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ID: 3
Posted on: 2012-08-03 07:07:07

Title: Evolution of Cognitive Psychology as a Discipline

Type: Argumentative Essay
Theme: Evolution of Cognitive Psychology as a Discipline
Author: The author is hidden!
School: Saunders Secondary School
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City: London, Ontario
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Evolution of Cognitive Psychology as a Discipline

This paper will cover cognition and what it means; this paper will also look at interdisciplinary perspective as it relates to cognitive psychology. Then the paper will describe the emergence of cognitive psychology as a discipline. And last the paper will assess the effects of the decline of behaviorism on the discipline of cognitive psychology. Hopefully once every one is done reading the paper they will have a better understanding of cognitive psychology.
Cognition
Cognition is typically referred to as the procedure of obtaining, retaining, using and applying information or knowledge. It can sometimes be defined as the science of knowing. Cognition “refers to all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used” (Neisser, 1967). When defined broadly, cognition includes the processing of emotions; however, if defined narrowly, it excludes emotion processing. Cognition includes all the mental processes. For example, attaining knowledge and understanding, thinking, remembering, assuming, perceiving, judging and even analytical problem-solving are all part of cognition. Given such a comprehensive definition, it is evident that cognition is concerned in everything a human being might probably do; every psychological experience is a cognitive experience. However, although cognitive psychology is related to all human activity rather than a few segments of it, the apprehension is that it is from a specific point of view yet other viewpoints are evenly justifiable and essential.
The Interdisciplinary Perspective & Emergence of Cognitive Psychology
As well as being part of psychology as a whole, cognitive psychology is also part of the more general interdisciplinary subject of cognitive science. Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of psyche and intellect. It embraces a number of fields such as philosophy, artificial intelligence, psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, and anthropology. These other disciplines have had a large influence on cognitive psychology as did cognitive psychology have on them. Behaviorism was the leading approach within psychology, however couldn’t explain the acquisition and use of language. Noam Chomsky revolutionized the field of linguistics with his ideas and was extremely influential in questioning simple and one-dimensional behaviorist clarification of language behavior. “Philosophical issues such as the nature of mind and consciousness have taxed great thinkers for centuries. Clearly, such issues cannot be avoided in cognitive psychology” (Eysenck & Keane, 2000). Understanding the emergence of cognitive psychology as the dominant approach in psychology comes after a history of psychology. Modern psychology is a young science. Like most sciences, it has not steadily developed into a single path but branched out into numerous subdivisions; cognitive psychology was one of them. The field of psychology has seen remarkable shifts in what are considered significant and vital fields of study and which is the best and most precise way and procedure to study why people behave in the way they do. These remarkable shifts have been referred to as ‘paradigm shifts', where the word paradigm refers to a unified and accepted method of study (Clark & Grush, 1999). There are number of events and occasions that sparked the emergence of cognitive psychology. Broadbent and a group of psychologists were brought in by the military to advice the engineers on how to create a panel that would improve the flying and performance with the numbers and buttons on their dashboard. This is when psychologist began to dig deeper into the open behaviors to apply this new improvement. During that time, there was a series of discovers and studies in the field on cognitive psychology. In 1966, George miller discovered a law for short term memory. His dedicated research on the human abilities on short-term memory is the reason we have seven digit phone numbers. Miller found that the majority of people could remember between 5 and 9 items when they faced them at one. That magic number is seven (plus or minus two). Miller's work was important in the emerging of cognitive psychology as it showed that there was a law for short-term information storage, and consequently mental processes too.
The Decline of Behaviorism
In the first half of the 20th century, behaviorism ruled the psychological field. However, in the mid-1950s, cognitive behavior re-emerged as psychologists and researchers in several fields began to develop concrete theories about the human mind and its complexity. Slowly, behaviorism declined even further in the 1960s and Cognitive psychology became predominant. “Despite finding a strong correlation between the overall number of lesions made to the brain and the number of errors made in the maze, he failed to find any particular region where memory for the maze might be localized” (Baars,1986). His finally conclusion stated that the memory of the mazes was scattered throughout the brain. “Lashley's work was seen as a departure from the behaviorist’s reluctance to consider internal processes, such as memory” (Baars,1986). Another major leap for cognitive psychology was the book of Ulric Neisser, which market a leap for the field. Although the dominance of behaviorism during the first half of the 20th-century left a lasting mark on psychology, its failure to consider that internal mental of people was a major part of its decline, yet it still continues to play a role in psychology.
Conclusion
Cognitive psychology is one of the most dominant fields of study and is one of the most diverse disciplines of psychology because it touches a number of different fields and subtypes of psychology. To name a few professions that may benefit from cognitive psychology are educators and individuals interested in the process of learning and understanding children’s way of learning better or even developing curriculums that can take learning to another level. Of course, the most obvious professions are scientists but as discussed above in the World War example, engineers, designers and architects can also benefit from understanding the way humans think and how they mentally process information.

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