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.
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