Cognitive psychology is a modern trend in the study of cognitive processes. It emerged in the 1960s. as an alternative to behaviorism — precisely because other areas of the natural-scientific plan in psychology did not exist at that time. Gestalt psychology had died by that time, and psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology had nothing to do with science. Cognitive psychology has rehabilitated the concept of the psyche as a subject of scientific research, considering behavior as mediated by cognitive (cognitive) factors. The research of cognitive psychologists covers both conscious and unconscious processes of the psyche, while both are interpreted as different ways of processing information. The most famous representatives of cognitive psychology: George Miller, Jerome Bruner, Ulrik Neisser.
The subject of cognitive psychology is models of cognitive processes. The concept of «cognitive» (cognitive processes, cognitive psychology and cognitive psychotherapy …) — became widespread in the 60s of the XX century, during the fascination with cybernetics and electronic modeling of intellectual processes, which grew into the habit of representing a person as a complex biocomputer. Researchers tried to model all the mental processes that take place in a person. What happened to be modeled was called cognitive processes. What did not work — affective. In practice, «cognitive» refers to mental processes that can be represented as a logical and meaningful sequence of actions for processing information.
Or: which can be reasonably modeled in terms of information processing, where logic and rationality can be seen in information processing.
Cognitive processes usually include memory, attention, perception, understanding, thinking, decision-making, actions and influences — to the extent or to the extent that they are occupied by cognitive processes, and not by something else (inclinations, entertainment …). Simplifying greatly, we can say that this is competence and knowledge, skills and abilities.
Modern cognitive psychology consists of many sections: perception, pattern recognition, attention, memory, imagination, speech, developmental psychology, thinking and decision making, in general, natural intelligence and partly artificial intelligence. Models of cognitive processes allow a fresh look at the essence of human mental life. “Cognitive, or otherwise cognitive, activity is the activity associated with the acquisition, organization and use of knowledge. Such activity is typical for all living beings, and especially for humans. For this reason, the study of cognitive activity is part of psychology» (Ulrik Neisser «Cognition and Reality»).
With the expansion of the subject area of research, the limitations of the informational approach were revealed, especially in the analysis of speech activity, thinking, long-term memory and the structure of the intellect. Therefore, cognitivists began to turn to genetic psychology (J. Piaget), cultural-historical psychology (L. S. Vygotsky and others), and the activity approach (A. N. Leontiev and others). On the other hand, the methodological base of experimental research developed by them attracted the attention of many European, including Russian scientists (in particular, A.I. Nazarov), who adapted it to develop their traditions (microstructural and microdynamic analysis, microgenetic method).
The cognitive approach is based on a number of axiomatic premises (Haber, 1964):
- The concept of incremental processing of information, i.e. that the stimuli of the external world pass inside the psyche through a series of successive transformations.
- Assumption about the limited capacity of the information processing system. It is the limited ability of a person to master new information and transform existing information that makes one look for the most effective and adequate ways to work with it. These strategies (to a much greater extent than their corresponding brain structures) are modeled by cognitive psychologists.
- Is introduced postulate about encoding information in the psyche. This postulate fixes the assumption that the physical world is reflected in the psyche in a special form that cannot be reduced to the properties of stimulation.
A variant of cognitive theory, which has gained increasing popularity in recent years, is the theory of levels of information processing (F. Craik, R. Lockhart, 1972). Currently, cognitive psychology is still in its infancy, but has already become one of the most influential areas of world psychological thought.