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Cognitve Psychology

Cognitive psychology deals with the mental processes like memory and problem solving. It is also concerned with internal processes such as attention, perception, thinking, reasoning and language. However in the past these processes were studied by means of laboratory tasks, however it has become clear that the cognitive approach is very useful when understanding developmental issues, social functioning and treatment of many mental disorders.
Biological psychology however brings together biology and psychology to understand behavior and thought it also looks at the link between biology and psychological events such as how information travels throughout our bodies.
The roots of cognitive psychology has existed for the last 2,000 years Neisser (1967) (cognitive psychologist) published the ‘cognitive psychology' as Neisser states cognition begins with sensory input, he says that our cognitive processes are most useful in responding to information that is present in the world and that is capable in being picked up by our sensory apparatus.
However more recent studies show that Cognitive psychologists have made many contributions in order to help us understand the processes and structures involved in perception, attention and performance. All these contributions have taken various forms leading Eysenck and Keane to identify three main strands in the cognitive psychology field.
(1) Experimental cognitive psychology: this approach mainly relies on lab based studies of cognition in normal individuals
(2) Cognition science: this approach involves producing computer programs to mimic the processes and outputs of the human brain.
(3) Cognitive neuropsychological: this approach involves studying cognitive process in brain-damaged patients to understand the workings of the cognitive system. (E.g. some brain damaged patients can understand language but cannot speak or write it properly. Some cognitive psychologist suggests that this may be because different language...