What is Cognitive Psychology?
Cognitive psychology is a point of view in psychology with its own specific journals, researchers, and research programmes. Contrast with other domains in psychology: biological psychology, clinical psychology, educational psychology, evolutionary psychology, experimental psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, and linguistics. Contrast with other theoretical perspectives in psychology: behaviorism, dynamic psychology, introspectivism, Freudian psychology, and pop psychology. The field of cognitive psychology is expansive, but generally starts by looking at how sensory input is transformed into beliefs and actions through the process of cognition. Cognitive psychology has a reputation for being slightly more scientific than other areas of psychology, putting great emphasis on experimentation and verification, and the scientific method in general. Cognitive psychology, in contrast to pop psychology, explicitly dismisses anecdotal introspective evidence as a valid founda
(Press here to return to home page.) Cognitive Psychology deals with how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information. The earliest roots of this study can be traced back to two areas: philosophy and physiology. Philosophy There have been two early schools of thought that are still in debate today. Aristotle led one school of philosophers, the empiricists. Empiricists believe that all knowledge is gained through experience. Plato, in contrast, was a rationalist. He, and his followers, believed that knowledge can only be find through the mind, rather through the corporeal world of the body. By the 1700s, debates about empiricism and rationalism had reached a peak. Then, Immanuel Kant had interests in synthesizing the two schools of thought. He stated that some knowledge, a posteriori knowledge, was gained by experience, while other knowledge, a priori knowledge, was innate. Although the debates were not completely settled, Kants synthesis have impacted greatly on a new
