Cognitive Reflective
Reflective Blog 4
Throughout the course of last week I have attended
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 are used to explain some data (Willingham. 2007). Clark Hull worked with abstract constructs and hypothesized theoretical constructs such as primary drives
Throughout the course of last week I have attended
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 are used to explain some data (Willingham. 2007). Clark Hull worked with abstract constructs and hypothesized theoretical constructs such as primary drives
References: Costall, A. (2004). From Darwin to Watson(and cognitive) and back again: The principle of animal-environment mutuality. Behavior and Philosophy, 32(1), 179-195. Retrieved July 23, 2012 from EBSCOHost database. Goodwin, C.J. (2005). A history of modern psychology (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Willingham, D.T. (2007). Cognition: The thinking animal. New York, NY: Pearson Prentice Hall. Zentall, T.R. (2002). A cognitive behaviorist approach to the study of animal behavior. Journal of General Psychology, 129(4), 328. Retrieved July 23, 2012 from EBSCOHost database.