Cognitive Psychology and Decline of Behaviorism - Research Paper Example

of June 21 Cognitive Psychology Cognitive psychology refers to a branch of psychology dealing with the study of mental processes, which includes how human beings learn, process, and store the learnt information for future use. This discipline of psychology has a close relationship with a number of disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics, and neuroscience (Gentner 332). Cognitive psychology enabled psychologists to explain mental process in the human mind. This field of psychology is applicable in many areas such as increasing accuracy in decision-making, organizing educational curricula, and improving memory. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy finds both cognitive psychology and behavioral psychology to be extremely significant in treating patients with psychological problems, such as schizophrenia. Therefore, cognitive psychology has continued to be a significant field of psychology which alters people’s undesirable behaviors. Cognitive psychology replaced behaviorism, which was the dominant school of thought, when psychologists discovered a variety of limitations that behaviorism possessed regarding the study of human behaviors (Gentner 328). This discussion will consider the history of cognitive psychology, including the decline of behaviorism, how cognitive psychology evolved, and criticism of cognitive psychology. Decline of Behaviorism Psychologists emphasized on cognitive psychology when behaviorism failed to describe human behaviors sufficiently. Behaviorism continued to be the leading school of thought in the field of psychology until the emergence of cognitive psychology when psychologists discovered a number of weaknesses in behaviorism (Gentner 338). According to the psychologists, behaviorism failed to allow them study psychology sufficiently because they could study physical and observable behaviors only. Behaviorism ignored internal mental processes, including consciousness and hypothetical feelings, which people could not portray outwardly. In the world history, many psychologists and scientists have criticized behaviorism and considered cognitive psychology to be the most significant area of psychology. Cognitive psychology allowed psychologists to study consciousness and thinking (Gentner 329). This branch of psychology makes use of an information processing approach, which explains how the human brain functions. Psychologists decided not to base psychology entirely on physical and observable behaviors when investing the mind. Therefore, psychologists started to explain the behaviors of human beings by virtue of the internal mental processes and not observable behaviors. George Miller, Ulric Neisser, and Noam Chomsky are among the psychologists considered cognitive psychology as a useful branch of psychology (Gentner 328). Evolution of Cognitive Psychology A number of occasions and events sparked the evolution of cognitive psychology. Aircraft panels in the World War II serve as an example of such occasions (Gentner 332). Engineers discovered that the pilots for the fighter airplanes experienced trouble in operating the planes because the information on the flight dashboard had a large number dials and buttons. The pilots failed to attend to this information, which hindered them from operating the airplanes successfully. The military brought in psychologists to inform the engineers about creating an appropriate panel, which would improve the operation with the buttons and numbers on the dashboard. Therefore, psychologists started to study human behaviors intensively to apply the new improvement. Psychologists made a number of discoveries in the field of cognitive psychology. George Miller came upon a law that explains short-term memory (Gentner 333). He carried on a thorough research on the abilities of human beings regarding short-term memory by which he explained the reason to why phone numbers have about seven digits. The majority of individuals could remember a maximum of nine items or digits when facing them at once. Understanding of the evolution of cognitive psychology that is a significant field of psychology is apparent after a careful study of the history of psychology. It has been apparent that in the past, before the evolution of cognitive psychology, behaviorism was the most significant approach in psychology. Behaviorism focused on the observable behaviors of people and failed to explain internal mental states, such as how human beings acquire and use language. With the use of behaviorism, it was not possible for psychologists to explain a number of human behaviors such as acquisition of information, memorization of the acquired information overtime, and many other behaviors (Gentner 339). Psychologists realized that cognitive psychology can explain such behaviors. However, the study of cognitive psychology started later during the 1960s with the presence of written materials. Ulric Neisser, an American psychologist, pioneered the study of cognitive psychology by publishing a book, Cognitive Psychology in 1967. He defines cognitive psychology by characterizing human beings as active information-processing systems, which resemble a computer system. Neisser considered the explanations of other psychological terms, including cognition (Gentner 328). Cognition refers to the procedure through which human beings obtain, retain, use, and apply knowledge or information. According to Neisser, cognition includes the combination of processes that transform, reduce, elaborate, store, recover, and use the sensory input. Knowledge acquisition and understanding, remembering, perceiving, thinking judging, analytical problem-solving, and making assumptions make up cognition. It is apparent that cognition includes almost all psychological experiences among human beings. Therefore, cognitive psychology embraces various disciplines, such as anthropology, philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, artificial intelligence, and linguistics, which human beings find useful in executing daily tasks (Gentner 332). Cognitive psychology and these disciplines have influenced each other in a significant manner. People found cognitive psychology to be a significant branch of psychology because of its applications in a variety of disciplines. Behaviorism declined and left cognitive psychology as the dominant field of psychology. Noam Chomsky criticized behaviorism in the 1950s as a result of its apparent weaknesses (Gentner 328). In spite of being among the earliest fields of psychology, behaviorism could not explain how human beings acquire and use language. Noam Chomsky overturned the discipline of linguistics and became an influential figure in questioning one-dimensional and simple behaviorist categorization of language behavior. Linguistic communication can facilitate the process of understanding the psychology of people various groups, including educational groups, gangs, and many other groups in the society (Gentner 331). Great thinkers have found philosophical issues like consciousness to be extremely demanding for a number of centuries. Apparently, it is not possible to avoid such issues in psychology, especially in cognitive psychology. Evolution of computers also enhanced the emergence of cognitive psychology because psychologists considered computers to process information in the same way human brains do (Solso, MacLin, and MacLin 528). Criticism of Cognitive Psychology However, after careful evaluation, some psychologists have questioned the approach of information processing in cognitive psychology. Skinner has criticized cognitive approaches because of the belief that psychologists can only study external stimuli as these can undergo scientific measurement (Gentner 340). Therefore, Skinner has considered internal mental processes to be nonexistent because people cannot be able to see the processes and measure them scientifically. Skinner continued to detect shortcomings with cognitive methods of research, namely introspection because of its unscientific and subjective nature. Carl Rogers is another psychologist, who criticized cognitive approaches of psychology as he believed that laboratory experiments in cognitive psychology had low ecologic validity and created artificial surroundings because an experimenter controls the variables. According to Rogers, the holistic approach in psychology is to understand the behavior of an organism. Other psychologists considered the paradigm of information processing in cognitive psychology as different from information processing in computers because computers do not get tired (Gentner 341). Conclusion It is apparent that cognitive psychology came into consideration during the World War II because there was a need for psychologists to give advice to aircraft engineers on how to design aircrafts appropriately for the pilots to operate them successfully (Gentner 332). Behaviorism was the dominant school of thought in the field of psychology. Later, in the history of psychology, psychologists realized a number of limitations in behaviorism. Behaviorism ignored internal mental processes as a basis to study human behavior and considered observable behaviors instead. Psychologists discovered that cognitive psychology can enable them carry on scientific experimentations in order to study human behaviors sufficiently. However, other psychologists such as Skinner and Carl Rogers criticized cognitive psychology because of various reasons (Gentner 342). Works Cited Gentner D. Psychology in Cognitive Science: 1978-2038. Topics In Cognitive Science . July 2010; 2(3):328-344. Solso, Robert L., M. Kimberly MacLin, and Otto H. MacLin. Cognitive psychology. 7th ed. Boston: Pearson/A and B, 2008. Print. Read More