Psychology
What word spells J-O-K-E? Now, what do you call a white part of an egg? This is what you call, a perceptual set, our tendency to interpret things in certain ways is based on our previous experiences. This idea is part of a larger concept of study called psychology, “the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given context” (Angell). I’ve done extensive research on this topic, as well as taken a few psychology classes in the past. So, today we will be learning about cognitive, perceptual, and behavior psychology.
First let’s look at the idea of cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental functions such as : learning, reasoning, language, conceptual development, and decision making. In 1967 the term cognitive psychology first came into light during the rise of behaviorism, Franciscus Donders was the first to experiment with this idea as he created an experiment to test the reaction time by recording the time it took to respond to light by pressing a button, then he increased the numbers of stimulus to determine how much it would take to do more than one (Hergenhahn, Henley). You can apply cognitive bias in your daily lives in many different ways, say you
Perceptual psychology is a branch in cognitive psychology that deals with processes we use daily in our everyday life. What do I mean by this? Well, imagine your in your kitchen at home and someone lights a candle, and it smells like a blueberry muffin. How do you feel? Some people may love the smell and enjoy it, while others like me, may feel sick to their stomach and want to leave the room. The beginning of the study of this idea began in 1897 when the father of psychology Wilhelm Wundt, began the first psychological laboratory in the University of Leipzig, and within two years later found the first journal of psychology, “Principles of Psychology” (Reiber,
Schacter, D. L., Gilbert, D. T., & Wegner, D. M. (2010). Psychology. (2nd ed., p. 600). New York: Worth Pub.
There can be some potential barriers when using TF-CBT. Therapists have to take into consideration that when having the session with the child and the parent, the parent may have experienced sexual abuse as well as a child, and this may open up some past wounds that have not been resolved (Foster, 2014). Foster (2014) also states there is a risk that a child and/or family may want to drop out due to the dynamics of the family, the severity of the symptoms of the child, the stress of the parent, whether or not if the parent believes in counseling, or if the child’s symptoms get worse before they get better and the parent takes them out of therapy.
Passer, M., Smith, R., Holt, N., Bremner, A., Sutherland, E., & Vliek, M. (2009). Psychology; Science of Mind and Behaviour. (European Edition). New York.
According to numerous references in the field of Psychology, a cognitive psychologist is an individual that studies topics such as thinking, problem-solving, learning, attention, memory, forgetting, and language acquisition, among several others. Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that studies mental processes, and its core focus is on how people acquire, process, and store information. While great research has been done within the field of psychology, there are individuals such as B.F. Skinner who criticize its strides, purposes, and research methods.
Gall, S. B., Beins, B., & Feldman, A. (2001). The gale encyclopedia of psychology. (2nd ed., pp. 271-273). Detroit, MI: Gale Group.
Whilst evaluating the cognitive approach to psychology there are many strengths such as that the cognitive approach takes an understanding of the influence from mental processes on one’s behaviour, focusing on an individual’s thinking patterns and their perception. This approach also relates to many known functions and operations that the human body performs such as memory and problem solving.
While people deal with everyday life, a plethora of events is occurring throughout the day. Most people usually do a multitude of actions to resolve these events without thinking as well. This can be anything from trying to get to class as soon as possible, talking to someone that recently was introduced, or doing a kind of tradition at a football game. Cognitive Biases is defined as a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion. This article will talk about a small sample of these situations and clarify what the meaning behind them. It shall discuss Negativity Bias, Confirmation Bias, Gamblers Fallacy, and Illusion of Control
Several acheivements occurred in the development of cognitive psychology. The study of neuroscience brings us to what we know about cognition today. Cognitive psychology came from the criticisms and flaws of behaviorism. The focus of behaviorism is on observable behaviors, although cognitive psychology became a means to studying mental processes. Cognitive psychology can answer the questions behaviorism could not provide. Behavioral observations are key factors in cognitive psychology, and help with interpreting mental processes and behaviors. Through studying mental processes cognitive psychologists’ expanded psychology through and beyond observations. Behavioral observations helps researchers test cognitive theories. Behaviorists study observable behavior and cognitive psychologists study the mental processes. When studying these processes, researchers attempt to explain how unobservable processes interact with the observable behaviors and helping cognitive psychologists test their theories in
The development of psychology like all other sciences started with great minds debating unknown topics and searching for unknown answers. Early philosophers and psychologists such as Sir Francis Bacon and Charles Darwin took a scientific approach to psychology by introducing the ideas of measurement and biology into the way an indi...
Sternberg, R. J. (1999). Cognitive psychology (2nd ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers
Perception is defined as the process of organizing, interpreting, and selectively extracting sensory information . Visual perception is left to the individual person to make up their own mind. Perceptual organisation occurs when one groups the basic elements of the sensory world into the coherant objects that one perceives. Perception is therefore a process through which the brain makes sense of incoming stimuli.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory, developed by Leon Festinger (1957), is concerned with the relationships among cognitions (Festinger, 1957). In this context, cognition can be perceived as a piece of knowledge that may inscribe an element of an attitude, an emotion, a behavior, a value, and so on (Festinger, 1957). For example, the knowledge that you like the color blue is a cognition. People hold a multitude of cognitions simultaneously, and these cognitions form irrelevant, consonant or dissonant relationships with one another.
Edited by Raymond J. Corsini. Encyclopedia of Psychology, Second Edition, Volume 1. New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc.
Pronin, E., Lin, D. Y., & Ross, L. (2002). The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self
Balota, D. A. and Marsh, E.J. Cognitive psychology. Key Readings. (2004) Hove: East Sussex: Psychology Press.