The Rise of the Cognitive Perspective

Rise of the Cognitive Perspective

Throughout the history of modern psychology there has been no greater breakthrough than the development of the cognitive perspective. From the beginning of the late 1950’s, the cognitive perspective has dominated all other forms of psychology, but to better understand why this perspective rose so quickly one must first understand what it is. The cognitive perspective can best be described as a genre of psychology “concerned with how people acquire, store, transform, use and communicate information.” Its rise in popularity and usage can be best attributed to four main historical and cultural factors: it was the first challenge to the learning perspective, the beginning of World War II, the computer and information process model, and brain scan technology.

The most prominent and important reason why the cognitive perspective rose was because it was the first challenge against the, although very important but very flawed, learning perspective; used before. The learning perspective did not provide an account for all aspects of human behavior. To them conscious thought and mental processes were irrelevant, all that mattered was what was taught to them. There way of measuring mental processes was called the Stimulus-Response Theory. In this method they would reduce all responses to associations; if one did something good, it/he/she was given a treat and it/he/she would do it again, but if it/he/she did something bad it/he/she was reprimanded and it/he/she would not do it again. Although this theory is very important it mostly applies to animals rather than humans. The Cognitive perspective, on the other hand, gives a deeper insight in to what really happens in one’s mind. It takes into account what the person really is thinking. It says that the way people behave is affected by the way they understand the situation. The cognitive perspective’s concept was- we must focus on concepts and how they are learned- where as the learning perspective’s concept was that of the exact opposite -if we can’t see it, we can’t measure it; which is another factor which will be discussed later.

Another reason why the cognitive perspective rose to prominence was the beginning of the Second World War. Prior to WWII, psychologist viewed human performance as mechanic, they were supposed to do what they are told unless some malfunction occurred; yet they couldn’t explain why many failed in doing there task despite the apparent motivation to do so. For example, why would pilots voluntarily crash their planes into the ground even though there were no computer failures? Psychologist had to analyze the fact that even though there were no problems, the pilots saw something in there way and they tried to shift directions to avoid the object. This caused them to believe that humans were actually information processors; they saw a hindrance in there way by there senses which went to short term memory then to long term and then cause them to respond by changing the planes direction, accidentally hitting the ground. This theory was the foundation of the Cognitive perspective. Still an even more important reason how WWII helped develop the cognitive perspective was that during this time there were many advancements in technology. At this time people want to further all there technology to be able to “defeat the enemy”. Because of this the creation of the computer soon came about, which leads me to my next point.

The creation of the computer was just one more factor that contributed to the rise of the cognitive perspective. The computer gave the cognitive philosophic terminology and metaphor it needed to better explain the human mind. It was the first way that psychologist were able to determine how the mind works. By this invention psychologist were able to create the Information Process Model. The IPM was a paradigm of how we, as humans, process information, similar to the way the computer does. Our senses pick up on our surroundings