Noun

Singular cognitive psychology

Plural uncountable

cognitive psychology (uncountable)

1. (psychology) A branch of psychology that examines internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language.

António Damásio Phineas Gage Norman Geschwind Elkhonon Goldberg Patricia Goldman Rakic Pasko Rakic Donald O. Hebb Kenneth Heilman Edith Kaplan Muriel Lezak Benjamin Libet Rodolfo Llinás Alexander Luria Brenda Milner Karl H. Pribram Oliver Sacks Mark Rosenzweig Roger W. Sperry

Benton Visual Retention Test Clinical Dementia Rating Continuous Performance Task Glasgow Coma Scale Hayling and Brixton tests Johari window Lexical decision task Mini-mental state examination Stroop effect Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale

Cognitive psychology is a discipline within psychology that investigates the internal mental processes of thought such as visual processing, memory, thinking, learning, feeling, problem solving, and language.

The school of thought arising from this approach is known as cognitivism which is interested in how people mentally represent information processing. It had its foundations in the work of Wilhelm Wundt, Gestalt psychology of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka, and in the work of Jean Piaget, who provided a theory of stages/phases that describe children's cognitive development. Cognitive psychologists use psychophysical and experimental approaches to understand, diagnose, and solve problems, concerning themselves with the mental processes which mediate between stimulus and response. Cognitive theory contends that solutions to problems take the form of algorithms—rules that are not necessarily understood but promise a solution, or heuristics—rules that are understood but that do not always guarantee solutions. In other instances, solutions may be found through insight, a sudden awareness of relationships.