Cognitive Psychology Is the Study of How

Cognitive psychology is the study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information.

Cognitive psychology was shaped by several milestones but four of its most significant transitions that I will focus on are: Functionalism, Behaviorism, Psychobiology, and Computer Engineering (including Artificial Intelligence (AI)).

Functionalism: Functionalism was a popular approach to the first school of psychology, Structuralism, that sought to understand that structure of the mind and its perceptions by breaking those down into elemental pieces. The perception of a flower, for instance, was studied by analyzing the constituent colors, geometric forms, size relationship, and so forth.

Functionalism, on the other hand, insisted that it was the process of the mind - the way the mind operated these thoughts and perceptions - that was more important than studying the structure of these thoughts. Functionalism, in other words, sought to understand why the mind acted the way it did rather than to study the structural contents and elements of the mind.

Structuralism segued into Pragmatism which believed that knowledge should be instrumental -- should be used as a means to an end. The writings of William James (a pioneer of pragmatism) on cognitive concepts such as attention, consciousness, and perception are still used by cognitive psychologists today. John Dewy was another major influence on the discipline, primarily remembered for his pragmatic approach to thinking and education.

3. Behaviorism: Behaviorism developed as an extension of Associationism (i.e., a school of psychology that examined how events or ideas can become mentally associated with one another to result in learning).

Behaviorism propounded that learning ensues from the environment. Skeptical of introspection, and other mental acts, behaviorism insisted that all human conduit is a form of stimulus-response, in other words that it is the environment (or environmental stimulus) that shapes human behavior. Psychology, therefore, should focus only on the relationship between observable behavior, on the one hand, and environmental influences, on the other. Behaviorism initiated as a result of Pavlov's experiment on salivation that led to classical conditioning. Extreme behaviorists, famously Watson and Skinner, introduced other concepts that included reinforcement and modeling. It was behaviorism that shifted the loci for experimental research from humans to laboratory animals, particularly to rats, in the assumption that these animals allow for greater control of relationships between the environment and consequent behavior.

3. Psychobiology: Pioneered by Lashley, who believed that the human brain was an active dynamic organizer of behavior, and Hebb, who structured the theory that thinking worked through firing of related cell assemblies, focus turned to the human brain as manipulator of thinking and related constructs. Chomsky destroyed Skinner's concept of environment promoting language, by demonstrating that language is a biological construct (innate rather than environmentally determined).