Cognitive Psychology
The scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, and problem-solving, exploring how people acquire, process, and store information.
Cognitive Psychology
How We Think, Learn, and Remember
Cognitive Psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem-solving, creativity, and thinking. It seeks to understand how people acquire, process, and store information.
Unlike behaviorism, which focuses solely on observable behaviors, cognitive psychology "opens the black box" of the mind, attempting to understand the internal mechanisms that drive our actions.
Core Research Areas
- Attention: How do we focus on specific information while filtering out distractions?
- Perception: How do we interpret sensory information to form a meaningful understanding of the world?
- Memory: How do we encode, store, and retrieve information? Different types of memory include sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.
- Language: How do we acquire, understand, and produce language?
- Problem Solving & Decision Making: How do we identify problems, generate solutions, and make choices?
Cognitive Biases: The "Bugs" in Our Software
Despite our sophisticated cognitive abilities, our minds are prone to systematic errors in thinking, known as Cognitive Biases. These are like "bugs" in our mental "software," often leading to irrational decisions and skewed perceptions of reality. For example, Confirmation Bias describes our tendency to favor information that confirms our existing beliefs.
Understanding these biases is a major application of cognitive psychology, helping us to make better decisions and understand human behavior more deeply.
Recommended Reading
- Popular Science:
- (Book) Psychology: A Very Short Introduction by Gillian Butler. (ISBN: 9780199670420)
- (Book) Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. (ISBN: 9780374275631)
- (Book) The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks. (ISBN: 9780060970796)
- Textbooks:
- (Book) Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook by Michael W. Eysenck and Mark T. Keane. (ISBN: 9781138482234)
- Further Reading:
- (Book) Models of My Life by Herbert A. Simon. (ISBN: 9780262691857)