Cognitve Psychology

Cognitive psychology deals with the mental processes like memory and problem solving. It is also concerned with internal processes such as attention, perception, thinking, reasoning and language. However in the past these processes were studied by means of laboratory tasks, however it has become clear that the cognitive approach is very useful when understanding developmental issues, social functioning and treatment of many mental disorders.

Biological psychology however brings together biology and psychology to understand behavior and thought it also looks at the link between biology and psychological events such as how information travels throughout our bodies.

The roots of cognitive psychology has existed for the last 2,000 years Neisser (1967) (cognitive psychologist) published the ‘cognitive psychology’ as Neisser states cognition begins with sensory input, he says that our cognitive processes are most useful in responding to information that is present in the world and that is capable in being picked up by our sensory apparatus.

However more recent studies show that Cognitive psychologists have made many contributions in order to help us understand the processes and structures involved in perception, attention and performance. All these contributions have taken various forms leading Eysenck and Keane to identify three main strands in the cognitive psychology field.

(1) Experimental cognitive psychology: this approach mainly relies on lab based studies of cognition in normal individuals

(2) Cognition science: this approach involves producing computer programs to mimic the processes and outputs of the human brain.

(3) Cognitive neuropsychological: this approach involves studying cognitive process in brain-damaged patients to understand the workings of the cognitive system. (E.g. some brain damaged patients can understand language but cannot speak or write it properly. Some cognitive psychologist suggests that this may be because different language functions are based in different parts of the brain.

The main method used in cognitive psychology to help us understand the working of the human mind are lab experiments these attempt to help determine the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. The main aim is to isolate a particular component of the cognitive process for the study. Such experiments can take on many forms such as control of groups, for the experiment to be successful it has to be proven against the hypotheses. Lab experiments however usually lack ecological validity this means the tasks being studied fails to include the influences of the natural environment.

To try and understand humans cognitive psychologist use different kinds of strategies.

Firstly:

(1) they identify the problem and form a hypothetical relation among the variables.

(2) Design and execute the experiment

(3) examine the data from the experiment

(4) communicate the results.

So in a case of 'users of a word processor learn faster when they are given feedback'

they then put these into context in relation to humans, so they break the hypothesis into two variables, like i mentioned before the independent and dependent variable and the experimental hypothesis predicts that the word processor affects the feedback, at the same time as meeting the hypothesis the null hypothesis is formulated that predicts that the feedback will not be affected by the word processor.

This leaves the experiment open and can be seen from two different angles.

Many cognitive psychologists also use self report; case studies and observation techniques, these techniques are used to support the findings from lab experiments cognitive psychologist use these techniques because it gives them a good idea of the interaction between humans and the environment; however the results vary depending on the environment.

Observation in psychological terms requires collecting a lot of data in a systematic and recordable manner. The psychologists may observe by taking part and participating with the subjects this helps them obtain a deeper understanding, however the downside to this approach is that psychologists may become too involved and may be unable to make relevant recordings.

However case studies focus on single case, they allow psychologists to investigate something in more detail then if they were dealing with more subjects.

Biopsychology however is linked to understanding human behavior from the biological perspective. This approach involves studying processes within our