Intro to Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive psychology is, in a general sense, the study of thinking. Cognitive psychologists study how people reason through problems; how they allocate their mental resources; how they perceive the world around them; how they remember past experiences; and how they describe the world with language. Cognitive psychology separates itself from philosophy by depending on experiments that measure, as best as they can, the internal processes taking place. Experimental studies are the heart of cognitive psychology. Unfortunately there is no way to literally watch a person think. We must rely on external indicators, such as how well or how quickly a person can perform a certain task. Cognitive studies set tasks before people and ask them to do their best, using all the mental resources at their disposal.

By modifying these tasks slightly, we can get a good idea of what people can and can't do, which can give us clues about the mental processes that they use. Taking all the evidence into consideration, researchers in cognitive psychology then try to form models of how the mind might work. These models describe the mental steps that people take and the resources they use to perform any particular cognitive act, such as processing a sentence or recalling a memory. Usually, a researcher will focus only on a particular area, such as attention, memory, or language. Researchers then collaborate and compete to accumulate evidence for their model or against previous models.

This course will examine various models that attempt to describe the areas of problem solving, attention, perception, memory, and language, the major areas of research in cognitive psychology. Although this includes the best research to date, keep in mind that a theory can never be proven correct but can easily be disproven, so none of these ideas are the final word. Research in cognitive psychology is an exciting and dynamic field, and cognitive studies can reveal amazing insights into the workings of the human mind.