Contrary to behavioral psychologists, cognitive psychologists study unobservable mechanisms and processes, such as memory storage and memory changes.
Studying cognitive process from the perspective of information processing is the mainstream of modern cognitive psychology, which can be said to be equivalent to information processing psychology. It regards people as an information processing system, and thinks that cognition is the whole process of information processing, including encoding, storing and extracting sensory input. According to this view, cognition can be decomposed into a series of stages, each stage is a unit that performs a certain operation on the input information, and the reaction is the product of this series of stages and operations. All components of an information processing system are interrelated in some way. With the development of cognitive psychology, this view of sequential processing is increasingly challenged by parallel processing theory and related theories of cognitive neuropsychology.
Cognitive psychologists pay attention to the psychological mechanism as the basis of human behavior, and its core is the internal psychological process between input and output. But people can't directly observe the internal psychological process, and can only speculate by observing what is input and output. Therefore, the method used by cognitive psychologists is to infer unobservable psychological processes from observable phenomena. Some people call this method convergence proof, that is, data with different properties are gathered together and a conclusion is drawn. At present, cognitive psychology research usually needs the support of experiments, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive neuropsychology and computer simulation, and this kind of multi-faceted research is increasingly favored. Cognitive psychologists hope to reveal the essential process of cognitive activities by studying the brain itself, rather than just speculating on its process.
Cognitive psychology often divides the information processing process into several stages, that is, the whole process from stimulus input to response. They often use the reaction time method. That is to say, by measuring the time required for a process, we can determine the nature of this process and its relationship with other processes.
Suppose a person looks at the letter E projected on the screen. If the projection time is short, such as one millisecond, then this person can't see anything, which means that perception is not instantaneous. If the projection time is longer, such as five milliseconds, then this person will see something, but he doesn't know what it is, which means that perception has been produced, but discrimination has not yet been produced; If the projection time is long enough for people to see that the letters are not O or Q, but E, F or K, then this person has partial discrimination. From this, people can determine the time required to completely distinguish, partially distinguish or just see something. All this shows that perception is cumulative, and it includes several specific stages.
Reaction time research method is also a convergence proof method. Cognitive psychologists use selective reaction time more than simple reaction time. Because the selective reaction can provide more information about the internal state.
Computer simulation and analogy is a special method adopted by cognitive psychologists. To make computers think like people, computer programs should conform to the mechanism of human cognitive activities, that is, to some cognitive theory or model. Representing cognitive theory as a computer program is called computer simulation. Therefore, computer simulation can be used to test a theory, find its defects and improve it.
The output provided by computer simulation can be compared with human behavior. If the theory is correct, then this output should be similar to that given by human beings when solving the same problem; If the output of the program is different from that of human beings, then finding out the difference will find the basis for correcting the theory. Computer simulations can also predict complex behaviors. Although we understand some concepts and can turn them into programs step by step, when this series of steps is long and complicated and requires a lot of connections, we often can't predict the results. In this case, computer simulation can sometimes get amazing results.
Some cognitive psychologists often use information sequence flow charts to describe the main features of computer programs. However, this flowchart does not have the details of the actual operation of the computer, but only provides an outline of the computer program, which can be further transformed into a computer program, and this part of the work is often realized by computer software experts.
Oral recording is also a common method used by cognitive psychologists, especially cognitive psychologists who study thinking. This method can produce good results when combined with other objective methods.
Cognitive psychology is the result of psychological development. It is also related to western traditional philosophy. Its main feature is to emphasize the role of knowledge, which is the main factor that determines people's behavior. This idea can be traced back at least to British empirical philosophers such as Bacon and Locke. Descartes emphasized the role of deduction, while cognitive psychology attached importance to hypothetical deduction. Kant's schema concept has become a major concept in cognitive psychology.
Cognitive psychology also inherited the tradition of early experimental psychology. The research method of reaction time put forward by Helmholtz and Donders in19th century is widely used by cognitive psychologists today and has made new progress.
Feng Te is the founder of modern experimental psychology, and the view of cognitive psychology on the object and method of psychology is very close to his view. He believes that the object of psychology is the content of experience and consciousness, and the method is introspection under controlled conditions. Some psychologists say that cognitive psychology has returned to Feng Te's consciousness psychology, but the difference is that the method is more reliable and precise. James's formulation of two kinds of memory, primary memory and secondary memory, has become the basis of memory research in cognitive psychology today.
Gestalt psychology has obvious influence on cognitive psychology. It is famous for its research on perceptual and advanced psychological processes, emphasizing the organization and structural principles of gestalt, and opposing the view that behavioral psychology regards people as passive stimulus reactors. These viewpoints have great influence on cognitive psychology. For example, cognitive psychology defines perception as the organization and interpretation of sensory information, and emphasizes the initiative of information processing.
In terms of methods, Gestalt psychology advocates the study of direct life experience and the combination of direct life experience materials and experimental data, such as attaching importance to the observer's direct description of his own perceptual content, and calls this method phenomenological method. This view is different from that of Feng Te and Tichner, who only admit the introspection of strictly trained subjects, and from that of behaviorism, which only attaches importance to laboratory experiments, but it is consistent with the basic view of cognitive psychology.
Cognitive psychology opposes behaviorism, but it is also influenced by it. Cognitive psychology has accepted behaviorism's strict experimental methods and operationalism. In recent years, cognitive psychology no longer pays attention to the study of internal psychological processes, but also begins to pay attention to the study of behavior. It is generally believed that people use information from the environment, combined with things stored in memory, to guide future behavior and shape the living environment.
Cognitive psychology is also the product of cross-infiltration between psychology and adjacent disciplines. First of all, linguistics has a great influence on the development of cognitive psychology. Psycholinguistics founded by Chomsky combining linguistics with psychology can be said to be a branch of cognitive psychology.
Cybernetics, information theory and computer science have far-reaching influence on the development of cognitive psychology. The combination of computer science and psychology has produced a frontier discipline artificial intelligence. There is a close relationship between artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology, and the appearance of computers makes people find a new method to analyze people's inner psychological process and state.
The psychological direction of early experimental psychology was cut off by behaviorism for nearly half a century. Today's cognitive psychology continues this direction, while maintaining the strict hypothesis deduction method of new behaviorism and adding machine simulation method. This expands the research topic of cognitive process analysis.
Turing's mathematical system, published in 1930s, was later called Turing Machine, which also had an impact on psychology. Quantitative logic and Turing machine make people think that human cognitive system can also be regarded as a symbolic application system. Some concepts of human beings can be expressed by symbols, which can be transformed through a certain symbolic operation process. These thoughts play an important role in cognitive psychology not only in theory but also in concrete research.
A basic view of cognitive psychology is that computers can be used to simulate people's internal psychological processes. The computer accepts the symbol input, encodes it, makes a decision on the encoded input, stores it and gives the symbol output. This can be compared with how people receive information, how to encode memory, how to make decisions, how to transform internal cognitive state, and how to compile this state into behavioral output. This analogy between computer and cognitive process is only a horizontal analogy, that is, describing the internal psychological process at the computer program level mainly involves the logical ability of people and computers, rather than the analogy between computer hardware and human brain.
The rise of cognitive psychology is a major change in the development of western psychology. Some people say it is a new school, others say it is a new direction, and more people agree with Kuhn's point of view as a new "paradigm". Kuhn called the replacement of old and new paradigms in science scientific revolution. It is in this sense that some American psychologists believe that the emergence of cognitive psychology is the second revolution in the development of American psychology. The first revolution was the rise of behaviorism.
The emergence of cognitive psychology shows that American psychologists have changed their views on basic issues such as the objects and methods of psychology. Behaviorism has dominated American psychology for forty years, and its influence is deeply rooted, while cognitive psychology opposes the basic viewpoint of behaviorism.
On the research object of psychology, behaviorism advocates the study of explicit and observable behavior, regardless of the internal psychological process; Cognitive psychology has shifted the research focus to the internal psychological process. In terms of research methods, behaviorism emphasizes strict laboratory methods and excludes all reports of subjective experience; Cognitive psychology attaches importance to laboratory experiments and reports of subjective experience. For cognitive psychologists, changing external conditions is not an end, but an auxiliary means to reveal the knowledge structure.
Cognitive psychology tries to unify all cognitive processes. It holds that cognitive phenomena such as attention, perception, memory and thinking are intertwined, and understanding one group of phenomena helps to explain another. Because of their interdependence, it is possible to find a unified processing model of human cognitive process.
Cognitive psychology should not only unify the cognitive process, but also unify all fields of general psychology, that is, to study and explain emotions, motives, personality and other aspects from a cognitive point of view. The viewpoint of cognitive psychology is further extended to social psychology, developmental psychology, physiological psychology, engineering psychology and other fields.
Cognitive psychology attaches importance to the comprehensive viewpoint in psychological research, and emphasizes the interrelation and mutual restriction among various psychological processes, which is helpful to expand psychological research methods in the study of specific problems. The research results of cognitive psychology also contribute to the development of computer science.
A metaphor often used by psychologists is, if you were a Martian, how would you study the psychological behavior of people on earth? Judging from the current situation, the "heart" of the earth people seen by Martians has been divided into pieces. If Martians want to understand the psychology of people on earth, they must master as many as forty or fifty branches of personality psychology, social psychology, cognitive psychology, abnormal psychology and cultural psychology.
Suppose you are a young man who often receives a girl's "good friend card". You want a simple question, why do girls always say I am good, but always refuse me? After she turned me down, I was happy to keep friendly relations with her.
Psychologists from different branches will give you completely different answers. Personality psychologists will answer you from the perspective of personality differences; Developmental psychologists pay more attention to your early attachment to your parents and the influence of adolescent sexual psychology on you; Cognitive psychologists will care about your decision-making bias and irrational cognitive behavior in different stages of marriage and love; Social psychologists will care about the influence of peer groups and social norms on you; Self-psychologists will care about the influence of your tendency in different dimensions, such as open self and private self; Cultural psychologists pay more attention to how your cultural background shapes you; A local psychologist like Yang Zhiping may try to find local words such as "outsider", "own" and "match" to answer your questions ... Of course, there are special circumstances, and pseudo-psychologists will not hesitate to give you a whole set of Freudian theories to fool you. Anyway, when you hear the words "ID" and "ego", be ready to hold out your middle finger.
A small problem of marriage and love will involve most mainstream disciplines of psychology, and different disciplines will give different answers to the same proposition. It is often difficult to compare models obtained from different disciplines. The research mode of each discipline follows the most standardized psychological scientific methodology, which always looks so impressive. Even in some universities in China, some so-called experts who have studied this issue for many years may have approved the doctoral program of "Good Man Card". As for the young man who is still confused about the "good man card" problem, he has long been forgotten by psychologists.
However, do we really need dozens of sub-disciplines to explain a psychological and behavioral problem in real life?
Like physicists eager to unify physical theory, psychologists who are full of ambition and curiosity to explore human psychological behavior also call for a unified psychological discipline framework.
The increasingly popular evolutionary psychology may reverse this situation. With the rise of evolutionary psychology, a unified discipline framework of psychology is becoming a reality. 2 1 century, psychology has become a prominent school, and maybe it will start with the breakthrough of evolutionary psychology in more fields. If psychology is roughly divided into three levels: psychological essence theory, psychological technology and psychological application. Evolutionary psychology may unify the theory of psychological essence in the near future.
Why evolutionary psychology may become the commander-in-chief of future psychology? The fundamental reason why there are so many branches of psychology at present is that the basic units of analysis of each branch are not unified. Personality psychologists are more accustomed to using words such as "trait", "behavior" and "type" to describe people's personality differences. Then, once it comes to the question of whether "trait" exists and what its physiological basis is, personality psychologists begin to be speechless. Similarly, developmental psychologists have their own atlas, and attach great importance to concepts such as attachment style and adolescence. However, most of these concepts separate the "heart" of the earth people from the time dimension and present it to Martians, and do not have the basis for common dialogue with other branches.
This phenomenon has existed in psychology for a long time, and Martians will often be curious about the "psychology department" on earth. Why are you not an educator, but an educational psychologist? Why are you not a management scientist, but an industrial organization psychologist? Why are you not a biologist, but a neuropsychologist? ......
As a result, the reason why the head of the psychology department comforts psychologists in different disciplines is that different branches of psychology use the same set of psychological research methodology. Yes, this is also the greatest achievement of psychology today. Research methodology supports communication between different disciplines, not research propositions. In the early stage of the development of psychology, the times when various branches of psychology appeared one after another were often the times when psychological research techniques appeared one after another. In that glorious era, a large number of psychological research methods appeared, such as experimental control, factor analysis, Q classification, meaningless words, computer simulation technology, psychological tests, reliability and validity concepts, which greatly promoted the development of the whole scientific community. However, with the intensification of interdisciplinary communication and the popularization of computer technology in recent years, the original research methodology of psychologists has made less and less contribution to the whole scientific community, and we have little or no unique research methods of psychology.
Under this historical background, with the continuous birth of gifted biologists and psychologists, psychologists who try to integrate various branches of psychology naturally turn their attention to "genes"-the basic unit of human physiology.