Cognitive Psychology
Essay Preview: Cognitive Psychology
Report this essay
Cognitive psychology is figuring out what makes an individual tick and understanding the internal process of their mind. Cognition literally means “knowing”. In other words, psychologists from his approach study cognition which is the mental act or process by which knowledge is acquired (cognitive psychology). This type of psychology focuses on how we as human process information, and how we react to this information. When studying cognitive psychology it basically means the studying of the mind. Cognitive psychology is one of the most important schools in psychology. This paper is discussing the history and milestones made with cognitive psychology.
William Wundt is the individual who gets the credit for founding modern psychology in 1879 even knowing he was the not the first to publish psychological work. The reason it is told he was the first because Wundt was the first to establish a laboratory just for psychology. In the course book written by Willingham, D.T it states how this is not true. Wundt started his lab in 1879 and William James started a lab in 1875. But it does not count because James used his lab for teaching Wundt did what was necessary to get science going.
In 1913 John Watson Published a paper titled “Psychology as the behaviorist views it”. Watson made it clear in that paper that he plans to overturn psychology. Wundt had train many students who remained introspectionists. Watson challenged their assumptions with his four basic principles of behaviorism. Now Watson was saying, “Throw the mind out the window.” Remember Kants position that mental processes could not be measured, so applying scientific methods to them is impossible? Watson agreed with him! He was saying that introspectionism hadnt made progress because trying to deal with mental processes was hopeless. Instead, psychology should be redefined. It was not a science of mental processes but a science of behavior (Willingham D.T) And psychologist went for behaviorisms.
But in the late 1950s behaviorism began to crumble. It fail because of many reasons but two main were because people started to doubt that behaviorism could do as it had said and it became obvious that deleting mental processing from psychology was hurting more than helping. Thats when the help of cognitive psychology came along.
Edward Tolman is known for his cognitive map. He believed that instead of memorization his experimental rats had formed cognitive maps in order to complete the maze. Tolman proved this by placing the rats in different areas on the maze in which they had not been trained to. B.F. Skinner (1904-1995), is famous for his theory of operant conditioning. Skinner believed that behaviors and languages were learned through reinforcement. He invented the Skinner box in which he measured and controlled animal behavior. He believed that the cognitive revolution was not leaping forward, only