What is Cognitive Psychology?

What is Cognitive Psychology?
Cognitive Psychology as a term was coined in 1967 by American psychologist Ulric Neisser in his book Cognitive Psychology. Cognitive Psychology is a subdivision of psychology that dwells at length with the study of the mental processes and analyses the causes, reasons and effects of an individual’s thinking process, perception, memory patterns and learning capacity. Therefore, this branch of psychology goes beyond the regular study of human behavior and takes it a step further to look into the other dimensions of human existence. In order to understand cognition, let’s quote the author Neisser here, who mentioned that “Cognition comprises of all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used.” Cognitive psychology came to the forefront during the "cognitive revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s. The prime focus of the cognitive psychologists is in the patterns of information stored in human brains, the mechanism of information synthesis and processing in human brains and the function of the human memory.
Cognitive Psychology is generating huge interest across people from various fields, including teachers, educators, artists, architects, scientists, engineers etc. as they all want to understand the intricate processes of the mental state of human beings. Cognitive Psychology finds huge acceptance and application in the field of artificial intelligence, behavioral neurosciences, Neuro linguistic processing, industrial-organizational psychology etc. People who design educational curriculum are highly interested to know, as to how do people learn and retain information so that they can make the necessary changes to streamline the curriculum. Thus, the field of Cognitive Psychology has a wide range of application.
Core focus of Cognitive Psychology
The core focus of cognitive psychology is on the processes of information acquisition and storage in human brains. Cognitive Psychology research brings to fore the applications of techniques for improving memory, increasing the perfection and accuracy of the decision-making process, and configuring the curriculum in schools and colleges in order to facilitate a wholesome learning process.
Cognitive Psychology and Behaviorism
The internal phases of mental health are of great importance in Cognitive Psychology, whereas behaviourism’s core competency is comprehension and dissection of the observable human behavior . The concept of behaviorism in psychology was in vogue until the 1950’s, post which the glimpses of Cognitive Psychology ushered in as consideration was being given to the nuances of the human attention span, memory power and problem solving skills. Thus, the research methods of Cognitive Psychology came to light along with the various other processing models.
Cognitive Psychology and psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis tries to fathom the functioning of the unconscious mind and deals a lot on the subjective perceptions. The influence of the unconscious mind on human behavior is the key topic of interest in psychoanalysis. However, the domain of Cognitive Psychology relies heavily on the usage of scientific methods to research the mental states.
Conclusion
Therefore, the field of Cognitive Psychology has a huge scope in terms of career as it is a out of the ordinary domain of psychology and the application of this branch of psychology is far sighted and huge.

Reference:
http://classof1.com/homework-help/psychology-homework-help/