Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with mental processes, including attention, perception, memory, language and problem solving.[1] It investigates how people process information and how thought relates to experience and behaviour.[1] The field forms part of cognitive science, which brings together psychological research and approaches from other disciplines.[1]
Approach and development
Researchers study mental processes through observable behaviour and the circumstances in which it occurs, since thoughts cannot be observed directly.[2] They divide broad questions about the mind into more specific problems, such as how people recognise an object or remember information.[2] The assumptions used to make these divisions influence both the questions asked and the explanations considered.[2]
One influential approach compares the mind with an information-processing system: information is received, transformed and used to produce responses.[2] This is a model for investigation rather than a complete description of the brain.[2] Cognitive psychologists also investigate processes outside conscious awareness, including the operations that precede conscious perception.[2]
Modern cognitive psychology developed against the background of earlier experimental psychology and behaviorism.[2] Behaviourism concentrated on observable behaviour; renewed interest in mental processes became prominent in the late 1950s.[2]
Areas of study
Research on attention examines how people select information and what happens to material they do not attend to.[3] In dichotic listening experiments, different messages are presented to the two ears and participants repeat one of them; their reports help researchers compare processing of attended and unattended information.[3]
Memory research distinguishes the temporary use of information in working memory, recollection of personal events in episodic memory, and knowledge of facts and meanings in semantic memory.[4] Remembering involves encoding, retaining and retrieving information; failure at any of these stages can affect later recollection.[4]
Other research examines concepts and prototypes: the categories people use to organise information and the examples they regard as representative.[5] Concepts connect details from experience with broader knowledge, while prototypes provide familiar examples against which new cases can be considered.[5]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "1.3 Contemporary Psychology". OpenStax. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
attention to problem solving to language to memory
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 Willingham, Daniel T.; Riener, Cedar (2019). "Cognitive Psychologists' Approach to Research". Cognition: The Thinking Animal (PDF) (4th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–10. ISBN 9781107525122. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
science of mental processes
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Friedrich, Frances. "Attention". Noba. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
select certain stimuli in the environment to process
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 McDermott, Kathleen B.; Roediger, Henry L. "Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval)". Noba. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
encoding information ... storing it ... retrieving it
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "7.1 What Is Cognition?". OpenStax. Retrieved 2026-10-20.
Concepts are categories or groupings
Attribution
Adapted from the scope of English Wikipedia’s Cognitive psychology, revision 1380659350, with contributor history, under CC BY-SA 4.0. The prose was rewritten from the separately inspected sources cited here.