INTRODUCTION TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

How does memory work? How do we understand language, and produce it so that others can understand? How do we perceive our environment?

 How do we infer from patterns of light or sound the presence of objects in our environment, and their properties? How do we reason, and solve problems? How do we think? These are some of the foundational questions that cognitive psychology examines.

They are foundational partly because each concerns the nature of a basic psychological ability, abilities that we often take for granted, yet which are vital to our normal, healthy functioning and are key to our understanding of what it meansto be human.

 And they are foundational partly because they are important for psychology as a whole, and not just cognitive psychology. 

For instance, how can we hope to understand completely the behaviour of employeesin an organization unless we first understand their perceptions and memories, and how they reason and attempt to solve problems?

 How can we understand the way in which people interact to shape one another’s opinions if we do not understand how people understand and process language, and how they make judgements?

 In this post, we try to answer the question ‘What is cognitive psychology?’ and, in so doing, outline some of the foundational assumptions that cognitive psychologists tend to make, as well as some of the reasons why it is such an important and fascinating subject – not least the fact that it raises many deep and important questions concerning the mind. 

We consider some of the issues that have attracted and continue to attract the interest of cognitive psychologists, and some of the assumptions they make in order to develop models and theories.

 We also consider the cognitive approach in general and the kinds of explanation cognitive psychologists favour.

 We touch upon the relations between cognitive psychology and other sub-disciplines of psychology, and those between cognitive psychology and other disciplines (such as philosophy, computing, and linguistics).

 There are many substantial issues that we only touch on – it is not easy to define the relationship between two academic disciplines, for example – and so we only hope to convey something of their flavour here.