Cognitive Psychology

Many contemporary psychologists would describe themselves as cognitive psychologists. This reflects not only the fact that cognitive psychology is currently the dominant approach within academic psychology, but also the increasing vagueness of the term cognitive. After all, if the cognitive approach is seen to dominate, it is not surprising that many different types of psychologists want to identify themselves with it. However, it is probably fair to say that mainstream cognitive psychology is most closely related to what used to be called experimental psychology. The core components of mainstream cognitive psychology are memory, attention, psycholinguistics, thinking, and reasoning.

The word cognition comes from the Latin cognoscere, which means to apprehend. According to Chambers English Dictionary, to apprehend means to be conscious of by the senses; to lay hold of by the intellect; to catch the meaning of; to understand; to recognize; to consider.  Increasingly, however, it is recognized that cognitive psychologists must take into account the effects of motivation, emotion, and a range of other psychological factors. So why not just say that cognitive psychology is synonymous with psychology as a whole? The main reason is that cognitive psychology is characterized by a particular approach to its subject matter: the information-processing approach. This approach views mental events in terms of information flow. It implies a somewhat mechanistic view of the mind, which is seen as being enormously flexible and adaptive but nevertheless as a rule-governed automaton. Information-processing models of cognitive processes are often represented as flowcharts. Flowcharts highlight the often implicit assumption that mental operations occur in a clear sequence. Early cognitive models tended to assume that each component (each of the boxes in the flowcharts) had to complete its processing before passing on the results to the next component (via the arrows). This serial processing assumption is increasingly questioned and contrasted with parallel processing models. 

Early cognitive theories also tended to assume that stimuli impinge on a passive organism and are processed in a fairly automatic manner. In fact it is easy to demonstrate that the expectations of the organism influence what is perceived and remembered. This is an example of what is known as a top-down influence on processing (because it originates at a "higher" level within the cognitive system), in contrast to the stimulus-driven or bottom-up influences emphasized by early theories. Cognitive processes often involve complex interplays of both top-down and bottom-up processes. At the heart of cognitive psychology is the notion that cognition involves processes acting on and transforming symbolic representations in ways that allow the organism to model the external world internally. This internal model is based on the interaction between stimulus information from the senses and what we already believe about the way the world operates.