Seminar 5

Cognitive theory as a study of mental processes

What is Cognitive Psychology?

Today, cognitive psychology occupies a strong position among the directions of psychology
and has many different definitions and descriptions as a promising and young direction. The
formal beginning of cognitive psychology is September 11, 1956, when a special group of the
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, dealing with information theory, gathered
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is believed that this meeting marked the
beginning of a cognitive revolution in psychology. Cognitive psychology is the product of
advances in psychology in related technical disciplines such as engineering psychology.

In modern psychological science, cognitive psychology is understood as a psychology

focused on the study of cognitive (cognitive) processes of the psyche of humans and animals;
explores and studies such processes as attention, memory, imagination, perception, speech,
logical thinking, problem solving processes, human and artificial intelligence, and so on - that
is, everything related to the acquisition, structuring, use and reproduction of information.
All cognitive processes are involved at different stages of receiving, storing and reproducing
the information received. Cognitive processes are considered as functions of the human
psyche, which performs operations related to receiving, storing, processing and issuing
information, that is, cognitive psychology examines and studies the process of processing
information into knowledge, the process of forming concepts and associations.
Scientists draw an analogy between the work of the human brain and the work of a computer.
Psychologists have even borrowed the term "information processing" and use it successfully
in their scientific psychological works. Thus, cognitive psychology is based on the idea of a
person as a system that searches for information about objects and events of the surrounding
world, as well as processes and stores incoming information.

At the same time, individual cognitive processes ensure the implementation of different
stages of information processing. It is assumed that information is processed in stages, and at
each stage and stage of processing, it stays for a certain time and is presented in a different
form.
The basic idea of cognitive psychology boils down to the fact that all knowledge acquired by
a person is converted into schemes or so-called templates, which are stored in memory and
retrieved from there as needed. Creating a template allows you to speed up the response to a
subsequent similar impact. However, these are not static schemes, but dynamic ones, and
they change due to the fact that a person receives new knowledge, since cognitive activity
occurs continuously. After all, it is knowledge that allows you to gain experience from a
situation or make the right decision. Thus, new schemes appear and old ones are updated.
From this position, the main task of cognitive psychology is to find the most effective and
natural methods of work of the psyche for receiving and processing information. In
accordance with this task, the goal of cognitive psychology is to understand and model the
processes of cognition, to formulate the algorithm for the work of brain functions.

Cognitive psychology methods

The cognitive approach in psychology is scientific, therefore it needs an accurate research

method - a laboratory experiment, which is the main method of the cognitive approach.
A laboratory experiment is a type of experiment that is carried out under artificially created
conditions in a scientific laboratory; characterized by isolation of ongoing research from real
life.
A laboratory experiment allows you to explore the basics of perception, memory, attention,
ways of building a cognitive picture of the world. The determining factor is the fact that the
cognitive structure of a person should not be in a disharmonious state. But if this happens, a
person seeks to direct maximum efforts to change this state until a balance and harmony of
mental processes is achieved.
To conduct a laboratory experiment, certain conditions must be met:

Preliminary setting of goals, tasks of a laboratory experiment, formulation of research

hypotheses, definition of the object and subject of research, as well as the formation of a
sample of subjects.
Familiarization with the subjects should be carried out even before the start of the laboratory
experiment.
A well-developed experimental methodology is required: prepare material for research, for
example, cards for memorizing objects.
The place of the experiment should be equipped with everything necessary, the
circumstances in which the experiment will be carried out, the form of its conduct: joint
group or individual, are thought out.
The experimenter must give instructions to the subjects before starting the experiment, since
a laboratory cognitive experiment presupposes standards for its conduct, therefore, the
research instruction must not be distorted.
In the course of the study, it is not recommended to pay attention to the mistakes made or to
comment on what is happening, if this is not required by the instructions, since the
experimenter can influence the results of the study.
To monitor the emotional and physical state of a person, to note physiological reactions,
features of behavior: in case of excessive fatigue of the subject, his excessive excitement, it is
recommended to interrupt the experiment and conduct it another time.
What is cognitive psychology for?

Thus, cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology that studies cognitive processes using
various methods and techniques, and also has a theoretical and practical basis. The basic
premise of cognitive psychology is that the basic components of mental processes can be
identified using scientific methods, and the internal processes of the psyche can be described
using rules or algorithms used in information processing models and in artificial intelligence
models. This premise lies at the heart of the cognitive approach.

Concept and brief history of cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychological science that studies the cognitive

processes of the human psyche. Research based on the cognitive approach in psychology is
focused on the study of feelings, attention, memory, imagination, logical thinking,
presentation of information, the ability to make decisions. In fact, this is a whole concept
focused on the activity of consciousness and the process of cognition.

Cognitive psychology examines the process of obtaining information about the world by a
person, how it appears to him, how it is stored in memory and becomes knowledge, as well as
how this knowledge affects not the behavior and attention of a person. This direction
concerns the entire range of mental processes, starting with sensations and ending with
perception, attention, learning, pattern recognition, memory, and the formation of concepts.
It concerns thinking, language, memorization, imagination, emotion and developmental
processes, as well as all possible behavioral domains.
This direction appeared in the 50s of the XX century in the United States. Although, of
course, attempts were made to study the problems of consciousness before. Even ancient
philosophers asked questions about where thoughts and memory are located. For example, in
ancient Egypt, they believed that they are located in the heart. This idea was supported by
Aristotle. However, Plato believed that the place of their storage was the brain. Without
going into details, we can say that people showed great interest in the problem of
consciousness hundreds of years before cognitive psychology developed into a scientific
direction.
Considerable merit in the development of cognitive science belongs to such famous
philosophers as Immanuel Kant, David Hume and René Descartes. Thus, Descartes's theory
of mental structure eventually became a method for studying the psyche. Hume's work
contributed to the establishment of the laws of association of ideas and the classification of
mental processes. And Kant pointed out that the mind is a structure, and experience is the
facts that fill this structure. But, naturally, it is wrong to believe that only these people should
be thanked for the development of cognitive psychology. The activities of scientists from
other fields also played a huge role.
One of the people who influenced the formation of cognitive psychology more seriously is
the German psychologist and physiologist Wilhelm Wundt, because he repeatedly said that
consciousness has creative potential. Later, this topic partially developed in functionalism
and structuralism, and only with the emergence of behaviorism, which focused not on
consciousness, but on behavior, at the beginning of the twentieth century, interest in it faded
out for almost half a century.
But already in the 1950s, a new stage in the development of cognitive science began. One of
the pioneers of the movement was the American psychologist Edward Tolman. He pointed
out the importance of looking at cognitive variables and contributed to the rejection of the
stimulus-response approach in behaviorism. However, the most significant contribution to
the formation of the approach was made by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who studied
child psychology, focusing on the stage of cognitive development. And even despite the fact
that Piaget's work was devoted mainly to child psychology, the range of applicability of the
cognitive approach has expanded significantly, and Piaget himself received the award for
Outstanding Contribution to the Development of Science.

In the 1970s, cognitive psychology began to emerge more and more as a separate field of
research and therapeutic practice. Many of its provisions became the basis of
psycholinguistics, and its findings began to be used in other branches of psychological
science, such as educational psychology, personality psychology and social psychology.
Currently, cognitive psychology is largely based on analogies between the mechanisms of
human cognition and the transformation of information in computing devices. (And this
despite the fact that its foundations were laid before cybernetics and complex computing and
information technology appeared.)

The most common concept is that the psyche is represented by a device that has a fixed
ability to transform the received signals. Internal cognitive schemes and activities of the
organism involved in the process of cognition are of primary importance in it. The human
cognitive system is considered as a system with devices for input, storage and output of data,
taking into account its throughput potential. And the basic metaphor of cognitive psychology
is a computer metaphor, according to which the work of the human brain is similar to the
work of the computer's processor.

For those who are interested in the representatives of cognitive psychology, let us give their
names. These are Boris Velichkovsky, George Sperling, Robert Solso, Karl Pribram, Jerome
Bruner, George Miller, Ulrik Neisser, Allen Newell, Simon Herbert and some others. At the
end of the article, we will also provide a small list of books by some of these authors. Now
the main ideas of cognitive science are of the greatest interest to us.

But given the seriousness of the topic and the physical impossibility of talking about
everything in one article, it will not be superfluous if you take the time to watch an hour and a
half video. This is a transcript of the lecture “What is cognitive psychology, where did it
come from and where is it going” by Maria Falikman, Doctor of Psychology, Senior
Research Fellow at the Center for Cognitive Research, Faculty of Philology, Moscow State
University. However, you can watch it at the end of the article or at any suitable time.
If we talk about the relevance of cognitive science in general, then it is in demand by
specialists who study the features and mechanisms of not only perception, memory, attention
and speech, but also the formation of judgments, decision-making, problem solving, the work
of the intellect and many other issues.

Considering that cognitive psychology concerns some other sciences, its study is required for
people working in completely different fields. It is of interest to neurologists, linguists,
educators, teachers, engineers, artists, scientists, designers, architects, educational developers,
artificial intelligence specialists, etc.

Cognitive psychology and its representatives have played a huge role in understanding the
laws of the entire process of cognition and its individual mechanisms. The activity of
cognitive scientists contributed to the development of personality psychology, psychology of
emotions and developmental psychology, made a significant contribution to research on the
ecology of perception and the study of social cognitions.

These are, in general terms, the foundations of cognitive psychotherapy and cognitive
psychology.