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Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of
mental process Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
es such as
attention Attention is the behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information. William James (1890) wrote that "Atte ...
, language use,
memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...
,
perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
, problem solving,
creativity Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a printed literary w ...
, and
reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, ...
ing. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from
behaviorism Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent (behavioral psychology), antecedent stimuli in the environment, o ...
, which held from the 1920s to 1950s that unobservable mental processes were outside the realm of empirical science. This break came as researchers in linguistics and cybernetics, as well as applied psychology, used models of mental processing to explain human behavior. Work derived from cognitive psychology was integrated into other branches of psychology and various other modern disciplines like cognitive science,
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
, and
economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...
. The domain of cognitive psychology overlaps with that of cognitive science, which takes a more interdisciplinary approach and includes studies of non-human subjects and artificial intelligence.


History

Philosophically, ruminations on the human mind and its processes have been around since the times of the ancient Greeks. In 387 BCE,
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
had suggested that the brain was the seat of the mental processes. In 1637,
René Descartes René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathem ...
posited that humans are born with innate ideas and forwarded the idea of mind-body dualism, which would come to be known as substance dualism (essentially the idea that the mind and the body are two separate substances).Malone, J.C. (2009). ''Psychology: Pythagoras to Present''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. (a pp. 143, b pp. 293, c pp. 491) From that time, major debates ensued through the 19th century regarding whether human thought was solely experiential (
empiricism In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
), or included innate knowledge (
rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy' ...
). Some of those involved in this debate included
George Berkeley George Berkeley (; 12 March 168514 January 1753) – known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland) – was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immate ...
and
John Locke John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism ...
on the side of empiricism, and
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
on the side of nativism.Anderson, J.R. (2010). ''Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications''. New York, NY: Worth Publishers. With the philosophical debate continuing, the mid to late 19th century was a critical time in the development of psychology as a scientific discipline. Two discoveries that would later play substantial roles in cognitive psychology were
Paul Broca Pierre Paul Broca (, also , , ; 28 June 1824 – 9 July 1880) was a French physician, anatomist and anthropologist. He is best known for his research on Broca's area, a region of the frontal lobe that is named after him. Broca's area is involve ...
's discovery of the area of the brain largely responsible for language production, and
Carl Wernicke Carl (or Karl) Wernicke (; ; 15 May 1848 – 15 June 1905) was a German physician, anatomist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist. He is known for his influential research into the pathological effects of specific forms of encephalopathy and also t ...
's discovery of an area thought to be mostly responsible for comprehension of language. Both areas were subsequently formally named for their founders, and disruptions of an individual's language production or comprehension due to trauma or malformation in these areas have come to commonly be known as
Broca's aphasia Expressive aphasia, also known as Broca's aphasia, is a type of aphasia characterized by partial loss of the ability to produce language ( spoken, manual, or written), although comprehension generally remains intact. A person with expressive apha ...
and
Wernicke's aphasia Wernicke's aphasia, also known as receptive aphasia, sensory aphasia or posterior aphasia, is a type of aphasia in which individuals have difficulty understanding written and spoken language. Patients with Wernicke's aphasia demonstrate fluent s ...
. From the 1920s to the 1950s, the main approach to psychology was
behaviorism Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent (behavioral psychology), antecedent stimuli in the environment, o ...
. Initially, its adherents viewed mental events such as thoughts, ideas, attention, and consciousness as unobservables, hence outside the realm of a science of psychology. One pioneer of cognitive psychology, who worked outside the boundaries (both intellectual and geographical) of behaviorism was
Jean Piaget Jean William Fritz Piaget (, , ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called " genetic epistemolog ...
. From 1926 to the 1950s and into the 1980s, he studied the thoughts, language, and intelligence of children and adults.Smith, L. (2000). About Piaget. Retrieved from http://piaget.org/aboutPiaget.html In the mid-20th century, three main influences arose that would inspire and shape cognitive psychology as a formal school of thought: * With the development of new warfare technology during
WWII World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the need for a greater understanding of human performance came to prominence. Problems such as how to best train soldiers to use new technology and how to deal with matters of attention while under duress became areas of need for military personnel.
Behaviorism Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent (behavioral psychology), antecedent stimuli in the environment, o ...
provided little if any insight into these matters and it was the work of
Donald Broadbent Donald Eric (D. E.) Broadbent CBE, FRS (Birmingham, 6 May 1926 – 10 April 1993) was an influential experimental psychologist from the UK His career and research bridged the gap between the pre-World War II approach of Sir Frederic Bartlett a ...
, integrating concepts from human performance research and the recently developed
information theory Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification (science), quantification, computer data storage, storage, and telecommunication, communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist a ...
, that forged the way in this area. * Developments in computer science would lead to parallels being drawn between human thought and the computational functionality of computers, opening entirely new areas of psychological thought. Allen Newell and Herbert Simon spent years developing the concept of
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
(AI) and later worked with cognitive psychologists regarding the implications of AI. This encouraged a conceptualization of mental functions patterned on the way that computers handled such things as memory storage and retrieval, and it opened an important doorway for cognitivism. *
Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
's 1959 critiqueChomsky, N. A. (1959), ''A Review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior'' of behaviorism, and empiricism more generally, initiated what would come to be known as the "
cognitive revolution The cognitive revolution was an intellectual movement that began in the 1950s as an interdisciplinary study of the mind and its processes. It later became known collectively as cognitive science. The relevant areas of interchange were between th ...
". Inside psychology, in criticism of behaviorism, J. S. Bruner, J. J. Goodnow & G. A. Austin wrote "a study of thinking" in 1956. In 1960, G. A. Miller, E. Galanter and K. Pribram wrote their famous "Plans and the Structure of Behavior". The same year, Bruner and Miller founded the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies, which institutionalized the revolution and launched the field of cognitive science. * Formal recognition of the field involved the establishment of research institutions such as
George Mandler George Mandler (June 11, 1924 – May 6, 2016) was an Austrian-born American psychologist, who became a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Career Mandler was born in Vienna, Austria in 1924. He re ...
's Center for Human Information Processing in 1964. Mandler described the origins of cognitive psychology in a 2002 article in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral SciencesMandler, G. (2002). Origins of the cognitive (r)evolution. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 38, 339–353.
Ulric Neisser Ulric Richard Gustav Neisser (December 8, 1928 – February 17, 2012) was a German-American psychologist, Cornell University professor, and member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He has been referred to as the "father of cognitive ps ...
put the term "cognitive psychology" into common use through his book ''Cognitive Psychology'', published in 1967.Neisser, U. (1967). ''Cognitive Psychology''. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Neisser's definition on page 4. Neisser's definition of "cognition" illustrates the then-progressive concept of cognitive processes:
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 A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the qualities of a real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. Hallucination is a combinatio ...
. ... Given such a sweeping definition, it is apparent that cognition is involved in everything a human being might possibly do; that every psychological phenomenon is a cognitive phenomenon. But although cognitive psychology is concerned with all human activity rather than some fraction of it, the concern is from a particular point of view. Other viewpoints are equally legitimate and necessary. Dynamic psychology, which begins with motives rather than with sensory input, is a case in point. Instead of asking how a man's actions and experiences result from what he saw, remembered, or believed, the dynamic psychologist asks how they follow from the subject's goals, needs, or instincts.


Cognitive processes

The main focus of cognitive psychologists is on the
mental processes Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
that affect behavior. Those processes include, but are not limited to, the following three stages of memory: # Sensory memory storage: holds sensory information # Short-term memory storage: holds information temporarily for analysis and retrieves information from the Long-term memory. # Long-term memory: holds information over an extended period of time which receives information from the short-term memory.


Attention

The psychological definition of
attention Attention is the behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information. William James (1890) wrote that "Atte ...
is "a state of focused awareness on a subset of the available perceptual information". A key function of attention is to identify irrelevant data and filter it out, enabling significant data to be distributed to the other
mental processes Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
. For example, the human brain may simultaneously receive auditory,
visual The visual system comprises the sensory organ (the eye) and parts of the central nervous system (the retina containing photoreceptor cells, the optic nerve, the optic tract and the visual cortex) which gives organisms the sense of sight (the ...
,
olfactory The sense of smell, or olfaction, is the special sense through which smells (or odors) are perceived. The sense of smell has many functions, including detecting desirable foods, hazards, and pheromones, and plays a role in taste. In humans, it ...
,
taste The gustatory system or sense of taste is the sensory system that is partially responsible for the perception of taste (flavor). Taste is the perception produced or stimulated when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste receptor ...
, and
tactile Tactile may refer to: * Tactile, related to the sense of touch * Haptics (disambiguation) * Tactile (device), a text-to-braille translation device See also * Tangibility, in law * Somatosensory system, where sensations are processed * CD96 CD ...
information. The brain is able to consciously handle only a small subset of this information, and this is accomplished through the attentional processes. Attention can be divided into two major attentional systems: exogenous control and endogenous control. Exogenous control works in a bottom-up manner and is responsible for orienting reflex, and pop-out effects. Endogenous control works top-down and is the more deliberate attentional system, responsible for divided attention and conscious processing. One major focal point relating to
attention Attention is the behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information. William James (1890) wrote that "Atte ...
within the field of cognitive psychology is the concept of divided attention. A number of early studies dealt with the ability of a person wearing headphones to discern meaningful conversation when presented with different messages into each ear; this is known as the dichotic listening task. Key findings involved an increased understanding of the mind's ability to both focus on one message, while still being somewhat aware of information being taken in from the ear not being consciously attended to. For example, participants (wearing earphones) may be told that they will be hearing separate messages in each ear and that they are expected to attend only to information related to basketball. When the experiment starts, the message about basketball will be presented to the left ear and non-relevant information will be presented to the right ear. At some point the message related to basketball will switch to the right ear and the non-relevant information to the left ear. When this happens, the listener is usually able to repeat the entire message at the end, having attended to the left or right ear only when it was appropriate. The ability to attend to one conversation in the face of many is known as the
cocktail party effect The cocktail party effect is the phenomenon of the brain's ability to focus one's auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, such as when a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room ...
. Other major findings include that participants cannot comprehend both passages when shadowing one passage, they cannot report the content of the unattended message, while they can shadow a message better if the pitches in each ear are different. However, while deep processing does not occur, early sensory processing does. Subjects did notice if the pitch of the unattended message changed or if it ceased altogether, and some even oriented to the unattended message if their name was mentioned.


Memory

The two main types of memory are short-term memory and long-term memory; however, short-term memory has become better understood to be working memory. Cognitive psychologists often study memory in terms of
working memory Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold information temporarily. It is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior. Working memory is often used synonymously with short-term memory, ...
.


Working memory

Though working memory is often thought of as just short-term memory, it is more clearly defined as the ability to process and maintain temporary information in a wide range of everyday activities in the face of distraction. The famously known capacity of memory of 7 plus or minus 2 is a combination of both memories in working memory and long-term memory. One of the classic experiments is by Ebbinghaus, who found the
serial position effect Serial-position effect is the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst. The term was coined by Hermann Ebbinghaus through studies he performed on himself, and refers to the finding that re ...
where information from the beginning and end of the list of random words were better recalled than those in the center.Ebbinghaus, Hermann (1913). On memory: A contribution to experimental psychology. New York: Teachers College. This primacy and recency effect varies in intensity based on list length. Its typical U-shaped curve can be disrupted by an attention-grabbing word; this is known as the
Von Restorff effect The Von Restorff effect, also known as the "isolation effect", predicts that when multiple homogeneous stimuli are presented, the stimulus that differs from the rest is more likely to be remembered. The theory was coined by German psychiatrist and p ...
. Many models of working memory have been made. One of the most regarded is the Baddeley and Hitch model of working memory. It takes into account both visual and auditory stimuli, long-term memory to use as a reference, and a central processor to combine and understand it all. A large part of memory is forgetting, and there is a large debate among psychologists of
decay theory The Decay theory is a theory that proposes that memory fades due to the mere passage of time. Information is therefore less available for later retrieval as time passes and memory, as well as memory strength, wears away. When an individual learns so ...
versus
interference theory The interference theory is a theory regarding human memory. Interference occurs in learning. The notion is that memory encoded in long-term memory (LTM) are forgotten and cannot be retrieved into short-term memory (STM) because either memory could ...
.


Long-term memory

Modern conceptions of
memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...
are usually about long-term memory and break it down into three main sub-classes. These three classes are somewhat
hierarchical A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...
in nature, in terms of the level of
conscious Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
thought related to their use.Balota, D.A. & Marsh, E.J. (2004). ''Cognitive Psychology: Key Readings''. New York, NY: Psychology Press. (pp. 364–365) *
Procedural memory Procedural memory is a type of implicit memory (unconscious, long-term memory) which aids the performance of particular types of tasks without conscious awareness of these previous experiences. Procedural memory guides the processes we perform, ...
is memory for the performance of particular types of action. It is often activated on a
subconscious In psychology, the subconscious is the part of the mind that is not currently of focal awareness. Scholarly use of the term The word ''subconscious'' represents an anglicized version of the French ''subconscient'' as coined in 1889 by the psycho ...
level, or at most requires a minimal amount of
conscious Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
effort. Procedural memory includes stimulus-response-type information, which is activated through association with particular tasks, routines, etc. A person is using
procedural knowledge Procedural knowledge (also known as Know-how, knowing-how, and sometimes referred to as practical knowledge, imperative knowledge, or performative knowledge) is the knowledge exercised in the performance of some task. Unlike descriptive knowledge ( ...
when they seemingly "automatically" respond in a particular manner to a particular situation or process. An example is driving a car. *
Semantic memory Semantic memory refers to general world knowledge that humans have accumulated throughout their lives. This general knowledge (word meanings, concepts, facts, and ideas) is intertwined in experience and dependent on culture. We can learn about n ...
is the encyclopedic knowledge that a person possesses. Knowledge like what the
Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Locally nicknamed "'' ...
looks like, or the name of a friend from sixth grade, represent semantic memory. Access of semantic memory ranges from slightly to extremely effortful, depending on a number of variables including but not limited to recency of encoding of the information, number of associations it has to other information, frequency of access, and levels of meaning (how deeply it was processed when it was encoded). *
Episodic memory Episodic memory is the memory of everyday events (such as times, location geography, associated emotions, and other contextual information) that can be explicitly stated or conjured. It is the collection of past personal experiences that occurred ...
is the memory of autobiographical events that can be explicitly stated. It contains all memories that are temporal in nature, such as when one last brushed one's teeth or where one was when one heard about a major news event. Episodic memory typically requires the deepest level of
conscious Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
thought, as it often pulls together
semantic memory Semantic memory refers to general world knowledge that humans have accumulated throughout their lives. This general knowledge (word meanings, concepts, facts, and ideas) is intertwined in experience and dependent on culture. We can learn about n ...
and temporal information to formulate the entire
memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...
.


Perception

Perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
involves both the physical senses (sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch, and
proprioception Proprioception ( ), also referred to as kinaesthesia (or kinesthesia), is the sense of self-movement, force, and body position. It is sometimes described as the "sixth sense". Proprioception is mediated by proprioceptors, mechanosensory neurons ...
) as well as the
cognitive processes Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
involved in interpreting those senses. Essentially, it is how people come to understand the world around them through the interpretation of stimuli. Early psychologists like
Edward B. Titchener Edward Bradford Titchener (11 January 1867 – 3 August 1927) was an English psychologist who studied under Wilhelm Wundt for several years. Titchener is best known for creating his version of psychology that described the structure of the mind: ...
began to work with perception in their structuralist approach to psychology.
Structuralism In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader ...
dealt heavily with trying to reduce human thought (or "consciousness", as Titchener would have called it) into its most basic elements by gaining an understanding of how an individual perceives particular stimuli. Current perspectives on perception within cognitive psychology tend to focus on particular ways in which the human mind interprets stimuli from the senses and how these interpretations affect behavior. An example of the way in which modern psychologists approach the study of perception is the research being done at the Center for Ecological Study of Perception and Action at the University of Connecticut (CESPA). One study at CESPA concerns ways in which individuals perceive their physical environment and how that influences their navigation through that environment.


Language

Psychologists have had an interest in the cognitive processes involved with
language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
that dates back to the 1870s, when
Carl Wernicke Carl (or Karl) Wernicke (; ; 15 May 1848 – 15 June 1905) was a German physician, anatomist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist. He is known for his influential research into the pathological effects of specific forms of encephalopathy and also t ...
proposed a model for the mental processing of language. Current work on language within the field of cognitive psychology varies widely. Cognitive psychologists may study
language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...
, individual components of language formation (like
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
s), how language use is involved in mood, or numerous other related areas. Significant work has focused on understanding the timing of language acquisition and how it can be used to determine if a child has, or is at risk of, developing a
learning disability Learning disability, learning disorder, or learning difficulty (British English) is a condition in the brain that causes difficulties comprehending or processing information and can be caused by several different factors. Given the "difficult ...
. A study from 2012, showed that while this can be an effective strategy, it is important that those making evaluations include all relevant information when making their assessments. Factors such as individual variability,
socioeconomic status Socioeconomic status (SES) is an economic and sociological combined total measure of a person's work experience and of an individual's or family's economic access to resources and social position in relation to others. When analyzing a family's ...
, short-term and
long-term memory Long-term memory (LTM) is the stage of the Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model in which informative knowledge is held indefinitely. It is defined in contrast to short-term and working memory, which persist for only about 18 to 30 seconds. Long-t ...
capacity, and others must be included in order to make valid assessments.


Metacognition

Metacognition Metacognition is an awareness of one's thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them. The term comes from the root word '' meta'', meaning "beyond", or "on top of".Metcalfe, J., & Shimamura, A. P. (1994). ''Metacognition: knowi ...
, in a broad sense, is the thoughts that a person has about their own thoughts. More specifically, metacognition includes things like: * How effective a person is at monitoring their own performance on a given task (self-regulation). * A person's understanding of their capabilities on particular mental tasks. * The ability to apply cognitive strategies. Much of the current study regarding metacognition within the field of cognitive psychology deals with its application within the area of education. Being able to increase a student's metacognitive abilities has been shown to have a significant impact on their learning and study habits. One key aspect of this concept is the improvement of students' ability to set goals and self-regulate effectively to meet those goals. As a part of this process, it is also important to ensure that students are realistically evaluating their personal degree of knowledge and setting realistic goals (another metacognitive task). Common phenomena related to metacognition include: *
Déjà Vu ''Déjà vu'' ( , ; "already seen") is a French loanword for the phenomenon of feeling as though one has lived through the present situation before.Schnider, Armin. (2008). ''The Confabulating Mind: How the Brain Creates Reality''. Oxford Univer ...
: feeling of a repeated experience * Cryptomnesia: generating thought believing it is unique but it is actually a memory of a past experience; also known as unconscious plagiarism. * False Fame Effect: non-famous names can be made to be famous * Validity effect: statements seem more valid upon repeated exposure *
Imagination inflation Imagination inflation is a type of memory distortion that occurs when imagining an event that never happened increases confidence in the memory of the event. Several factors have been demonstrated to increase the imagination inflation effect. Im ...
: imagining an event that did not occur and having increased confidence that it did occur


Modern perspectives

Modern perspectives on cognitive psychology generally address cognition as a
dual process theory In psychology, a dual process theory provides an account of how thought can arise in two different ways, or as a result of two different processes. Often, the two processes consist of an implicit (automatic), unconscious process and an explicit (c ...
, expounded upon by
Daniel Kahneman Daniel Kahneman (; he, דניאל כהנמן; born March 5, 1934) is an Israeli-American psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, for which he was award ...
in 2011.Kahneman D. (2003) "A perspective on judgement and choice." ''American Psychologist''. ''58'', 697–720. Kahneman differentiated the two styles of processing more, calling them intuition and reasoning. Intuition (or system 1), similar to associative reasoning, was determined to be fast and automatic, usually with strong emotional bonds included in the reasoning process. Kahneman said that this kind of reasoning was based on formed habits and very difficult to change or manipulate. Reasoning (or system 2) was slower and much more volatile, being subject to conscious judgments and attitudes.


Applications


Abnormal psychology

Following the cognitive revolution, and as a result of many of the principal discoveries to come out of the field of cognitive psychology, the discipline of
cognitive behavior therapy Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psycho-social intervention that aims to reduce symptoms of various mental health conditions, primarily depression and anxiety disorders. CBT focuses on challenging and changing cognitive distortions (suc ...
(CBT) evolved.
Aaron T. Beck Aaron Temkin Beck (July 18, 1921 – November 1, 2021) was an American psychiatrist who was a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.
is generally regarded as the father of
cognitive therapy Cognitive therapy (CT) is a type of psychotherapy developed by American psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck. CT is one therapeutic approach within the larger group of cognitive behavioral therapies (CBT) and was first expounded by Beck in the 1960s. Cogn ...
, a particular type of CBT treatment. His work in the areas of recognition and treatment of depression has gained worldwide recognition. In his 1987 book titled ''Cognitive Therapy of Depression'', Beck puts forth three salient points with regard to his reasoning for the treatment of depression by means of therapy or therapy and antidepressants versus using a pharmacological-only approach:
1. Despite the prevalent use of antidepressants, the fact remains that not all patients respond to them. Beck cites (in 1987) that only 60 to 65% of patients respond to antidepressants, and recent
meta-analyses A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting me ...
(a statistical breakdown of multiple studies) show very similar numbers.
2. Many of those who do respond to antidepressants end up not taking their medications, for various reasons. They may develop side-effects or have some form of personal objection to taking the drugs.
3. Beck posits that the use of
psychotropic drugs A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, psychoactive agent or psychotropic drug is a chemical substance, that changes functions of the nervous system, and results in alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition or behavior. Th ...
may lead to an eventual breakdown in the individual's coping mechanisms. His theory is that the person essentially becomes reliant on the medication as a means of improving mood and fails to practice those coping techniques typically practiced by healthy individuals to alleviate the effects of depressive symptoms. By failing to do so, once the patient is weaned off of the antidepressants, they often are unable to cope with normal levels of depressed mood and feel driven to reinstate use of the antidepressants.


Social psychology

Many facets of modern social psychology have roots in research done within the field of cognitive psychology.
Social cognition Social cognition is a sub-topic of various branches of psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in social interactio ...
is a specific sub-set of social psychology that concentrates on processes that have been of particular focus within cognitive psychology, specifically applied to human interactions. Gordon B. Moskowitz defines social cognition as "... the study of the mental processes involved in perceiving, attending to, remembering, thinking about, and making sense of the people in our social world". The development of multiple
social information processing Social information processing is "an activity through which collective human actions organize knowledge." It is the creation and processing of information by a group of people. As an academic field Social Information Processing studies the inform ...
(SIP) models has been influential in studies involving aggressive and anti-social behavior. Kenneth Dodge's SIP model is one of, if not the most, empirically supported models relating to aggression. Among his research, Dodge posits that children who possess a greater ability to process social information more often display higher levels of socially acceptable behavior; that the type of social interaction that children have affects their relationships. His model asserts that there are five steps that an individual proceeds through when evaluating interactions with other individuals and that how the person interprets cues is key to their reactionary process.


Developmental psychology

Many of the prominent names in the field of developmental psychology base their understanding of development on cognitive models. One of the major paradigms of developmental psychology, the
Theory of Mind In psychology, theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them (that is, surmising what is happening in their mind). This includes the knowledge that others' mental states may be different fro ...
(ToM), deals specifically with the ability of an individual to effectively understand and attribute cognition to those around them. This concept typically becomes fully apparent in children between the ages of 4 and 6. Essentially, before the child develops ToM, they are unable to understand that those around them can have different thoughts, ideas, or feelings than themselves. The development of ToM is a matter of
metacognition Metacognition is an awareness of one's thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them. The term comes from the root word '' meta'', meaning "beyond", or "on top of".Metcalfe, J., & Shimamura, A. P. (1994). ''Metacognition: knowi ...
, or thinking about one's thoughts. The child must be able to recognize that they have their own thoughts and in turn, that others possess thoughts of their own. One of the foremost minds with regard to developmental psychology, Jean Piaget, focused much of his attention on cognitive development from birth through adulthood. Though there have been considerable challenges to parts of his stages of cognitive development, they remain a staple in the realm of education. Piaget's concepts and ideas predated the cognitive revolution but inspired a wealth of research in the field of cognitive psychology and many of his principles have been blended with modern theory to synthesize the predominant views of today.


Educational psychology

Modern theories of education have applied many concepts that are focal points of cognitive psychology. Some of the most prominent concepts include: *
Metacognition Metacognition is an awareness of one's thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them. The term comes from the root word '' meta'', meaning "beyond", or "on top of".Metcalfe, J., & Shimamura, A. P. (1994). ''Metacognition: knowi ...
: Metacognition is a broad concept encompassing all manners of one's thoughts and knowledge about their own thinking. A key area of educational focus in this realm is related to self-monitoring, which relates highly to how well students are able to evaluate their personal knowledge and apply strategies to improve knowledge in areas in which they are lacking.Reif, F. (2008). ''Applying Cognitive Science to Education: Thinking and Learning in Scientific and Other Complex Domains''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. (a pp. 283–84, b pp. 38) *
Declarative knowledge In epistemology, descriptive knowledge (also known as propositional knowledge, knowing-that, declarative knowledge, or constative knowledge) is knowledge that can be expressed in a declarative sentence or an indicative proposition. "Knowing-that" c ...
and
procedural knowledge Procedural knowledge (also known as Know-how, knowing-how, and sometimes referred to as practical knowledge, imperative knowledge, or performative knowledge) is the knowledge exercised in the performance of some task. Unlike descriptive knowledge ( ...
: Declarative knowledge is a persons 'encyclopedic' knowledge base, whereas procedural knowledge is specific knowledge relating to performing particular tasks. The application of these cognitive paradigms to education attempts to augment a student's ability to integrate declarative knowledge into newly learned procedures in an effort to facilitate accelerated learning. *
Knowledge organization Knowledge organization (KO), organization of knowledge, organization of information, or information organization is an intellectual discipline concerned with activities such as document description, indexing, and classification that serve to ...
: Applications of cognitive psychology's understanding of how knowledge is organized in the brain has been a major focus within the field of education in recent years. The hierarchical method of organizing information and how that maps well onto the brain's memory are concepts that have proven extremely beneficial in classrooms.


Personality psychology

Cognitive therapeutic approaches have received considerable attention in the treatment of personality disorders in recent years. The approach focuses on the formation of what it believes to be faulty schemata, centralized on judgmental biases and general cognitive errors.


Cognitive psychology vs. cognitive science

The line between cognitive psychology and cognitive science can be blurry. Cognitive psychology is better understood as predominantly concerned with applied psychology and the understanding of psychological phenomena. Cognitive psychologists are often heavily involved in running psychological experiments involving human participants, with the goal of gathering information related to how the human mind takes in, processes, and acts upon inputs received from the outside world. The information gained in this area is then often used in the applied field of
clinical psychology Clinical psychology is an integration of social science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and persona ...
. Cognitive science is better understood as predominantly concerned with a much broader scope, with links to philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, neuroscience, and particularly with artificial intelligence. It could be said that cognitive science provides the corpus of information feeding the theories used by cognitive psychologists. Cognitive scientists' research sometimes involves non-human subjects, allowing them to delve into areas which would come under ethical scrutiny if performed on human participants. I.e., they may do research implanting devices in the brains of rats to track the firing of neurons while the rat performs a particular task. Cognitive science is highly involved in the area of artificial intelligence and its application to the understanding of mental processes.


Criticisms


Lack of cohesion

Some observers have suggested that as cognitive psychology became a movement during the 1970s, the intricacies of the phenomena and processes it examined meant it also began to lose cohesion as a field of study. In ''Psychology: Pythagoras to Present'', for example, John Malone writes: "Examinations of late twentieth-century textbooks dealing with "cognitive psychology", "human cognition", "cognitive science" and the like quickly reveal that there are many, many varieties of cognitive psychology and very little agreement about exactly what may be its domain." This misfortune produced competing models that questioned information-processing approaches to cognitive functioning such as
Decision Making In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either rati ...
and
Behavioral Sciences Behavioral sciences explore the cognitive processes within organisms and the behavioral interactions between organisms in the natural world. It involves the systematic analysis and investigation of human and animal behavior through naturalistic o ...
.


Controversies

In the early years of cognitive psychology,
behaviorist Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual' ...
critics held that the empiricism it pursued was incompatible with the concept of internal mental states. However,
cognitive neuroscience Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental proces ...
continues to gather evidence of direct correlations between physiological brain activity and mental states, endorsing the basis for cognitive psychology. There is however disagreement between
neuropsychologists Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology often focus on how injuries or illnesses of ...
and cognitive psychologists. Cognitive psychology has produced models of cognition which are not supported by modern
brain science Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmen ...
. It is often the case that the advocates of different cognitive models form a
dialectic Dialectic ( grc-gre, διαλεκτική, ''dialektikḗ''; related to dialogue; german: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing ...
relationship with one another thus affecting empirical research, with researchers siding with their favorite theory. For example, advocates of ''mental model theory'' have attempted to find evidence that
deductive reasoning Deductive reasoning is the mental process of drawing deductive inferences. An inference is deductively valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises, i.e. if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be fals ...
is based on image thinking, while the advocates of ''mental logic theory'' have tried to prove that it is based on verbal thinking, leading to a disorderly picture of the findings from
brain imaging Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the neuroanatomy, structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive ...
and
brain lesion Neurotrauma, brain damage or brain injury (BI) is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain injuries occur due to a wide range of internal and external factors. In general, brain damage refers to significant, undiscriminating t ...
studies. When theoretical claims are put aside, the evidence shows that interaction depends on the type of task tested, whether of visuospatial or linguistical orientation; but that there is also an aspect of reasoning which is not covered by either theory. Similarly,
neurolinguistics Neurolinguistics is the study of neural mechanisms in the human brain that controls the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language. As an interdisciplinary field, neurolinguistics draws methods and theories from fields such as n ...
has found that it is easier to make sense of brain imaging studies when the theories are left aside. In the field of language cognition research,
generative grammar Generative grammar, or generativism , is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguistic ...
has taken the position that language resides within its private
cognitive module A cognitive module in cognitive psychology is a specialized tool or sub-unit that can be used by other parts to resolve cognitive tasks. It is used in theories of the modularity of mind and the closely related society of mind theory and was devel ...
, while 'Cognitive Linguistics' goes to the opposite extreme by claiming that language is not an independent function, but operates on general cognitive capacities such as
visual processing Visual processing is a term that is used to refer to the brain's ability to use and interpret visual information from the world around us. The process of converting light energy into a meaningful image is a complex process that is facilitated by ...
and
motor skills A motor skill is a function that involves specific movements of the body's muscles to perform a certain task. These tasks could include walking, running, or riding a bike. In order to perform this skill, the body's nervous system, muscles, and br ...
. Consensus in neuropsychology however takes the middle position that, while language is a specialized function, it overlaps or interacts with visual processing. Nonetheless, much of the research in language cognition continues to be divided along the lines of generative grammar and Cognitive Linguistics; and this, again, affects adjacent research fields including
language development Language development in humans is a process starting early in life. Infants start without knowing a language, yet by 10 months, babies can distinguish speech sounds and engage in babbling. Some research has shown that the earliest learning begin ...
and
language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...
.


Major research areas

Categorization Categorization is the ability and activity of recognizing shared features or similarities between the elements of the experience of the world (such as Object (philosophy), objects, events, or ideas), organizing and classifying experience by a ...
* Induction and acquisition * Judgement and classification * Representation and structure * Similarity
Knowledge representation Knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR, KR&R, KR²) is the field of artificial intelligence (AI) dedicated to representing information about the world in a form that a computer system can use to solve complex tasks such as diagnosing a medic ...
*
Dual-coding theories Dual-coding theory, a theory of cognition, was hypothesized by Allan Paivio of the University of Western Ontario in 1971. In developing this theory, Paivio used the idea that the formation of mental images aids learning. According to Paivio, there ...
* Media psychology *
Mental image A mental image is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of 'perceiving' some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses. There are ...
ry *
Numerical cognition Numerical cognition is a subdiscipline of cognitive science that studies the cognitive, developmental and neural bases of numbers and mathematics. As with many cognitive science endeavors, this is a highly interdisciplinary topic, and includes ...
*
Propositional encoding In propositional logic, a propositional formula is a type of syntactic formula which is well formed and has a truth value. If the values of all variables in a propositional formula are given, it determines a unique truth value. A propositional fo ...
Language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
*
Language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...
*
Language processing Language processing refers to the way humans use words to communicate ideas and feelings, and how such communications are processed and understood. Language processing is considered to be a uniquely human ability that is not produced with the sa ...
* *
Memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...
*
Aging and memory Age-related memory loss, sometimes described as "normal aging" (also spelled "ageing" in British English), is qualitatively different from memory loss associated with types of dementia such as Alzheimer's disease, and is believed to have a diffe ...
*
Autobiographical memory Autobiographical memory is a memory system consisting of episodes recollected from an individual's life, based on a combination of episodic (personal experiences and specific objects, people and events experienced at particular time and place) a ...
*
Childhood memory Childhood memory refers to memories formed during childhood. Among its other roles, memory functions to guide present behaviour and to predict future outcomes. Memory in childhood is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the memories fo ...
* Constructive memory *
Emotion and memory Emotion can have a powerful effect on humans and animals. Numerous studies have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events, which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail than ...
*
Episodic memory Episodic memory is the memory of everyday events (such as times, location geography, associated emotions, and other contextual information) that can be explicitly stated or conjured. It is the collection of past personal experiences that occurred ...
*
Eyewitness memory Eyewitness memory is a person's episodic memory for a crime or other dramatic event that he or she has witnessed. Eyewitness testimony is often relied upon in the judicial system. It can also refer to an individual's memory for a face, where they a ...
*
False memories In psychology, a false memory is a phenomenon where someone recalls something that did not happen or recalls it differently from the way it actually happened. Suggestibility, activation of associated information, the incorporation of misinformat ...
*
Flashbulb memory A flashbulb memory is a vivid, long-lasting memory about a surprising or shocking event that has happened in the past. The term "flashbulb memory" suggests the surprise, indiscriminate illumination, detail, and brevity of a photograph; however fl ...
*
List of memory biases Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm and/or rationality in judgment. They are often studied in psychology, sociology and behavioral economics. Although the reality of most of these biases is confirmed by reproducible re ...
*
Long-term memory Long-term memory (LTM) is the stage of the Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model in which informative knowledge is held indefinitely. It is defined in contrast to short-term and working memory, which persist for only about 18 to 30 seconds. Long-t ...
*
Semantic memory Semantic memory refers to general world knowledge that humans have accumulated throughout their lives. This general knowledge (word meanings, concepts, facts, and ideas) is intertwined in experience and dependent on culture. We can learn about n ...
*
Short-term memory Short-term memory (or "primary" or "active memory") is the capacity for holding a small amount of information in an active, readily available state for a short interval. For example, short-term memory holds a phone number that has just been recit ...
*
Source-monitoring error A source-monitoring error is a type of memory error where the source of a memory is incorrectly attributed to some specific recollected experience. For example, individuals may learn about a current event from a friend, but later report having lear ...
*
Spaced repetition Spaced repetition is an evidence-based learning technique that is usually performed with flashcards. Newly introduced and more difficult flashcards are shown more frequently, while older and less difficult flashcards are shown less frequently in ...
*
Working memory Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold information temporarily. It is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior. Working memory is often used synonymously with short-term memory, ...
Perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
*
Attention Attention is the behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information. William James (1890) wrote that "Atte ...
*
Object recognition Object recognition – technology in the field of computer vision for finding and identifying objects in an image or video sequence. Humans recognize a multitude of objects in images with little effort, despite the fact that the image of the ...
*
Pattern recognition Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphi ...
*
Perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
**
Form perception Form perception is the recognition of visual elements of objects, specifically those to do with shapes, patterns and previously identified important characteristics. An object is perceived by the retina as a two-dimensional image, but the image can ...
*
Psychophysics Psychophysics quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described as "the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation" or, m ...
* Time sensation
Thinking In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to conscious cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, an ...
*
Choice A choice is the range of different things from which a being can choose. The arrival at a choice may incorporate motivators and models. For example, a traveler might choose a route for a journey based on the preference of arriving at a giv ...
 ( Glasser's theory) *
Concept formation Concept learning, also known as category learning, concept attainment, and concept formation, is defined by Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin (1967) as "the search for and listing of attributes that can be used to distinguish exemplars from non exemplars ...
*
Decision making In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either rati ...
*
Logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...
*
Psychology of reasoning The psychology of reasoning (also known as the cognitive science of reasoning) is the study of how people reason, often broadly defined as the process of drawing conclusions to inform how people solve problems and make decisions. It overlaps w ...
*
Problem solving Problem solving is the process of achieving a goal by overcoming obstacles, a frequent part of most activities. Problems in need of solutions range from simple personal tasks (e.g. how to turn on an appliance) to complex issues in business an ...


Influential cognitive psychologists

* John R. Anderson *
Alan Baddeley Alan David Baddeley CBE FRS, is a British psychologist. He is known for his research on memory and for developing the three-component model of working memory. He is a professor of psychology at the University of York. Biography Baddeley was ...
*
David Ausubel David Paul Ausubel (October 25, 1918 – July 9, 2008) was an American psychologist. His most significant contribution to the fields of educational psychology, cognitive science, and science education learning was on the development and research o ...
*
Albert Bandura Albert Bandura (; December 4, 1925 – July 26, 2021) was a Canadian-American psychologist who was the David Starr Jordan Professor in Psychology at Stanford University. Bandura was responsible for contributions to the field of education and to ...
*
Frederic Bartlett Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett FRS (20 October 1886 – 30 September 1969) was a British psychologist and the first professor of experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge. He was one of the forerunners of cognitive psychology as wel ...
*
Elizabeth Bates Elizabeth Ann Bates (July 26, 1947 – December 13, 2003) was a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego. She was an internationally renowned expert and leading researcher in child language acquisition, psyc ...
*
Aaron T. Beck Aaron Temkin Beck (July 18, 1921 – November 1, 2021) was an American psychiatrist who was a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.
*
Robert Bjork Robert Allen Bjork (born 1939) is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on human learning and memory and on the implications of the science of learning for instruction and training ...
*
Gordon H. Bower Gordon Howard Bower (December 30, 1932 – June 17, 2020) was a cognitive psychologist studying human memory, language comprehension, emotion, and behavior modification. He received his Ph.D. in learning theory from Yale University in 1959. He he ...
*
Donald Broadbent Donald Eric (D. E.) Broadbent CBE, FRS (Birmingham, 6 May 1926 – 10 April 1993) was an influential experimental psychologist from the UK His career and research bridged the gap between the pre-World War II approach of Sir Frederic Bartlett a ...
*
Jerome Bruner Jerome Seymour Bruner (October 1, 1915 – June 5, 2016) was an American psychologist who made significant contributions to human cognitive psychology and cognitive learning theory in educational psychology. Bruner was a senior research fellow ...
* Susan Carey *
Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
*
Fergus Craik Fergus Ian Muirden Craik FRS (born 17 April 1935, Edinburgh, Scotland) is a cognitive psychologist known for his research on levels of processing in memory. This work was done in collaboration with Robert Lockhart at the University of Toronto ...
*
Antonio Damasio Antonio Damasio ( pt, António Damásio) is a Portuguese-American neuroscientist. He is currently the David Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience, as well as Professor of Psychology, Philosophy, and Neurology, at the University of Southern California, ...
*
Hermann Ebbinghaus Hermann Ebbinghaus (24 January 185026 February 1909) was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory, and is known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. He was also the first person to describ ...
*
Albert Ellis Albert Ellis (September 27, 1913 – July 24, 2007) was an American psychologist and psychotherapist who founded rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT). He held MA and PhD degrees in clinical psychology from Columbia University, and was certi ...
*
K. Anders Ericsson K. Anders Ericsson (October, 23, 1947 – June 17, 2020) was a Swedish psychologist and Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University who was internationally recognized as a researcher in the psychological natur ...
* William Estes *
Eugene Galanter Eugene Galanter (1924-2016) was one of the modern founders of cognitive psychology. He was an academic in the field of experimental psychology and an author. Dr. Galanter was Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Quondam Director of the Psychophy ...
*
Vittorio Gallese Vittorio Gallese is professor of Psychobiology at the University of Parma, Italy, and was professor in Experimental Aesthetics at the University of London, UK (2016-2018). He is an expert in neurophysiology, cognitive neuroscience, social neurosc ...
*
Michael Gazzaniga Michael S. Gazzaniga (born December 12, 1939) is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the USA, where he heads the new SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind. He is one of the leading researchers in cognitive ...
*
Dedre Gentner Dedre Dariel Gentner (born 1944) is an American cognitive and developmental psychologist. She is the Alice Gabriel Twight Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University. She is a leading researcher in the study of analogical reasoning. Wor ...
*
Vittorio Guidano Vittorio Filippo Guidano (4 August 1944, Rome, Italy – 31 August 1999, Buenos Aires, Argentina) was an Italian neuropsychiatrist, creator of the cognitive procedural systemic model and contributor to constructivist post-rationalist cognitive th ...
*
Philip Johnson-Laird Philip Nicholas Johnson-Laird, FRS, FBA (born 12 October 1936) is a philosopher of language and reasoning and a developer of the mental model theory of reasoning. He was a professor at Princeton University's Department of Psychology, as well a ...
*
Daniel Kahneman Daniel Kahneman (; he, דניאל כהנמן; born March 5, 1934) is an Israeli-American psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, for which he was award ...
*
Nancy Kanwisher Nancy Gail Kanwisher FBA (born 1958) is the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She s ...
*
Eric Lenneberg Eric Heinz Lenneberg (19 September 1921 – 31 May 1975) was a linguist and neurologist who pioneered ideas on language acquisition and cognitive psychology, particularly in terms of the concept of innateness. Life and career He was born in D ...
* Alan Leslie *
Willem Levelt Willem Johannes Maria (Pim) Levelt (born 17 May 1938 in Amsterdam) is a Dutch psycholinguist. He is a researcher of human language acquisition and speech production. He developed a comprehensive theory of the cognitive processes involved in t ...
*
Elizabeth Loftus Elizabeth F. Loftus (born 1944) is an American psychologist who is best known in relation to the misinformation effect, false memory and criticism of recovered memory therapies. Loftus's research includes the effects of phrasing on the percep ...
*
Alexander Luria Alexander Romanovich Luria (russian: Алекса́ндр Рома́нович Лу́рия, p=ˈlurʲɪjə; 16 July 1902 – 14 August 1977) was a Soviet neuropsychologist, often credited as a father of modern neuropsychology. He develope ...
*
Brian MacWhinney Brian James MacWhinney (born August 22, 1945) is a Professor of Psychology and Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University. He specializes in first and second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and the neurological bases of language, an ...
*
George Mandler George Mandler (June 11, 1924 – May 6, 2016) was an Austrian-born American psychologist, who became a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Career Mandler was born in Vienna, Austria in 1924. He re ...
*
Jean Matter Mandler Jean Matter Mandler (born 1929) is Distinguished Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego and visiting professor at University College London. She was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1929 and attended Ca ...
*
Ellen Markman Ellen Markman is Lewis M. Terman Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. She specializes in word learning and language development in children, focusing specifically on how children come to associate words with their meanings. Markman c ...
* James McClelland *
George Armitage Miller George Armitage Miller (February 3, 1920 – July 22, 2012) was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of cognitive psychology, and more broadly, of cognitive science. He also contributed to the birth of psycholinguistics. Mille ...
*
Ulrich Neisser Ulric Richard Gustav Neisser (December 8, 1928 – February 17, 2012) was a German-American psychologist, Cornell University professor, and member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He has been referred to as the "father of cognitive ps ...
*
Allen Newell Allen Newell (March 19, 1927 – July 19, 1992) was a researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND Corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, Tepper School of Business, and Department ...
*
Allan Paivio Allan Urho Paivio (March 29, 1925 – June 19, 2016) was a professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario and former bodybuilder. He earned his Ph.D. from McGill University in 1959 and taught at the University of Western Ontario fro ...
*
Seymour Papert Seymour Aubrey Papert (; 29 February 1928 – 31 July 2016) was a South African-born American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator, who spent most of his career teaching and researching at MIT. He was one of the pioneers of artificial ...
*
Jean Piaget Jean William Fritz Piaget (, , ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called " genetic epistemolog ...
*
Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. P ...
* Michael Posner * Karl H. Pribram *
Giacomo Rizzolatti Giacomo Rizzolatti (born 28 April 1937) is an Italian neurophysiologist who works at the University of Parma. Born in Kyiv, UkSSR, he is the Senior Scientist of the research team that discovered mirror neurons in the frontal and parietal corte ...
*
Henry L. Roediger III Henry L. "Roddy" Roediger III (born July 24, 1947) is an American psychology researcher in the area of human learning and memory. He rose to prominence for his work on the psychological aspects of False memory syndrome, false memories. Biograph ...
*
Eleanor Rosch Eleanor Rosch (once known as Eleanor Rosch Heider;"Natural Categories", Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 4, No. 3, (May 1973), p. 328. born 1938) is an American psychologist. She is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, s ...
*
David Rumelhart David Everett Rumelhart (June 12, 1942 – March 13, 2011) was an American psychologist who made many contributions to the formal analysis of human cognition, working primarily within the frameworks of mathematical psychology, symbolic artif ...
* Eleanor Saffran *
Daniel Schacter Daniel Lawrence Schacter (born June 17, 1952) is an American psychologist. He is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. His research has focused on psychological and biological aspects of human memory and amnesia, with a particular empha ...
*
Otto Selz Otto is a masculine German given name and a surname. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants ''Audo'', '' Odo'', ''Udo'') of Germanic names beginning in ''aud-'', an element meaning "wealth, prosperity". The name is recorded f ...
*
Roger Shepard Roger Newland Shepard (January 30, 1929 – May 30, 2022) was an American cognitive scientist and author of the " universal law of generalization" (1987). He was considered a father of research on spatial relations. He studied mental rotation, a ...
*
Richard Shiffrin Richard Shiffrin (born March 13, 1942) is an American psychologist, professor of cognitive science in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University, Indiana University, Bloomington. Shiffrin has contributed a number of t ...
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Herbert A. Simon Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American political scientist, with a Ph.D. in political science, whose work also influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary ...
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George Sperling George Sperling (born 1934) is an American cognitive psychologist, researcher, and educator. Sperling documented the existence of iconic memory (one of the sensory memory subtypes). Through several experiments, he showed support for his hypothes ...
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Robert Sternberg Robert J. Sternberg (born December 8, 1949) is an American psychologist and psychometrician. He is Professor of Human Development at Cornell University. Sternberg has a BA from Yale University and a PhD from Stanford University, under advisor ...
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Larry Squire Larry Ryan Squire (born May 4, 1941) is a professor of psychiatry, neurosciences, and psychology at the University of California, San Diego, and a Senior Research Career Scientist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego. He is a leadin ...
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Saul Sternberg Saul Sternberg is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology and former Paul C. Williams Term Professor (1993–1998) at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a pioneer in the field of cognitive psychology in the development of experimental techniques ...
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Anne Treisman Anne Marie Treisman (née Taylor; 27 February 1935 – 9 February 2018) was an English psychologist who specialised in cognitive psychology. Treisman researched visual attention, object perception, and memory. One of her most influential ide ...
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Endel Tulving Endel Tulving (born May 26, 1927) is an Estonian-born Canadian experimental psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist. In his research on human memory he proposed the distinction between semantic and episodic memory. Tulving is a professor emerit ...
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Amos Tversky Amos Nathan Tversky ( he, עמוס טברסקי; March 16, 1937 – June 2, 1996) was an Israeli cognitive and mathematical psychologist and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his ...
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Lev Vygotsky Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (russian: Лев Семёнович Выго́тский, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; be, Леў Сямёнавіч Выго́цкі, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet psychologist, known for his work on ps ...


See also


References


Further reading

* * * * Philip T. Quinlan, Ben Dyson. 2008. ''Cognitive Psychology''. Publisher-Pearson/Prentice Hall. , 9780131298101 * Robert J. Sternberg, Jeffery Scott Mio. 2009. ''Cognitive Psychology''. Publisher-Cengage Learning. , 9780495506294 * Nick Braisby, Angus Gellatly. 2012. ''Cognitive Psychology''. Publisher-Oxford University Press. , 9780199236992


External links

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Cognitive psychology
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cognitive Psychology 1967 introductions Cognition Behavioural sciences