History of Cognitive Psychology

Plato

Advocated Nativism – the idea that certain kinds of knowledge are innate

Aristotle

Advocated Philosophical empiricism – the idea that all knowledge is acquired through experience

Wilhelm Wundt

Credited with establishing the 1st psychology lab in 1879 in Germany.

Established the first psychology journal.

Subject matter: Immediate conscious experience.

Method: Introspection

Structuralism

Aim: To identify the basic elements, or structures, of psychological experience.

Founder: Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927), a student of Wilhelm Wundt.

Subject matter: Structure of consciousness.

Method: Introspection.

Example: Analyzing the sensation of pain by its intensity.

Legacy: Ultimately deemed not scientific due to heavy reliance on introspection and authority figures

Functionalism

Aim: To identify the underlying function or adaptive purpose of consciousness.

Founder: William James (1842-1910), heavily influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

Subject matter: Evolutionary or adaptive purpose of consciousness.

Method: Real-world applications.

Example: Examining how pain serves an adaptive function (e.g., to reduce damage).

Legacy: Led to the birth of applied psychology (e.g., IQ tests) and evolutionary psychology

Behaviorism

Focus: Examined only observable behavior. All behaviors are learned through interaction with the environment.

Key figures: John B. Watson (Wrote the Behaviorist Manifesto), B.F. Skinner.

Subject matter: Behavior.

Method: Stimulus - Response

Issues with behaviorism

Instinctive Drift: Animals sometimes acted out of instinct rather than conditioning.

WWII: Psychologists were enlisted to help improve attention and vigilance, but behaviorists offered few insights.

Language: Language development did not seem to be adequately explained by reinforcement alone

Cognitive psychology

identifies our mental processes and how they affect our ability to interact with the world

Assumptions of cognitive psychology

Mental processes are systematic (e.g., people remember about 7 +/- 2 items, allowing inferences about short-term memory size).

Mental processes can be studied objectively.