Cognitive Perspective In Psychology

There are many different ways of thinking about human behavior. Psychologists use a lot of different ways to study how people think, feel, and behave. Some of them look at a certain point of view while others look at several points of view. There is no single perspective that is better than the other because each perspective points out different aspects of human behavior.

The essentials of the cognitive learning theory have a long history, and the cognitive transformation occurred around the middle of the 20th century. This area of psychology focused on mental processes such as memory, thinking, problem solving, language and decision-making. If one wanted to simply define the cognitive perspective it would be a branch of psychology that focuses on the brain’s functions and processes with an aim of understanding how it operates. Therefore, psychologists from this perspective study the mental act or process in which knowledge is acquired by focusing on the variables that intervene between stimulus/input and response/output (The Cognitive Perspective, n.d.).

Three of the main areas of study in cognitive perspective are perception, memory, and language (McLeod, 2007). Perception is concerned with the way people acquire knowledge. It involves organizing, identifying, and interpreting of information related to the five senses in order to embody and figure out the environment. All perception involves signals in the nervous system which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs. Perception involves bottom-up process of giving out sensory input as well as top-down effects. The bottom-up process takes low-level information and uses it to build up higher-level information. The top-down processing ...

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... learning is that coping with a lack of sleep was a lot easier when I was younger. At a younger age, I could function with little or no sleep and work longer hours with little or no change in cognitive performance. With age, I am learning that lack of sufficient sleep not only a impairs working memory, but also other functions such as long term memory and decision making. There also may be other factors involved such as psychological mechanisms as well as social or environmental factors. With that being said, all I know is that a good night of sleep makes me feel physically and mentally healthier.

Bibliography

McLeod, S. (2007). Cognitive Psychology. Retrieved April 10, 2014, from http://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive.html

The Cognitive Perspective. (n.d.). Retrieved April 10, 2014, from http://testbed.cis.drexel.edu/I625/Basics_Cognitive_Perspective.pdf