Cognitive Psychology Definition Paper

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Cognitive Psychology Definition Paper |
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PSY/360 |
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6/23/2012 |
                                                                             

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      Cognitive Psychology focuses on a person’s cognitive functions and their internal states by
studying motivation, thinking, attention span, and their problem solving skills. There have been
milestones, in psychology, marked by the development of cognitive psychology. Certain
developments such as the need for change in methods, the theories, and how these theories are
researched, are what led to the discovery of cognitive psychology. This paper will inform you
about four of the milestones that made a huge impact on cognitive psychology and why observed
behavior is essential to the science.
      Behaviorism was one of the many milestones that paved the way for cognitive psychology.
Behaviorism, which is a perspective of psychology, had shortfalls such as not being able to
account for every piece of experimental data that was being introduced (Willingham. 2007).
Behaviorism has not been perfect and it has had its downfalls and its basic principle was about
what could be observed being where the focus should be, while the unobservable behavior was
being ignored. Behaviorism gave cues to cognitive psychology by explaining the relationship
between stimulus and response as well as the relevance it had to human behavior.
      The hypothetic-deductive method of Hull relied on the stimulus/response relationship as a
means to explain observed behavior. Through the use of hypothetic-deductive, cognitive
psychologists were able to theorize unobservable abstract constructs. The abstract constructs
were used to test psychological efficacy through observed behavior and manipulation. Abstract
constructs and their ability to account for data from the first milestone, is the second milestone.
Abstract construct is a theoretical set of processes and representations that...