Chinazo Uchechukwu

COGNITIVE PYCHOLOGY

In the middle of the 20th century, alongside the massive proliferation of computers, a new specialism in psychology emerged. Some thought it was so influential that they called it a revolution. The cognitive revolution. So what is cognitive psychology? To answer that question, it's worth thinking for just a moment about what psychology looked like just before cognitive psychology existed. The subject was engulfed in a movement called behaviorism, with the prevailing belief that the role of psychology was to study people's behaviors. But some psychologists were becoming increasingly frustrated that by only studying behaviors, they weren't able to understand the processes that were going on internally. And so in a grand shift, cognitive psychology emerged as the study of mental processes and complex behaviors.