Paradigms of Cognitive Psychology

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Compare and contrast the three paradigms of Cognitive Psychology. What is the best way to organize this type of assignment and what facts should be included?

The three main paradigms of Cognitive Psychology are the information-processing approach (see Lachman et al., 1979), the connectionist approach (see McClelland & Rumelhart, 1986), and the ecological approach (see Lave, 1988; Neisser, 1976; Rogoff, 1990).

Paradigms are basically the intellectual frameworks that guide investigators in studying and understanding phenomena. In learning about each cognitive paradigm and in a compare and contrast assignment of the three paradigms, several questions should be addressed. What assumptions underlie each of the paradigms? What questions or issues does each paradigm emphasize? What analogies or metaphors (for example, the computer-mind) does the paradigm use? What research methods and measures are favored in each of the three paradigms?

As an example, we will address each of these questions for one of the three paradigms-- the information-processing paradigm below:

1. In this paradigm, cognition is thought of as information (what we see, hear, read about, think about) passing though a system (us, or more specifically, our minds) serially or in discrete stages.

2. One of the assumptions of this paradigm is that information is processed (that is, received, stored, recoded, transformed, retrieved, transmitted) in stages and that it is stored in specific places while being processed.

3. One goal of this paradigm, then, is to determine what these stages and storage places are and how they work.

4. Another ...