Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology involves the study of internal mental processes—all of the things that go on inside your brain, including perception, thinking, memory, attention, language, problem-solving, and learning. This topic gain a deeper understanding of how the human brain works, but it allows psychologists to develop new ways of helping people deal with psychological difficulties. Findings from cognitive psychology have also improved our understanding of how people form, store, and recall memories.
Mind map
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
SUMMARY: Cognitive psychology focuses on the way people process information. Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that focuses on the way people process information. It looks at how we process information we receive and how the treatment of this information leads to our responses. In other words, cognitive psychology is interested in what is happening within our minds that links stimulus (input) and response (output).Cognitive psychologists study internal processes that include perception, attention, language, memory, and thinking. They ask questions like how do we receive information about the outside world, how do we store and process information, how do we solve problems, how does a breakdown in our perceptions cause errors in our thinking, how do errors in our thinking lead to emotional distress and negative behaviors. The term 'cognitive psychology' was first used by Ulric Neisser in 1967. Since then, many interventions have emerged from cognitive study that have benefited the field of psychology. Cognitive psychology also touches on many other disciplines. Because of this, it is frequently studied by people in a number of different fields including medicine, education, and business. Cognitive psychology is goal-oriented and problem-focused from the beginning. Imagine you are entering treatment with a cognitive psychologist. One of the first things you will be asked to do is identify your problems and formulate specific goals for yourself. Then you will be helped to organize your problems in a way that will increase the chances of meeting your goals. Suppose that as you are preparing for your presentation at work tomorrow, you fear you will fail. Because of this, you are using distractions around you as a way to avoid working on the presentation. This prevents you from preparing properly, which actually causes you to fail. You believe that you failed because you are worthless. A cognitive psychologist would help you examine and then rationalize the situation in order to understand the most valid reason for your failure. Then they would teach you how to make changes that will help you succeed.
Summary: In cognitive psychology, B.F. Skinner, the central figurehead of behavioral psychology, suggested in an article that behavioral language is learned — words are memorized, spoken, and understood merely when tone, development, and meaning are enhanced. Noam Chomsky wrote a criticism of Skinner's language article arguing that there must be an inherent component to drive language development, as language is simply too normal and learned too easily to be explained by reinforcement alone. Cognitive psychologists try to build up cognitive models of the information processing that goes on inside people’s minds, including perception, attention, language, memory, thinking, and consciousness. As a scientific study of mind and mental functioning, the core focus of modern cognitive psychology is on studying how people acquire, process, and store information within the complex computing system known as the human brain. Therefore, cognitive psychologists are most concerned with studying how we think, perceive, remember, forget, solve problems, focus, and learn. Unlike the behavioral school of thought that focuses only on observable behaviors, cognitive psychology studies internal mental states and processes. Human intelligence is mental quality that consists of the abilities to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts, and use knowledge to manipulate one's environment. intelligence, human overview of human intelligence, including a discussion of intelligence tests. Cognitive perception includes, aside from the senses listening, seeing, smelling, tasting and feeling, the way in which we deal with information. While perception refers to ways of obtaining information from our environment, cognition describes processes such as remembering, learning, solving problems and orientation. Attention is the ability to choose and concentrate on relevant stimuli. Attention is the cognitive process that makes it possible to position ourselves towards relevant stimuli and consequently respond to it. This cognitive ability is very important and is an essential function in our daily lives.memory as the “process of retaining information over time.” Others have defined it as the ability to use our past experiences to determine our future path. ... We would not be able to function in the present or move forward without relying on our memory.In cognitive psychology, the term problem-solving refers to the mental process that people go through to discover, analyze, and solve problems. Before problem-solving can occur, it is important to first understand the exact nature of the problem itself.
QUESTIONS
1) Describe the concept and categories of cognitive psychology
Concept are the building blocks of thoughts. Consequently, they are crucial to such psychological processes as categorization, inference, memory, learning, and decision-making. The most concepts cannot be strictly defined but are organized around the “best” examples or prototypes, which have the properties most common in the category. Categories is a class of similar objects. There is 3 approaches and theory which humans acquire perceptual and conceptual categories which is the feature integration theory, the exemplar theory and the prototype theory.
2) Step of problem solving
Based on psychologist have described the problem-solving process in term of a cycle(Bransford & Stein, 1993; Hayes, 1989; Sternberg, 1986) First, we have to identify the problems. Then we need to define and represent the problem mentally. After that we need to develop a solution strategy to solve that problem. We need to organize the knowledge about the problem to ensure that we could to find the right way. After that, we have to allocate mental and physical resources for solving the problem implement. We need to monitor they are progress toward the goal. Lastly We need to evaluate the solution for accuracy.
3) what is the types of long-term memory.
Based on tulving (1972) proposed a distintion between there types. First procedural memory is basically knowing how to do things or memory of motor skills. For the example in ride a bike, operate washing machine, button on the shirt and others. Second, is semantic memory which is storing information about the world. This including knowledge about the meaning of words. For the example is your friends name, song’s lyric and other. For the episodic memory there is a part of storing information about events, for the example is we know the experienced in our lives like our first day at school and others.
LEARNING REFLECTIONS
Over the past 50 years, cognitive psychology (CP) has shown remarkable growth, providing a broad range of data primarily concerned with specific elements of the mind's complex cognitive structure. the mental processes studied in the CP, such as memory, attention, language, reasoning and so on can be used in other psychological areas, such as social psychology, clinical psychology, applied psychology, schooling, evolving psychology, etc. The way humans interpret knowledge about the world is important to concepts and categories. A concept is a mental representation of a category (a category is a collection of items that' belong' together). People form mental concepts for categories of objects to enable them to properly respond to new objects which they experience. Most concepts cannot be described specifically, but are organized according to the best examples or models that have the most common characteristics in the class. Concepts are general idea or perception originating from specific instances such as the meaning of words and signs, endless details about the universe, and how things appear, how they function.
Concepts are the ideas ' building blocks. Consequently, psychological processes such as categorization, inference memory learning, and decision making are important to them. This kept in the long term memory. We would not be able to assign instances of the definition to a category without understanding and memorizing a concept. Categories are a class of similar objects. We can make use of the information that the category suggests. For example, categories of types of trees is more useful than categories of odd or even tree.
There are 3 Approaches/ Theories by which humans acquire perceptual and conceptual categories such as the feature integration theory, the exemplar theory and the prototype theory. Feature Integrating Theory is a theory that explains how a person integrates pieces of measurable data on an object to create a full view of the object. This theory is based on the visual search component of stimuli perception developed by the artist Gelade and Treisman. The theory of feature integration consists of two phases. Firstly, the individual's pre-attention stage focuses on a distinct feature of the object and on an unconscious automatic process. Second, focused attention, which is human, takes all the observed characteristics and combines them to create a complete perception and occurs when the object does not immediately stand out. Next, each instance of a class stored in memory is an exemplary theory. It stores all class members ' instances. We have encountered existing members of a group in the past which allowed us to function in the world. Objects similar to most samples are categorized more easily. Classified according to their resemblance to the stored version. The third one is prototypes theory. Prototypes theory is used to improve memory and recall as you can retain a prototype of something and then match new, prototype-like things to define, categorize, or store this new thing.
Next, the most basic form for further cognitive processing to occur in mental representations. Information may be expressed in two forms consisting of visuals (perception) also known as concept representation and verbal (meaning-based) representation, also known as propositions representation. If someone asks us to describe a pet, concept representation is likely to "see" one in the eye of our mind. Representing propositions is about our thought which can take the form of meanings / verbal / language as well. An interpretation of the relationship between concepts is a proposition. Concepts have no truth values in mental representations.
Besides this, in cognitive psychology, there are schemes and scripts. Schema theory is a cognitive science branch that focuses on how brain information works. A structured information system is a schema for a subject or event This draws on past experience and is useful to notify current understanding or behavior. Schemas are dynamic–based on new information and experiences, they develop and change. A script represents a simple and well-structured sequence of events related to a well-known activity. Scripts provide our procedural awareness with the basic mental structures. Therefore, mental images reflect sensations which are not present physically. Our experiences seem much to see something in our minds when we create a mental picture. This looks like a lot of vision. We seem to be able to manipulate them as we construct mental images, and sometimes we seem to be solving problems by manipulating them. Mental pictures can be pretty detailed, but less precise than actual vision.
Problem-solving in psychology does not necessarily involve solving mental/psychological problems of the brain. The process just refers to the correct solution of all kinds of life problems. The theory of psychology is because the whole psychological system is discussed in psychology. And using our thinking process tactfully leads to solving problems. Various sequential cognitive phases are involved in solving problems, which are also called the problem-solving cycle. The procedures are in series and any problem needs to be solved one by one. But we tend to avoid taking such systematic steps, so it often allows us, until a suitable solution is found, to go through the same steps time and again. The process consists of the following steps: the problem solver must locate or identify the problem, describe and mentally represent the problem, formulate a solution plan, coordinate its knowledge of the problem, provide mental and physical resources for solving it (implementation), track its progress towards the target, and analyze the solution for accuracy. The process is descriptive and does not suggest any problem-solving in all stages in this order sequentially. Instead, those that are flexible are successful solvers.