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Evolution of Cognitive Psychology

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In dealing with cognitive psychology I need assistance with:
- Defining cognition
- Explaining the interdisciplinary perspective in relation to cognitive psychology
- Describing the emergence of cognitive psychology as a discipline
- Assessing the impact of the decline of behaviorism on the discipline of cognitive psychology

I have some peer reviewed articles I have found, but if you have other suggestions I am open to them.

- Hodgkinson, G. P., & Clarke, I. (2007, January). Exploring the cognitive significance of organizational strategizing: A dual-process framework and research agenda. Human Relations, 60(1), 243.
- Maurage, P., Pesenti, M., Philippot, P., Joassin, F., & Campanella, S. (2009, March). Latent deleterious effects of binge drinking over a short period of time revealed only by electrophysiological measures. Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience : JPN, 34(2), 111.
- Otter, T., Johnson, J., Rieskamp, J., & Allenby, G. M. (2008, December). Sequential sampling models of choice: Some recent advances. Marketing Letters, 19(3-4), 255.
- Xie, S., Yang, Y., Yang, Z., & He, J. (2005, May). Millisecond-accurate synchronization of visual stimulus displays for cognitive research. Behavior Research Methods, 37(2), 373.

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Solution Summary

An evolution of cognitive psychology are examined. The expert describes the emergence of cognitive psychology as a discipline.

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Evolution of Cognitive Psychology

A few years ago the movie Quest for Fire presented the struggles of early human kind to navigate and subjugate their surroundings. Their quest for fire represented a quest to understand themselves and their environment, seeking to learn how to use fire to serve their needs. Any student of human history realizes that from the time we took our first steps as fully formed beings we have been engaged in a never-ending exploration of the world we inhabit and have struggled to find and keep our place in that world. As sentient beings with ever expanding cognitive capabilities, we embarked on a never-ending quest to explore and understand ourselves and the world we inhabit. A variety of factors motivated our explorations, like self and societal preservation, the need to understand ourselves relative to the world around us, and in internal quest to harness and understand our ever-expanding abilities. In essence, we came to realize that it was our nature to explore and come to know our world - our biological, social, spiritual and emotional worlds. We embarked on a quest to understand - a quest for knowledge.
The simplest and most direct definition of cognition is that it is the process of thinking. However, few things are ever that simple. A more comprehensive definition is that cognition involves the multiple mental processes and functions that include arousal and attention, memory, communications, heuristics, problem solving, reasoning, decision-making and consciousness or the human capacity to be self-aware. The term, though used in a variety of disciplines (such as computer science and philosophy), for psychologist, the terms use, definition and area of emphasis can vary across a number of psychological sub-disciplines. For example, forensic psychologist may be most interested in the processes of memory, how they are selected, sorted, stored and recalled either accurately or inaccurately. They would be interested in how the cognitive process and social influence affects the decision making process of juries among other things. Social psychologist would be interested in the areas of cognitive science that effect social learning and behavior, as well as attitudes, beliefs, attribution and social and cultural group dynamics. They would be interested in how cognitions change to increase altruist attitudes and behaviors for example and trying to device ways to improve attitudes and cognitions affecting such issues as diversity and ethnic and cultural prejudice (fundamental attribution errors). Health Psychologists are concerned with how cognition affects behaviors and outcomes in relationship to health and prevention. Clinical psychologists are interested in the links between how we think and our behavior. Those who study learning and cognition are interested in how we learn and think. Understanding the link between our cognitions and our behavior may be understood through the theories of cognitive mapping.
From humankind's earliest attempts to locate themselves in the world and enjoining the process to secure their survival they engaged in the conscious and unconscious process of remembering and encoding the knowledge they gained. They mapped and communicated this knowledge through drawings on cave walls and as time has advanced, we have continued to map our knowledge of the physical world with greater precision. One theory of cognitive scientist seeks to understand the process by which we come to ...

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