Definition and scope of Cognitive Psychology

The word ‘cognition’ is derived from the Latin word cognoscere, meaning “to know”
or “to come to know”. Thus, cognition includes the activities and processes concerned with the
acquisition, storage, retrieval and processing of knowledge. In other words, it might include
the processes that help us to perceive, attend, remember, think, categorize, reason, decide, and
so on. Cognitive psychology, as the name suggests, is that branch of psychology that deals with
cognitive mental processes.
Sternberg (1999) defined Cognitive psychology as that which deals with how people
perceive, learn, remember, and think about information.” In 2005, Solso gave another
definition of Cognitive psychology as the study of processes underlying mental events. In
general, Cognitive psychology can thus be defines as that branch of psychology that is
concerned with how people acquire, store, transform, use and communicate language. The
cognitive psychologists study the various cognitive processes that make up this branch. These
processes include attention, the process through which we focus on some stimulus; perception,
the process through which we interpret sensory information; pattern recognition, the process
through which we classify stimuli into known categories; and memory, the process through
which information is stored for later retrieval, and so on.
Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that studies mental processes such
as how people think, perceive, remember and learn. In other words, cognitive psychology
alarms how people diagnose, realize, perceive, evaluate and consider/think.
Cognition factually means “knowing”. In other words, psychologists from this method
study cognition which is the psychological act or procedure by which information is learned.
Cognitive psychology involves experimentation. It examines internal mental procedure such
as problem solving, memory, and language. Cognitive psychology is the subdiscipline of
psychology, It is a comparatively early branch of mindset that became a chief force throughout
the “cognitive revolution” of 1960s & 1970s.
Broad Definition: Empirical Investigation of mental events and knowledge involved
in recognizing an object, remembering a name, having an idea, understanding a sentence and
solving problems.
Scientific Definition: The empirical investigation of mental processes used in
perceiving, remembering, thinking and the acting of using these processes.
Cognitive psychology is not only centered to everything what happens in everyday life,
it is even central to psychologist's quest to understand how of the behaviour. The scope of
cognitive psychology could be understood by understanding its sub disciplines and the work
done in it.
1. Social Psychologists: Social psychologists try to investigate the mental processes involved
in thinking about others.

2. Clinical Psychologists: Clinical psychologists investigate the role that mental processes play
in psychopathology.

3. Developmental Psychologists: Developmental psychologists’ study about the ways that

cognitive processes change throughout the life span.

4. Neuropsychologists: Cognitive psychology is also related with neuropsychology, in which

neuropsychologists try to understand the association between mental processing and brain
activity.

5. Organizational Psychologists: Cognitive psychology plays its role in industrial or

organizational set up where in organizational psychologists are insisted to know how cognitive
processes such as remembering and decision making strategies work out in organizational or
industrial workplace.

SCOPE of Cognitive Psychology:

The scope of cognitive psychology could be assumed by realizing its sub disciplines
and the effort or the work done on it.
1. Social/Communal Psychologists:
Social psychologists try to examine the mental process involved in thinking about other
persons.
2. Scientific Psychologists:
Clinical psychologists inspect the role that mental practice play in psychopathology.
3. Developmental Psychologists:
Developmental psychologists examine about the ways that cognitive procedure amend
throughout the life time.
4. Neuropsychologists:
Cognitive psychology is also connected with neuropsychology, in which neuropsychologists
stab to understand the connotation between mental dispensation and brain action.
5. Managerial Psychologists:
Cognitive psychology plays its role in manufacturing or structural set up where in
administrative psychologists are maintained to know how cognitive procedure such as
memorizing and decision-making plans work out in administrative or industrial workstation.

History of Cognitive Psychology

 At the beginning of the 21st century, cognitive psychology is a broad field concerned
with memory, perception, attention, pattern recognition, consciousness, neuroscience,
representation of knowledge, cognitive development, language, thinking, and, human and
artificial intelligence. But contemplation about the source of knowledge, how people think,
solve problems, and perceive their world is as ancient as human history and has occupied a
venerated position in the musings of philosophers, theologians, mystics, and scientists for as
long as we can tell. These notions started to be tested empirically during the latter part of the
nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century and became known in the history of
science as cognitive psychology.
The history of cognitive psychology can be parsed into four periods: philosophical,
early experimental, the cognitive revolution, and modern cognitive psychology.
Philosophical Period
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics suggest that thoughtful people were concerned with
processes such as thought, memory, and most of all the “ka”, or soul, Great energy was directed
toward preserving the soul but also some theorized that knowledge was localized in the heart.
Greek philosophers were obsessed with knowledge and cognitive matters and current models
of cognition often have some ties to ancient Greece. Aristotle’s views on the locus of
knowledge were similar to the Egyptians. However, Plato postulated that the brain was the true
locus of knowledge. Renaissance scholars considered thinking, logic, and the nature of the soul
and, although divergent views were expressed, the locus of the knowledge and rationality was
thought to be in the brain.
During the eighteenth century, philosophic debate over the source of knowledge took
place between the empiricist and the nativist. A British empiricist believed knowledge came
from experience. However, the nativist believed knowledge was innate and based on structural
characteristics and properties inherent in the brain. Modern cognitive psychologists continue
to argue these matters, although usually with scientific data.
The philosophic period provided a context for understanding the mind and its processes.
In addition, these early thinkers identified some major theoretical issues that would later be
studied empirically using scientific research methods.
Early Experimental Period
Cognition has been studied scientifically since the end of the nineteenth century. In
1879, the philosophical aspects of mental processes gave way to empirical observations when
Wundt founded the first psychological laboratory in Germany in 1879. Psychology began to
break away from philosophy and form a discipline based on objective science rather than on
speculation, logic, and conjecture. Many forces propelled the break with moral philosophy, but
certainly the development of new methods that allowed for the examination of mental events
changed the way cognition was studied. Introspection, or looking within, was one such method
that allowed the observer to examine consciousness and the structure of mental representation
by breaking down an experience into sensations and images. By detecting patterns within
introspective reports, the mind’s contents were presumed to be revealed.
Theories of knowledge representation became divided between introspectionists who
studied observable sensations, and act psychologists, led by Brentano, who studied the
activities of the mind. Brentano considered internal representations meaningless to psychology
and chose to study mental acts of comparing, judging, and feeling physical objects.
By the beginning of the twentieth century American psychology was beginning to take
a distinctive form with a wide range of topics under investigation. Leading this expanded
experimental psychology was William James, the first president of the American Psychological
Association. His ideas on philosophy, religion, and psychology shaped the intellectual history
of these topics throughout the twentieth century. No less important were his thoughts about
attention and memory, and his distinction of a dichotomy memory store—primary and
secondary memory—led directly to experiments in the 1960s on that topic. Clearly, James’s
ideas were important in shaping modern cognitive psychology.
During this time, American psychologists became interested in educational matters and
were greatly influenced by the objective nature of act psychology. Psychologists such as
Thorndike were concerned with the effects of reward and punishment on learning and less
concerned with consciousness. The introspective technique, in which a subject asks himself
what sensations he might experience, for example, were considered by American psychologists
as being sterile and leading to inconsistent results. There was, argued many, a need for a purely
objective and scientific psychology in which mental processes, such as memory, sensations,
and learning, could be reliably measured. Behaviorism, led by John Watson, was predicated on
the idea that overt behavior could be objectively observed, offered an attractive scientific
approach to psychology, and was an appropriate foil to the rapidly developing interest in psy-
choanalysis.
Despite interest in overt behavior, cognitive process were not totally neglected. During
the early 1900s Donders and Cattell were conducting perception experiments on imageless
thought using brief visual displays to examine the time required for mental operations to take
place and using reaction time data as dependent measures.
 In several laboratories in America interesting research was being done on memory,
attention, perception, language, concept formation, and problem solving that was the preformal
stage of cognitive psychology. In addition to these efforts within psychology, several forces
outside of traditional experimental psychology helped shape cognitive psychology. Among
these forces are the considerable influence of the Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget, whose
central idea was that there are distinctive cognitive stages through which children develop. In
Russia, the brilliant young savant, Lev Vygotsky, suggested a model of development
psychology in which learning precedes development. Another important influence was the
work of Frederic Bartlett, from England, who investigated memory from a naturalistic
viewpoint and was particularly concerned with the remembering of stories. From recall of
stories, Bartlett hypothesized that memory is largely determined by schemata, or the way
knowledge is organized and represented in the brain. Even some animal studies were beginning
to embrace cognitive themes. In 1932, Tolman, a well-known behavioral psychologist,
observed that rats learned a cognitive map of their environment while learning to run a maze.
Although cognition was not the dominant school of psychological thought in America during
this time, some experimental psychologists demonstrated that scientific methodology could be
used in the study of mental events. The techniques, subject matter, procedures, and even the
interpretations used by these researchers anticipated the emergence of a cognitive discipline.
Concepts such as sensation, thinking, and mental imagery were anathema under the
behaviorist’s influence, as they were considered subjective. Internal states were considered
intervening variables and not necessary to understand human behavior. Psychology had been
concentrated on observable behaviors and human subjects were largely replaced with rats and
pigeons.
Gestalt psychology offered an alternative way to study sensory perception to the
problematic method of introspection that diffused the research on cognition. Concurrently the
behaviorists attempted to create a purely objective psychology by successfully attacking the
cognitive psychologists and Gestaltists as well.
Cognitive Revolution
Cognitive psychology began to take form as a new way of understanding the science of
the mind during the late 1950s. These formative events were spurred on by research discoveries
in memory, learning, and attention as well as ideas outside of the mainstay of experimental
psychology, such as communication theory, developmental psychology, social psychology,
linguistics, and computer science, which gave cognitive psychologists additional breadth to
deal with the complexity of human information processing and thinking.
 The reemergence of cognitive psychology during this period is commonly referred to
as the Cognitive Revolution, emerging in 1956 with a conference on communication theory at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Solso, 1998) in which seminal papers were
presented by Noam Chomsky, Jerome Bruner, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon, and George
Miller. The coalescence of cognitive psychology during this period was probably not due to a
single group of people (and certainly no precise date of a movement is possible) but was a
reflection of a larger Zeitgeist in which psychologists appreciated the complexity of the
thinking human. At the same time, cognitive psychologists rejected the traditional, simplistic
theories of the mind, but in many cases held on to the scientific methodology as had developed
in the early part of the twentieth century. The paradigm that offered a pertinent methodology
and embraced a sufficiently wide latitude of intellectual topics was cognitive psychology,
which enjoyed widespread acceptance and growth.
Research in verbal learning and semantic organization led to the development of
testable models of memory and cognition, providing another empirical base for the study of
mental processes. George A. Miller made a distinction between short-term and long-term
memory and his influential paper The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two (Miller, 1956)
addressed the limited capacity of short-term memory and introduced the concept of chunking—
the idea that the limits of short-term memory could be extended by grouping information into
larger units of information. In 1958, Peterson and Peterson in America and John Brown in
England found a rapid loss or decay of memory after the study of nonsense syllables after a
few seconds when verbal rehearsal was absent, thus promoting the idea of a separate stage of
short-term memory. In 1960, Sperling showed that a very transitory memory (or information
storage system) held information for a very brief period of time. This discovery further
advanced the notion that humans were complex information-processing creatures who
processed incoming information through a series of stages. That simple idea was a perfect
model for researchers and theorists interested in memory, and several models appeared about
this time by Atkinson and Shiffrin, Waugh and Norman, and later by Craik and Tulving.
Prior to this period, information theory was introduced by Shannon and Weaver, who
used box diagrams to describe how information is communicated and transformed along a
series of stages. Donald Broadbent, a psychologist at Cambridge, began applying Shannon and
Weaver’s ideas to selective attention processes and introduced the concept of information flow
to psychology and used box diagrams to describe cognitive processes. Broadbent’s information
flow referred to the series of operations that analyze, transform, or change mental events such
as memory encoding, forgetting, thinking, concept formation, etc. As such, Broadbent provided
“a language to talk about what happened inside a man which was not a mentalistic introspective
language” (Cohen, 1986, p. 23).
Elsewhere, technological advances in computer science called for reexamination of
basic postulates of cognition. In 1955, Simon and Newell developed a computer capable of
solving a mathematical proof. Cognitive psychologists were excited that machines could
simulate human thought and computers could possibly be operating according to the same rules
and procedures as the human mind. Furthermore, since computers were seen as intelligent, it
required us to analyze our own intelligence so that the intelligence of a machine could be
determined. As a result the hypothetical Turing test was devised to determine if observers could
discriminate the output of a computer from that of human responses.
Meanwhile, the behaviorists came under attack from Chomsky, a linguist from MIT,
who developed a method of analyzing the structure of language. Chomsky argued that language
was too complicated to learn and produce via behavioral principles of reinforcement and
postulated the existence of a cognitive structure of an innate language acquisition device.
Another influence that aided cognitive psychology’s foothold was World War II.
Financial support in areas of military interest became readily available during the war. Because
of the military’s interest in developing and using new technology, research in vigilance, cre-
ativity, and human factors was encouraged. One outcome was a seminal report in 1954 by
Tanner and Swets on signal detection demonstrating that cognitive processes can have a
mediating effect on sensory thresholds. Another outcome of the war was that many soldiers
suffered from brain injuries. A vast amount of clinical data in perception, memory, and
language was a by-product of these victims’ afflictions.
In the 1950s, interest turned to attention, memory, pattern recognition, images, semantic
organization, language processes, thinking, and even consciousness (the most dogmatically
eschewed concept), as well as other cognitive topics once considered outside the boundary of
experimental psychology. Behaviorism and its dogma failed to account for the richness and
diversity of human experience. Behaviorists could not account for the results found by Piaget’s
and Chomsky’s developmental studies. And information theory and computer science gave
psychologists new ways to conceptualize and discuss cognition.
Modern Cognitive Psychology
By the 1960s, cognitive psychology had experienced a renaissance. Cognitive
Psychology, which systematized the new science, was written by Ulric Neisser and was
published in America (1967). Neisser’s book was central to the solidification of cognitive
psychology as it gave a label to the field and defined the topical areas. Neisser used the
computer metaphor for selecting, storing. Recovering, combining, outputting, and manipu-
lating information. And in 1966 Hilgard and Bower introduced a chapter in their Theories of
Learning (New York) that developed the idea of using computer programs to serve as models
on theories of cognition.
The 1970s saw the emergence of professional journals devoted to cognitive psychology
such as Cognitive Psychology, Cognition, Memory & Cognition, and a series of symposia
volumes, including the Loyola Symposium on Cognition edited by Solso and the Carnegie-
Mellon series edited by Chase and others, based on the Carnegie Symposium on Cognition. In
the 1970s and 1980s cognitive laboratories were beginning to be built, symposia and
conferences appeared at national and regional meetings, courses in cognitive psychology and
related topics were being added to curricula, grants were awarded to people investigating
memory, language processing, attention, and like topics, new textbooks were written on the
theme of cognition, and universities recruited professors of cognitive psychology to replace
those of traditional experimental psychology. In the 1980s and 1990s serious efforts were made
to find corresponding neural components that were linked to cognitive constructs. Thus, the
cerebral location for a word, like hammer, as a noun, might be far different than the location
for the same word if the word were used as a verb. Furthermore, influential memory theories
(such as Tulving’s semantic and episodic memory theory) were manifest in cerebral
localization experiments using brain imaging technology. The science of human cognition is
still undergoing transformation due to major changes in computer technology and brain
science. As a result cognitive psychology has converged with computer science and
neuroscience to create a new discipline called cognitive science.
Finally, with the advent of new ways to see the brain (e.g. functional magnetic
resonance imaging [fMRI], positron emission tomography [PET], electroencephalogram
[EEG]) cognitive psychologists have expanded their operations to neuroscience, which
promises to empirically display the parts of the brain involved in cognition that were
hypothesized by twentieth-century psychologists.
ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
A number of different approaches have been proposed in order to better understand the
field of cognitive psychology. Each of these approaches emphasizes a different aspect and
highlight distinct features underlying the cognitive processes. These methods provide us with
an insight into how the human mind functions by giving us a general idea about the workings
of the basic cognitive processes that we engage in. Broadly, there are four major approaches
that try to explain the various cognitive processes by highlighting the different important
features.
These approaches are: Experimental Cognitive Psychology, Computational Cognitive
Science, Cognitive Neuropsychology, and Cognitive Neuroscience.
Experimental Cognitive Psychology – This approach involves conducting tightly controlled
experiments under laboratory conditions on healthy individuals. It generally includes
experiments that designed in such a way that they might disrupt the cognitive processes and
reveal their workings. The findings obtained through such experiments then lead to formulation
of the theories, which in turn lead to testable claims. For example, a researcher wants to
examine the effect of arousal on reaction time. He uses the experimental approach, and the
reaction time is assessed through a machine where the buttons light up and the time to respond
is measured. The arousal is also assessed through heart rate measurement, under the following
conditions; after rest, after cognitive overload, after exercise, after caffeine, and after both
exercise and caffeine. The results obtained through such experimental methods can thus lead
to formulation of some theories, which later can be tested.
Computational Cognitive Science – This approach involves computational modelling
through the recreation of some of the aspects of human cognition in the form of some computer
program, or formula in order to predict behavior in novel situations. In other words, this
approach basically involves creating computer-based models of human cognitive functions, as
well as some work on artificial intelligence. Usually, there are a number of ways in which a
particular cognitive phenomenon can be modelled. However, there is a lack of a definite
method for relating a computational model’s behavior to human behavior, and thus, It is
extremely difficult, if not impossible, to take every cognitive factor into account when creating
a model (e.g. Do models of language processing take into account the emotional connotations
of particular sentences for particular individuals?).
Cognitive Neuropsychology- This approach to cognition investigates the various cognitive
processes by studying the people who have suffered brain damage, and to find out whether
damage to a particular brain region would result in a specific cognitive impartment. For
example, damage to region X disrupts ability Y, and the people who have lost ability Y also
have problems with ability. Thus, such studies involving people with brain damages help us to
make assertions regarding the healthy brain functions. However, such studies are difficult and
cannot be manipulated according to the wishes of the researcher as it would be unethical to
cause damage to a particular brain region of a person so that its role in a specific cognitive
function can be observed. Also, if a person has suffered damage to several brain areas, then the
interpretation of the resultant findings is difficult.
Cognitive Neuroscience - This approach has gained popularity over the past decade or so, and
involves brain-imaging devices to study cognitive functions. This can help to discover where
these processes occur in the brain, and when. In other words, this approach involves using brain
imaging and brain anatomy to study ‘live’ cognitive functioning in healthy individuals. As the
technology improves, these studies are becoming more influential and potentially useful. Some
of the methods used in the cognitive neuroscientific approach include: Single Unit Recording
Event Related Potentials (ERPs) Positron Emission Tomography (PET) (Functional) Magnetic
Resonance Imaging (fMRI, MRI) Magneto-encephalography (MEG) Transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS) However, these techniques might be of questionable use with high-order
functioning which might not be organized in a concise way. Also, if data from several
individuals is averaged the interpretations become accordingly blunt. Sometimes, when using
these methods, tendency for research to be conducted is just for the sake of research. Papers
can often be lacking any theoretical basis, and result in ad hoc hypotheses. Furthermore,
threshold levels need to be set to disregard noise, and these levels are a debatable issue.