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EVOLUTION OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Cognition is the process by which we understand or gain knowledge by

the mind and cognitive psychology is to understand and observe human
behavior by their cognitive tasks which include their power of attention,
memory, language, problem solving, thinking etc.

It’s been a long time since human mind and its processes have been
around. In fact, in 387 BCE, Plato even said that brain of human body
was where all the mental processes have a seat. In 1637, Rene
Descartes gave the idea of dualism which is also called as mind body
relationship and that they are two separate things. The moment he
gave this idea there have been debates going on that if the human mind
is only based upon their experience which is also called as empiricism or
their knowledge too also called as rationalism.
 [History Today]
Then comes the mid to late 19th
century where the main two
developments happened in cognitive
psychology were that of Paul Broca’s,
as Broca’s aphasia which is largely
responsible for language production
and Carl Wernicke’s, as Wernicke’s
aphasia which is mostly responsible for
comprehension language.
.
Now when we come forward to 1920s
to 1950s, the main perspective that
came into being was behaviorism. Jean
Piaget, was the one who studied
behaviorism, which everyone ignored or
did not observe properly, which included
mental events like thoughts, ideas,
attention, and consciousness. From
1926 to 1950s and also the 1980s he
studied the behavior of children and
adults.
2022
Now when we come forward to 1920s to
1950s, the main perspective that came
into being was behaviorism. Jean Piaget,
was the one who studied behaviorism,
which everyone ignored or did not observe
properly, which included mental events like
thoughts, ideas, attention, and
consciousness. From 1926 to 1950s and
also the 1980s he studied the behavior of
children and adults.
As we move further to mid - 20th
century, we could see there were three
main influences which shaped cognitive
psychology as a formal school of thought.
With the World War II there were new
weapons being made and simultaneously a
realization had also hit that human
performance was equally important. That
is how behaviorism was helpful at that
time in problems such as how to train
soldiers to use the weapons or be
attentive during the war. Donald
Broadbent had researched about the
concepts of human performance and
developed information theory.
There was another development occurring in
computer science which led to cognitivism.
Allen Newell and Herbert Simon worked on
this concept for years and artificial
intelligence came into existing. This later
inspired the concept of computers handling
memory, storage and retrieval which opened
a path for cognitivism.
. people as limited information processors
"Cognitive Revolution” where cognitive
psychology replaced behaviorism and
psychoanalysis as the main approach in the
field. With this concept coming into the
world, the concepts like mental
representations are not needed to explain
behavior.
One of the first historical trend product made
was Human Factor Engineering. During the
World War the people had to be trained to use
complicated weapons. Engineers then gradually
understood that they need to make the
equipment according to the capacities of the
people using them.
Thus, psychologists and engineers then
developed the concept of man – machine
system, where the machinery was being
developed with keeping in mind the
operator’s physical, cognitive and
motivational capacities and limitations.
.
Psychologists had also started calling the
as they can do only limited things at
once. For example, while reading a book
one cannot watch television at the same
time but there are other tasks one can
perform while watching television, that
is, folding clothes. Psychologists had
started to examine human beings’
capacity to receive send and process
information and the situations in which
they distort the information they
receive. Therefore, they started
describing people as “communication
channels”.

A lot of studies of cognitive psychology, to
which cognitive psychologists regard as
“classics” started just after World War II
and concentrated on searching the nature of
our capacity limitations. Just like George
Miller in his 1956 paper – The Magical
Number – seven plus or minus two observed
that:
(a) The number of unrelated things we can
perceive distinctly without counting.
(b) The number of unrelated things on a list
we can immediately remember,
(c) The number of stimuli we can make
absolute discriminations among is between
five and nine for most normal adults.
Thus, Miller explained that people’s cognitive
abilities could be measured and also tested.
Interestingly, there were new developments
happening in the linguistics are, the study of
language, at the same time. Naom Chomsky,
a linguist, with other psychologists began to
work and see the importance to get the
understanding of studying how people
acquire, understand and produce language.
Also, in Chomsky’s early work, we can
say that behaviorism could not completely
explain language. If we consider this
question ‘how is language acquired?’
Then a behaviorist might say that
language is obtained as a result of
parents’ appreciating when their children
speak correct grammatical sentence and
punishing when they speak wrong
grammatical sentences. But soon
psychologists and linguists realized that
this way had to be the wrong one.
Another concept of cognitive revolution came from the development of
neuroscience, they study of how the nervous system develops, its structure and
what it does. There was a major debate, which went on till centuries about the
Localization of functions, an idea that certain functions like memory, language
etc. have certain specific locations or areas within the brain. To counter this
point, a very famous neuroscientist, Karl Lashley, had written in one of his major
works, that there was reason to believe that the major functions are localized.

Well renowned professor at McGill University, Donald Hebb proposed the

concepts of cell assemblies – connections among set of cells in the brain. This
work suggested that at least some functions are localized.
- YASHITA CHHABRA
REFERENCES:
K.M. GALLOTI, M.A. FERNANDES, J. FUGELSANG, J.A. STOLZ 2009
(R.J. STERNBERG, KARIN STERNBERG 2017)

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