Neuroscience Cognitive Buttonholes to Excitement and Nervous Maladies - Essay Example

Running Header: Psychology Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code Date of Submission: Psychology Introduction Contemporary psychologists describe themselves as cognitive psychologists due to the fact that cognitive psychology has currently dominated the academic psychology. It has also increased vagueness of the term cognition. Mathews and MacLeod (26) explains that cognition is defined as the mental process of gaining knowledge or comprehending for example in thinking, knowing, remembering and solving problems. It includes higher level functions of the brain, language, imagination and perception. According to psychologists, cognition is defined as the synergy of mind processes where one has different mental states. It is also the difference in peoples’ opinions. Sun (307) shows cognitive psychology involves the internal mental processes. It involves the use of scientific method and rejects introspection which is a method used in investigation. Cognitive psychology also acknowledges mental states which include idea, knowledge, desire and motivation. Cognitive psychology is not synonymous as a whole since it involved the information-processing approach. This approach is necessary as it takes mental events in the form of information flow. It also involves a mechanic view of the mind which is flexible and adaptive but a rule-governed automation. The information processing model is represented by flowcharts that show that metal operations are clear. Cognitive psychology focuses on how people acquire, process and store information. Cognitive psychology is also based on two assumptions which include that human cognition can be revealed by the scientific method therefore showing that individual components of mental processes may be identified and understood. It also assumes that internal mental processes may be understood through rules in information processing models. Interdisciplinary perspective Cognitive psychology is the major player in the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science which involves understanding the mind. Cognitive science involves five disciplines where philosophy is the first discipline that examines the mind in such a way that it enables it to formulate fundamental questions. Neuroscience is also the other discipline that specifies the relationship between the mind and the brain. There is also artificial intelligence which examines the issues of the mind thorough modeling of human thought using computer hardware and software. The linguistic field is also necessary in investigating the structure of language and the use of language and what it tells about the mind. The final field is the anthropology which explores the mind through various lens of culture. Interdisciplinary perspective is a collection of various disciplinary perspectives and studies (Sun, 37). Cognitive models used earlier assumed that every component in the flowchart has to complete results before moving to the next stage. The theories also assumed that stimuli impose a passive organism which is then processed in an automatic manner. Cognitive processes are therefore said to involve complex interaction of top-down and bottom-up processes. The internal model involves interaction between stimuli information from the human senses and worldly believes. The cognitive approach is applied to traditional sections within psychology. Sun (38) explains that in developmental psychology for example it is possible to determine how cognitive processes change with age or how representations of the world develop during childhood. These conclusions can therefore show how the processes relate to children’s behavior and abilities. The recent ideas of cognitive psychology are applied with an aim to understand the abnormal psychology for example anxiety and depression. Cognitive psychology involves memory where it distinguishes between sensory, working and long- term memory. Cognitive science therefore involves a collection of interdisciplinary perspectives which include artificial intelligence, cognitive anthropology, neuroscience and linguistics. Research carried out in cognitive psychology is based on naturalistic research methods such as introspection, psychological experimentation, philosophical argumentation any others. Introspection involved showed that test subject was evaluated through cognitive thinking. Computation model sees the mind as a machine and convey theoretical ideas similar to humans through computation. Mathematical modeling on the other hand is based on flow charts and ensures that there is equivalence in input and results (Cacioppo et al., 307). Emergence of cognitive psychology The term cognitive psychology was coined by Ulric Neisser in his book which was published in 1967. In this book, Neisser defines cognitive psychology as a character in people which show their dynamic information-processing systems. It shows that their mental operations may be described in computational terms. Cognitive psychology is also shown as a point of view that suggest what the mind thinks and that it has a conceptual structure. Neisser defines cognition as processes by which the sensory input is reduced, stored, recovered, transformed and used. These processes work even without stimulation for example through images. Cognitive was recently added in the psychological research as it had emerged as a separate discipline. According to Cacioppo et al. (306), the development of cognitive psychology was as a result of the World War 2 which focused on human performance and attention. It also focused on computer science for example in artificial intelligence and linguistics. Cognitive psychology emerged from psychology but with certain additions of psychobiology, linguistics and computation. In Psychobiology, cognitive psychology tends to criticize behaviorists for example through black box approach. In linguistics, cognitive psychology criticizes support as the main mechanism of language acquisition. In computation, it provides metaphors for examining human thoughts. The information processing model has been in dominance after Donald Broadbent’s book of ‘Perception and communication’ published in 1958. The books revealed cognitive psychology as way of reasoning about mental processes and imagining the processes as software that runs inside a computer which is the brain. This therefore involves input, representation, computation and out put. George Miller, a cognitive psychologist also contributed to the development of WordNet which is an English language network. The network has been in operational since 1985 and is the base for machine ontologies (Mathews and MacLeod 25). Effects of the decline of behaviorism In psychology, behaviorism is a major trend as it follows functionalism which focuses on the biological significance of natural processes such as behavior. The behaviorist theory rejects the unique nature of mental events by declaring that psychology can only study observable behaviors. This therefore shows that mental events are not disciplines of psychology. This is by definition which shows behaviorism as the study of the relationship between people’s environments and their behavior and therefore it does not involve events occurring in the mind as it is in cognitive psychology. Mathews and MacLeod (26) shows the effect of decline of behaviorism brought about the domination of cognitive psychology and its application in the development of computer interfaces linked to users in order to operate as intelligent agents. Cognitive psychology also improved its effectiveness in the development of flexible information based structure representing knowledge and reasoning methods. According to Sun (34) unlike behaviorism, cognitive psychology has been applied in the development of bionic components in the cognitive neural system for example cochlear or retinal implants. Unlike behaviorism whose main focus is on observable behaviors, cognitive psychology has gained dominance since it is more concerned with the internal mental processes. The difference between behaviorism and cognitive psychology is that it involves private events that can be observed such as feelings, thoughts and dreams while cognitive psychology involves mental events that can not be observed for example how an infant is able to become mature and intelligent. Conclusion Cognition is adaptive though not in all instances. This is because the cognitive processes interact with other disciplines which include neuroscience, philosophy and linguistics. The main applications of cognitive research are how to improve memory, accuracy in decision making and how to enhance learning through structuring educational curricula. Behaviorism had been the dominant school of thought until 1950s where the dominance shifted to focus more on attention, memory and problem solving. This is the cognitive revolution which generated research on processing models, cognitive methods and cognitive psychology. Changes in cognitive development in future will depend on the improvement of technology more so in cognitive neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience. Works Cited Cacioppo, J., Petty, R. and Kao, C. “The efficient assessment of need for cognition”. Journal of Personality Assessment. 42.9 (1984): 306-307. Mathews, A. and MacLeod, C. “Cognitive approaches to emotion and emotional disorders”. Annual Review of Psychology. 45.2 (1994): 25-50. Sun, R. The Cambridge handbook of computational psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Read More