https://byjus.com/biology/neurons/
Cognitive psychology involves the study of internal mental processes—all of the things
that go on inside your brain, including perception, thinking, memory, attention,
language, problem-solving, and learning (Cherry, K., 2019). While it is a relatively young
branch in psychology, it has quickly grown to become one of the most popular subfields.
Cognition Definition: Co (together) + gnoscere (to know) = coming to know.
Cognitive Psychology is the science of how the brain processes information and
generates your illusion of reality.
Scientific Study of Information Processing...
Scientific study: This means that it is based on the experimental method, empirical,
scientific method.
Human information processing: People sometimes operate as information processors.
Information that comes from the environment is stored briefly. Some are selected for
additional processing, something is done to it, and it may result in some additional
behavior.
Why do we study it?
Theoretical reasons - to learn more about the processes that underlie our ability to
represent information about the world in memory, how language works, and how we
solve problems, how we learn things, etc
Practical reasons - to develop better human-machine interfaces, develop improved
teaching methods, understand where things like stereotypes come from, etc.
Key Persons in Cognitive Psychology
The First Cognitive Psychologists
Donders (1868)
Mental chronometry
Measuring how long a cognitive process takes
He conducted Reaction-time (RT) experiments, where he measured the interval
between stimulus presentation and person’s response to the stimulus.
Simple RT task: participant pushes a button quickly after a light appears
Choice RT task: participant pushes one button if the light is on the right side, another
if light is on left side
A modern version of Donders’ (1868) reaction-time experiment: (a) the simple
reaction-time task; and (b) the choice reaction-time task.
Choice RT – Simple RT = Time to make a decision
Choice RT = 1/10th sec longer than Simple RT
1/10th sec to make decision
Mental responses cannot be measured directly but can be inferred from the
participant’s behavior.
Helmholtz (~ the 1860s)
Unconscious inference
Some of our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions we make about
the environment
We infer much of what we know about the world
Ebbinghaus (1885)
In his experiment, he read a list of nonsense syllables aloud many times to determine
the number of repetitions necessary to repeat the list without errors
After some time, he relearned the list. He found that short intervals equate to fewer
repetitions to relearn.
He also learned many different lists at many different retention intervals
Savings = [(initial repetitions) – (relearning repetitions)] / (initial repetitions)
Wundt (1897)
He developed the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig, Germany
He conducted reaction time experiments
His approach was Structuralism: experience is determined by combining elements of
experience called sensations
And his method is Analytic introspection: participants trained to describe experiences
and thought processes in response to stimuli
With all these studies/experiments, John Watson noted two problems.


Extremely variable results from person to person
Results difficult to verify --- Invisible inner mental
processes
The studies conducted by Watson led to the rise of Behaviorism. In the next section, let
us look at what led to the rise (and the eventual fall) of behaviorism.
The Rise of Behaviorism
The following events led to the emergence of Behaviorism as a field

Watson (1920) – “Little Albert” experiment
o Behavior can be analyzed without any reference to the mind
o Examined how pairing one stimulus with another affected behavior
Pavlov’s famous experiment paired ringing a bell with presentation of food. Initially, only
presentation of the food caused the dog to salivate, but after a number of pairings of bell and
food, the bell alone caused salivation. This principle of learning by pairing, which came to be
called classical conditioning, was the basis of Watson’s “Little Albert” experiment.
Skinner (1950s)


Interested in determining the relationship between stimuli and response
Operant conditioning
o Shape behavior by rewards or punishments
o Behavior that is rewarded is more likely to be repeated
o Behavior that is punished is less likely to be repeated
The Decline of Behaviorism
It started with the controversy over language acquisition

Skinner (1957)
o Argued children learn language through operant conditioning
 Children imitate speech they hear
 Correct speech is rewarded

Chomsky (1959)
o Argued children do not only learn language through imitation and
reinforcement
 Children say things they have never heard and can not
be imitating
 Children say things that are incorrect and have not been
rewarded for
o Language must be determined by inborn biological program
o The Misbehavior of Organisms (1961)
 Attempts to condition animal behavior did not work

Tolman (1938)
o Tolman (1938) trained rats to find food in a four-armed maze
o Two competing interpretations:
 Behaviorism predicts that the rats learned to “turn right to
find food”
 Tolman believed that the rats had created a cognitive
map of the maze and were navigating to a specific arm
o What happens when the rats are placed in a different arm of the
maze?
o The rats navigated to the specific arm where they previously found
food
 Supported Tolman’s interpretation
 Did not support behaviorism interpretation
he Rise of Cognitive Psychology
There was a shift from behaviorist’s stimulus-response relationships to an approach that
attempts to explain behavior in terms of the mind. One approach that emerged was the
information processing approach.

Information-processing approach
o A way to study the mind created from insights associated with the
digital computer
Models of the Mind: Introduction of Digital Computer

Flow Diagrams for the Mind
o Rise of the Information Processing Metaphor
o Broadbent’s flow diagram depicted the mind as processing
information in a sequences of stages
o Information processing models conceive of cognitive activities as
involving a series of steps, procedures, or processes that take time
(e.g., 1/10 second)

Early computers (1950s)
o Processed information in stages


How much information can the mind absorb?
Attend to just some of the incoming information?
Cherry (1953)
He conducted experiments regarding how information are filtered and
absorbed by our minds.




Dichotic listening
Present message A in left ear
Present message B in right ear
To ensure attention, shadow one message
o
Participants were able to focus only on the message they were shadowing
Broadbent (1958)


Flow diagram representing what happens as a person directs attention to one
stimulus
Unattended information does not pass through the filter
When Ulric Neisser (1967) published the "Cognitive Psychology", this marked the official
beginning of the cognitive approach.
The Cognitive Revolution
Cognitive psychology became of great importance in the mid-1950s. Several factors
were important in this:
1. Dissatisfaction with the behaviorist approach in its simple emphasis on external behavior
rather than internal processes.
2. The development of better experimental methods.
3. Comparison between human and computer processing of information
The emphasis of psychology shifted away from the study of conditioned
behavior and psychoanalytical notions about the study of the mind, towards the
understanding of human information processing, using strict and rigorous laboratory
investigation.