Psychological Perspectives with a Focus on Cognitive Theory - Research Paper Example

 Human thoughts, behavior, and personality are important points of discussion in today’s contemporary society. In order to learn more about human behavior and their personalities several theories has been developed by various psychologists. These theories or frameworks are known as psychological theories. These theories emerged as significant tools through, which human behaviors are analyzed and understood. Some of the common and widely implemented psychological theories include Psychodynamic, Behavioral, Cognitive, Gestalt, and Humanistic among others.

Contextually, the primary aim of this paper will be to provide an elaborative explanation on cognitive theory and depicts its importance in the domain of psychology. Cognitive Theory Cognition theory is a particular concept in psychology that deals with the analysis and the development of thought process within individuals. Understanding the thought process simply means to know about the factors that influence people to interact with the world around. The theory further depicts that humans are the most logical beings on the planet and they make all their choices by analyzing the sense it makes to them.

Some of the variables used in the cognitive theory of psychology include attention, memory, perception and language among others. The cognitive theory was first put into effect by the mind of Jean Piaget who mainly focused on understanding the development in behavior of human beings from birth to adulthood. He stated in his theory that cognitive development takes place in four subsequent stages, which comprise sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage and formal operational stage.

Individuals develop their cognition in these four stages right from childhood to adulthood (Gonzalez-renders & Resko, n.d.). Apart from cognitive development theory of Piaget’s, Vygotsky’s Socio-cultural Cognitive Theory is also a vital one to be discussed. Vygotsky’s cognitive theory, as the name suggests is a socio-cultural theory that focuses on the development of social relations among people. The theory mainly consists of three basic claims about the societal development of individuals.

Firstly, he believes that cognitive skills of children can only be understood when they are properly analyzed and interpreted. Secondly, with his cognitive development, he depicted those cognitive skills of individuals can only be arbitrated with the help of analysis of words and language. In his third claim, Vygotsky’s affirms that cognitive skills of individuals have their source of origin from the social relations, which are deeply entrenched to socio-cultural background. In precise, Vygotsky’s explains that in order to understand the cognitive behavior of an individual especially including children as the base factor, one must gain comprehensive understanding about its origin and alteration of its skills (McGraw-hill, n.d.).

Additionally, another important part of cognitive theory is the model of information processing. The model mainly focuses on the aspect that its individuals who manipulate particular information and monitor it in order make strategies to deal with the same. Analyzing of memory along with thinking frames significant parts of this particular model of cognition.