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Cognitive Psychology

Kelly Zhang

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Introduction

How much of it can you memorize in 1 minute? Try it out!

Done? How do you think you did?

In this activity, you made short-term memories and perhaps used your thinking skills or problem-solving skills. These are some of the concepts studied in cognitive psychology.

Cogntive Psychology

  • It is the study of a variety of mental processes, including perception, thinking, memory, attention, language, problem-solving, learning, etc.
  • Believes that mental processes can be objectively studied through rigorous scientific methods such as controlled experiment.
  • Believes that behaviors can be largely explained in terms of how the mind operates.

The Field of Cognitive Psychology

  • Sometimes can think of the mind's operation like a computer: inputting, storing and retireving data.

Brief History of Cognitive Psychology

History

  • From the 1920s to the mid-1950s, Behaviorism was the dominant school of psychology.
  • Behaviorists rejected the idea of studying the mind because they believe mental processes cannot be objectively measured.
  • In the 1960s, cognitive psychology became popular as more research on topics such as memory, attention, and language acquisition began to emerge.
  • This shift was revolutionary as it broadened the scope of psychology from earlier approaches.
  • Nowadays cognitive psychology is one of the most popular branch of psychology and can collaborate with the behaviorist approach quite well

Use of Cognitive Psychology in Psychotherapy

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a common type of talk therapy that came from the cognitive approach.
  • It was invented in the 1960s by American psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck based on his clients with depression.
  • CBT helps a person identify cognitive distortions and replace them with healthy beliefs. Thereby dysfunctional behaviors that are results of the irrational beliefs can be eliminated.
  • Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) is perhaps the predecessor of CBT.

Application in Therapy

  • REBT and CBT are similar in form and goal, but REBT dates back to the 1950s and is now considered to be one of the earliest forms of psychotherapy.
  • Cognitive therapies are commonly used to treat depression, anxiety, phobias, but they can also be used to treat other mental health problems as well.

Ulric Neisser

Neisser is a German-American psychologist who lived from 1928 to 2012. He is considered to be the father of cognitive psychology because he was the first person to present cognitive psychological theories, and he coined the term ‘cognitive psychology’ with his book Cognitive Psychology (1967).

Education

Educational Background

Neisser studied psychology at Harvard University and Swarthmore College. At that time, he was particularly interested in Gestalt psychology and the studies of Wolfgang Kohler. He has received a doctoral degree in experimental psychology from Harvard University in 1956. It was not until 1960 that Neisser began dedicating himself to cognitive psychology.

Study of Perception

Neisser's Study of Perception

Neisser conducted a series of experiments on perception from 1975 to 1979. In one of the experiments, Neisser made the participants watch a video that shows a group of people in white shirts and a group of people in black shirts passing a basketball around from person to person. The participants were asked to count the number of passes being made. In the middle of the video, Neisser overlaid the footage of a woman with an open umbrella, who walked slowly across the screen. Yet few of the participants noticed her. Neisser called this phenomenon selective looking. It represents our ability to focus on elements that are important to us and visually blend everything else into the background.

The video used in Neisser's experiment can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcjnJ1B7N0E

Study of Memory

Neisser's Study of Flashbulb Memory

Brown and Kulik’s theory of flashbulb memories claims that events that produce high emotional arousal may result in vivid and highly accurate memories. Neisser conducted an experiment to test this theory. On January 28, 1986, the day after the space shuttle Challenger exploded, Neisser surveyed college freshmen about their immediate experience after hearing about the explosion, including how they heard the news, where they were, who they were with, and how they felt. Three years later, Neisser conducted the same survey on the same group of students. Roughly 50% of the students recalled the experience differently, among which 25% were very different. Less than 10% of the students had all the correct details, even though the student participants were overall confident in the accuracy of their memory. This experiment challenged the idea that flashbulb memories are highly accurate.

Albert Bandura

Albert Bandura is an influential social cognitive psychologist who lived from 1925 to July 26, 2021. He was born in a Canadian small town where he was given limited education opportunities, but he was later able to find his passion for psychology when he studied at the University of British Columbia. His early work is dedicated to theories of social learning. For example, his Bobo Doll experiment demonstrated observational learning in children.

Self-Efficacy

Theory of Self-Efficacy

Bandura established the concept of self-efficacy. He first pubished his theory of self-efficacy in his 1977 seminal paper "Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change”. He defined self-efficacy as “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations”, which, in simpler words, is a person’s confidence in their ability to be successful in a particular situation. The concept of self-efficacy was since then widely studied by psychologists. Like most other mental processes, how we think about our own ability affect the way we act, especially when it comes to choosing goals and approaching those goals.

Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget was born on August 9, 1896 in Switzerland and lived to 1980. He studied malacology and philosophy at the University of Neuchâtel. After graduation, Piaget soon became interested in psychology. He went to the University of Zürich for one semester, during which he study with Carl Jung and Eugen Bleuler. Then, Piaget spent one year working at Alfred Binet’s Ecole de la rue de la Grange-aux-Belles a boys’ institution. He was intrigued by the reasoning process of these young children, so he conducting studies on them and published his findings in 1921. This paved the way for his most well-known contribution to psychology, the theory of cognitive development.

Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget believes that children are not less intelligent than adults; they just think differently. His theory of cogntive development separated children's intellectual growth into four self-oriented stages.

Sensorimotor Stage

Sensorimotor Stage

0 to 2-year-olds would learn with their motor skills (grasping, moving, sucking) and senses. At around 10 months of age, they would learn that objects still exist even when they are out of sight; this is called object permanence.

Preoperational Stage

Preoperational Stage

2 to 7-year-olds would learn language and be able to think with more logic. However, they can not think in concrete terms because they struggle to see the point of view of other people, which is called egocentrism.

Concrete Operational Stage

7 to 11-year-olds start to get rid of egocentrism. They can think logically about concrete events but tend to struggle with abstract concepts.

Formal Operational Stage

Formal operational Stage

12-year-olds or older children would become capable of thinking logically about abstract concepts.

References

References

About Jean Piaget (Invalid Date). Piaget Society. https://piaget.org/about-piaget/

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (Invalid Date). Jean Piaget. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Piaget

Cherry, K. (2020). Albert Bandura’s Influence on the Field of Psychology. Very Well Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/albert-bandura-biography-1925-2795537

Cherry, K. (2022 February 17). Cognitive Psychology. Very Well Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/cognitive-psychology-4157181#toc-history-of-cognitive-psychology.

Freudenfett, F. (2005 October 28). Albert Bandura Psychologist. Photograph. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albert_Bandura_Psychologist.jpg.

McLeod, S. (2020). Cognitive Psychology. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive.html.

The History of Cognitive Psychology (2022 March 7). KlearMinds. https://www.klearminds.com/blog/history-cognitive-behavioural-therapy-cbt/.

Theodore T. (2022 March 1). Ulric Neisser Biography. PracticalPsychology. https://practicalpie.com/ulric-neisser/.

Ulric Neisser (2012). Photograph. Emory Magazine. https://www.emory.edu/EMORY_MAGAZINE/issues/2012/spring/register/tribute-neisser/index.html.

Space Shuttle Challenger Explodes Shortly After Take-off (1986 January 28). Photograph. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster

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