What Is Cognitive Psychology?

Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental functions such as attention, memory, and language. Cognitive psychology is a branch of both psychology and cognitive science that focuses on how we acquire, process, and store information. It also includes studies of language acquisition and human thinking that were previously categorized as part of behavioral psychology. Cognitive psychologists seek to understand how people think, remember and solve problems by observing them in different environments and by conducting experiments to test their theories. The field was established as a separate discipline in the 1950s by Ulric Neisser. Cognitive psychology is a branch of science that has been influenced by two other disciplines—behaviorism and Gestalt psychology. It uses a variety of methods to study the mind, including experiments, case studies, and computer simulations. Cognitive psychology has contributed to the development of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Its applications include areas such as education, business, and medicine. As we learn more about the human mind, cognitive psychology will continue evolving as new theories are proposed and tested.