-By Timothy Lyons
Cognitive psychology is the study of thinking, memory and learning. These internal verbal processes are used in how people communicate to themselves. This is the area of study that includes how we problem solve and even speak to ourselves and others. One of the ideas behind this field is that the human mind can be likened to a computer and described in such a way as well. In this way the mind can be studied like a computer which processes information. The mind can then be described and looked at through the schema of a modern processor. The result is that the understanding of the mind is based on the mutual ideas that all thought processes are alike.
Cognitive psychology
One of the forerunners of Cognitive psychology was Ulric Neisser. He is sometimes called the father of cognitive psychology. In 1967 he published his book called Cognitive Psychology. He defined cognition as any process that is used to input sensory information.IN this case the definition of cognitive psychology would refer to the study of any process that by which a person uses this information. This would include remembering, storing, using, and recovering data that is put into the human mind. It is primarily concerned with the study of attention, memory, perception and language.
Another well-known cognitive psychologist is Aaron Beck. His study of cognition lead to the clinical application of cognitive therapy. Beck is thought of as the father of cognitive therapy. He believed that pathologies should be treated with therapy or in combination with psychopharmacology rather than with medicine alone.
Some of the applications that have occurred as a result of cognitive psychology are mnemonics or improving memory, the study of education and how to improve learning or even making decisions that are more in line with objective goals and ideals.
One of the reasons that cognitive psychology came about was as a result of the dissatisfaction with the behavioral model which eschewed thoughts which were believed not to be measurable and therefore not worth studying. Cognitive Psychology believed differently. It was thought that if behavior could be measured, so could thoughts and internal processes. They attempted to devise experiments through the scientific method that could gather and study information about internal action that had previously been believed unobtainable.