2 History of Cognitive Psychology

Philosophers have wondered about the mind at least as far back as Socrates. Yet the scientific study of mental processes only began much more recently. What changed, and what tools can we use to study mental processes?

RISE OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Precursors to American psychology can be found in philosophy and physiology. Philosophers such as John Locke (1632–1704) and Thomas Reid (1710–1796) promoted empiricism, the idea that all knowledge comes from experience. The work of Locke, Reid, and others emphasized the role of the human observer and the primacy of the senses in defining how the mind comes to acquire knowledge. In American colleges and universities in the early 1800s, these principles were taught as courses on mental and moral philosophy. Most often these courses taught about the mind based on the faculties of intellect, will, and the senses (Fuchs, 2000).

EARLY COGNITIVE RESEARCH

While the term cognitive psychology was not coined until 1967, there were many researchers who contributed to its development much earlier. In 1868, Dutch physiologist Franciscus Donders aimed to determine the length of time needed to make a decision. Donders devised a simple experiment measuring reaction time – how long it takes to respond to a stimulus. He measured it using a simple reaction time task, where participants were asked to press a button as soon as they saw a light stimulus. Additionally, he measured it using a choice reaction time task, where participants were asked to press a button corresponding to one of two lights – a right-side button for a right-side light or a left-side button for a left-side light. In a third task, Donders had participants complete a go/no go task, where participants saw a number of stimuli presented sequentially, and were only to respond (by pressing a button) when the “go” stimulus was presented, while withholding their response on the “no go” stimuli. Donders reasoned that the simple reaction time task included sensory reception of the stimulus as well as the physiological response time (the time it takes the brain to command the finger to press the button). The go/no go task included these same components, plus an identification process (whether the stimulus was a “go” or “no go” stimulus). The choice reaction time task included all of these components as well as a response selection process (deciding which button to press), which Donders deemed the decision process.

Donders had deduced that the difference in the reactions times of the tasks would indicate the length of time needed for the different processes, using a subtractive method (also referred to as mental chronometry). So, the difference between a participant’s average time on the go/no go task and their average time on the simple reaction time task would indicate the length of time that the identification process takes. The difference between a participant’s average time on the choice reaction time task and their average time on the go/no go task would indicate the length of time that the response selection (decision) process takes.

ESTABLISHMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

The formal development of modern psychology is usually credited to the work of German physician, physiologist, and philosopher Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920). Wundt helped to establish the field of experimental psychology by serving as a strong promoter of the idea that psychology could be an experimental field and by providing classes, textbooks, and a laboratory for training students. In 1875, he joined the faculty at the University of Leipzig and quickly began to make plans for the creation of a program of experimental psychology. In 1879, he complemented his lectures on experimental psychology with a laboratory experience: an event that has served as the popular date for the establishment of the science of psychology.

The response to the new science was immediate and global. Wundt attracted students from around the world to study the new experimental psychology and work in his lab. Students were trained to offer detailed self- reports of their reactions to various stimuli, a procedure known as introspection, with the goal of identifying the components of consciousness. In addition to the study of sensation and perception, research was done on mental chronometry. The work of Wundt and his students further demonstrated that mental processes could be measured and the nature of consciousness could be revealed through scientific means. It was an exciting proposition, and one that found great interest in America. After the opening of Wundt’s lab in 1879, it took just four years for the first psychology laboratory to open in the United States (Benjamin, 2007).

THE GROWTH OF PSYCHOLOGY

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, psychology continued to grow and flourish in America. It was large enough to accommodate varying points of view on the nature of mind and behavior. Gestalt psychology is a good example. The Gestalt movement began in Germany with the work of Max Wertheimer (1880–1943). Opposed to the reductionist approach of Wundt’s laboratory, Wertheimer and his colleagues Kurt Koffka (1886–1941), Wolfgang Kohler (1887–1967), and Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) believed that studying the whole of any experience was richer than studying individual aspects of that experience. The saying “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is a Gestalt perspective. Consider that a melody is an additional element beyond the collection of notes that comprise it. The Gestalt psychologists proposed that the mind often processes information simultaneously rather than sequentially. For instance, when you look at a photograph, you see a whole image, not just a collection of pixels of color. Using Gestalt principles, Wertheimer and his colleagues also explored the nature of learning and thinking. Many of the German Gestalt psychologists were Jewish and were forced to flee the Nazi regime due to the threats posed on both academic and personal freedoms. In America, they were able to introduce a new audience to the Gestalt perspective, demonstrating how it could be applied to perception and learning (Wertheimer, 1938). In many ways, the work of the Gestalt psychologists served as a precursor to the rise of cognitive psychology in America (Benjamin, 2007).

Behaviorism emerged early in the 20th century and became a major force in American psychology. Championed by psychologists such as John B. Watson (1878–1958) and B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), behaviorism rejected any reference to mind and viewed overt and observable behavior as the proper subject matter of psychology. Through the scientific study of behavior, it was hoped that laws of learning could be derived that would promote the prediction and control of behavior. Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) influenced early behaviorism in America. His work on conditioned learning, popularly referred to as classical conditioning, provided support for the notion that learning and behavior were controlled by events in the environment and could be explained with no reference to mind or consciousness (Fancher, 1987).

COGNITIVE REVOLUTION

Behaviorism’s emphasis on objectivity and focus on external behavior had pulled psychologists’ attention away from the mind for a prolonged period of time. The early work of the humanistic psychologists redirected attention to the individual human as a whole, and as a conscious and self-aware being. By the 1950s, new disciplinary perspectives in linguistics, neuroscience, and computer science were emerging, and these areas revived interest in the mind as a focus of scientific inquiry. This particular perspective has come to be known as the cognitive revolution (Miller, 2003). By 1967, Ulric Neisser published the first textbook entitled Cognitive Psychology, which served as a core text in cognitive psychology courses around the country (Thorne & Henley, 2005). Cognitive psychology is the study of mental processing such as attention, memory, perception, language use, problem solving, decision making, creativity, and thinking. Much of the work derived from cognitive psychology has been integrated into various other modern disciplines of psychological study including social psychology, personality psychology, abnormal psychology, developmental psychology, educational psychology, and economics.

Although no one person is entirely responsible for starting the cognitive revolution, Noam Chomsky was very influential in the early days of this movement. Chomsky (1928–), an American linguist, was dissatisfied with the influence that behaviorism had had on psychology. He believed that psychology’s focus on behavior was short-sighted and that the field had to re-incorporate mental functioning into its purview if it were to offer any meaningful contributions to understanding behavior (Miller, 2003).

European psychology had never really been as influenced by behaviorism as had American psychology; and thus, the cognitive revolution helped reestablish lines of communication between European psychologists and their American counterparts. Furthermore, psychologists began to cooperate with scientists in other fields, like anthropology, linguistics, computer science, and neuroscience, among others. This interdisciplinary approach often was referred to as the cognitive sciences, and the influence and prominence of this particular perspective resonates in modern-day psychology (Miller, 2003). Next, we will look at the research methods psychologists use to ask questions about the world.

REFERENCES

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