesinformation, usesinformation, and produces an output (retrievesinfo)." CITATION McL07 \l 1033 (McLeod, Cognitive Psychology, 2007) With the invention of the computers, the way that they worked and their software gave psychologists a type of way to compare it to the human mind. The mind, like the computer, has a connection in which we have input (like seeing words on a paper), then codes it (changes it into information to be stored), and finally output (which is where we read the words on the paper). When we process the information in which we are consuming, they can be stored in the brain. The information can be stored and turned into memories, mental pictures, and different perceptions. All of the information that we intake are then changed by our senses so that it can be transformed, stored and retrieved when we deem it necessary. By using the information processing technique like this, humans compare to the workings of computers. The third milestone that contributed to the development of cognitive psychology as a discipline is artificial intelligence. " Artificial intelligence in cognitive psychology was the attempt to artificially create cognitive beings." CITATION Cog16 \l 1033 (Cognitive Science Department, 2016) With artificial intelligence (AI),