Essence of cognitive psychology. What is Cognitive Psychology: Key Ideas, Therapy, Exercises

Introduction

The topic of this course is cognitive psychology. The problem of the development of cognitive psychology is one of the key in psychology. It is widely discussed in the framework of domestic and foreign psychological research. The study of cognitive psychology, the dynamics of its development is of great interest, both in theoretical and practical terms, since it allows us to get closer to understanding the mechanisms of personality formation in ontogenesis.

Cognitive psychology is the psychology of cognitive processes; a special cognitive-oriented direction in psychology associated with the study of mental states and mental processes that characterize human behavior and distinguish it from other living beings. Cognitive psychology stood at the very origins of cognitive science and owes its name to W. Neisser; in 1967 he named his well-known book in the same way.

In the history of psychology as a special discipline, one can speak of the "cognitive revolution" of the late 50s - it can be considered a kind of reaction to the then dominant behaviorism in psychology, which was characterized by the denial of any role of the internal organization of mental processes. R.L. Solso cites the "failure" of behaviorism as one of the most important factors behind the "cognitive revolution."

Modern Cognitive Psychology consists of many sections: perception, pattern recognition, attention, memory, imagination, speech, developmental psychology, thinking and decision making, in general, natural intelligence and partly artificial intelligence. Since the emergence of cognitive psychology, its main method has been the informational approach, within which models of the microstructure of perception, attention, and short-term memory have been developed, occurring mainly in the millisecond range of time. Many provisions of cognitive psychology underlie modern psycholinguistics. This direction arose under the influence of the informational approach. Cognitive psychology is largely based on the analogy between the transformation of information in a computing device and the implementation of cognitive processes in humans. Cognitive psychology is closely related to cognitive anthropology and is one of its foundations. Their conceptual apparatus largely overlaps, although cognitive psychology is most interested in how, with the help of what concepts and categories one can explain the assimilation, classification, memorization of knowledge, and cognitive anthropology is how these categories and concepts can be used to explain culture and the connection between the psyche. and culture.

Cognitive psychology includes all areas that criticize behaviorism and psychoanalysis from intellectualistic or mentalistic positions (J. Piaget, J. Bruner, J. Fodor).

An object : cognitive psychology and the process of self-knowledge.

Thing: analysis of the concept of cognitive psychology. Self-knowledge methods.

Purpose: to analyze the main provisions and examples of experimental studies of cognitive psychology and the study of methods of self-knowledge of the individual.

• consider the concept of cognitive psychology;
• study the field of cognitive psychology;
• analyze cognitive models;
• get acquainted with cognitive psychocorrection.

1. Cognitive psychology

.1 The Historical Emergence of Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive psychology (сognitio (lat.) - knowledge, knowledge) originated in the United States in the 50s of the 20th century. Before the advent of cognitive psychology in its modern form, psychologists were already trying to deal with the problems of cognition.

Many years ago there were already the first attempts to study thinking by both philosophical and scientific methods. A certain role in the development of modern cognitive psychology was played by such philosophers as Descartes, Hume and Kant. The Cartesian idea of ​​mental structure resulted in a research method for studying one's own psyche. Empiricist Hume tried to establish the laws of association of ideas and developed a classification of mental processes. For Kant, reason is a structure, experience is the facts that fill the structure. He distinguished three types of mental structures in the study of cognition: dimensions, categories, and schemes. It would be wrong to think that only these philosophers are the pillars of cognitive psychology. Yes, and not only philosophers, but also scientists from other branches of knowledge have contributed to the formation and development of cognitive psychology.

Cognitive psychology - studies how people receive information about the world, how this information is represented by a person, how it is stored in memory and converted into knowledge, and how this knowledge affects our attention and behavior. Cognitive psychology covers the entire range of psychological processes - from sensations to perception, pattern recognition, attention, learning, memory, concept formation. Thinking, imagination, memory, language, emotions and developmental processes; it covers all sorts of areas of behavior.

Cognitive psychology is a psychological concept that focuses on the process of cognition and the activity of consciousness.

Even ancient thinkers tried to find out where memory and thought are located. As evidenced by hieroglyphic records from ancient Egypt, their authors believed that knowledge is in the heart - this view was shared by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, but Plato believed that it was the brain that was the center of thought. Like all genuine innovations in the history of psychology, cognitive psychology did not appear out of nowhere. Its origins can be traced back to earlier concepts. According to some researchers, cognitive psychology is both the newest and oldest psychology in history. This means that interest in the problem of consciousness has been present in history since the day it appeared. Long before it became a science. The problem of consciousness is discussed in the works of Plato and Aristotle. As well as in the studies of modern representatives of the empirical and associative schools.

When psychology took shape as an independent discipline, interest in the problem of consciousness remained. Wilhelm Wund can be considered one of the forerunners of cognitive psychology, since he repeatedly emphasized the creative nature of consciousness. Structuralism and functionism also deal with consciousness: the first with its elements, and the second with functioning. And only behaviorism departed from this tradition, banishing the topic of consciousness from the field of psychology for almost 50 years.

A revival of interest in this topic can be traced back to the 1950s. and if desired, from the 30s. Cognitive psychology is the product of a time when psychology, anthropology, and linguistics have redefined themselves, and computer science and neuroscience have just emerged. Psychology could not take part in the cognitive revolution until it freed itself from behaviorism and treated the problem of cognition with due scientific respect. By that time, it became clear to representatives of several disciplines that the solution of a number of questions they studied inevitably depended on the development of problems traditionally attributed to other areas of science.

The forerunner of the cognitive movement can be considered E.S. Tolman. This researcher recognized the importance of considering cognitive variables and contributed in no small measure to the abandonment of the "stimulus-response" approach. Tolman introduced the idea of ​​cognitive maps, argued for the applicability of the goal category to animal actions, and emphasized the need to use intermediate variables to define internal, unobservable states.

J. Piaget also conducted a number of very significant studies on child psychology from the standpoint of studying the stages of a child's cognitive development. As soon as the cognitive approach began to spread in America, the significance of Piaget's work immediately became apparent. Piaget was the first European psychologist to receive the "Outstanding Contribution to Science" award. Even that circumstance. The fact that Piaget's work was devoted mainly to child psychology contributed to the further expansion of the range of applicability of the cognitive approach.

Since the 1970s. Over the years, cognitive psychology has come to prominence as a field of study and therapeutic practice. She energetically deals with the central elements of consciousness, just as W. James did when he created the scientific discipline called psychology. Cognitive psychology is not a theory of personality. It does not form any single, cemented system, but rather combines many theories and types of therapeutic practice that have different goals and use different methods. Two areas of cognitive psychology are particularly relevant to the understanding of human personality. One is related to the mapping of the structure of the intellect. Another with the development of therapeutic techniques, with the aim of modifying the influence of intelligence on thinking, emotional life and well-being of a person.

All cognitive psychologists are interested in the principles and mechanisms that govern the phenomenon of human cognition. Cognition encompasses mental processes such as perception, thinking, memory, evaluation, planning, and organization.

1.1.1 George Kelly's theory

Cognitive psychology has invaded many areas of psychology. Including personality theory. Cognitive psychology allows you to analyze how the mind functions and appreciate the diversity and complexity of human behavior. If we can better understand how we think. By observing, focusing and remembering, we will gain a clearer understanding of how these cognitive building blocks contribute to the emergence of fears and illusions, creativity and all the behaviors and mental directions that make us who we are.

According to Kelly, all people are scientists. They form theories and hypotheses about themselves and other people and like professional scientists.

Kelly's cognitive theory is based on the way in which individuals comprehend and interpret phenomena in your surroundings. Calling his approach Personal Construct Theory, Kelly focuses on the psychological processes that enable people to organize and understand the events that take place in their lives.

The main concept in this direction is "construct". This concept includes features of all known cognitive processes (perception, memory, thinking and speech). Thanks to constructs, a person not only learns the world, but also establishes interpersonal relationships.

The constructs that underlie these relationships are called personality constructs.

A construct is a kind of classifier - a template for our perception of other people and ourselves.

Kelly discovered and described the main mechanisms of the functioning of personality constructs. From Kelly's point of view, each of us builds and tests hypotheses, solves problems using appropriate constructs. Some constructs are suitable for describing only a narrow range of events, while others have a wide range of applicability. For example, the construct "smart - stupid" is hardly suitable for describing the weather, but the construct "good - bad" is suitable for virtually all occasions.

People differ not only in the number of constructs, but also in their location. Those constructs that are actualized in consciousness faster are called superordinate, and those that are slower - subordinate. For example, having met a person, he is evaluated in terms of whether he is smart or stupid, and only then - good or evil, then the "smart - stupid" construct is superordinate, and the "good - evil" construct is subordinate. Kelly believed that the individual has limited free will. The constructive system that has developed in a person during his life contains certain limitations. However, he did not believe that human life is completely determined. In any situation, a person is able to construct alternative predictions. The outside world is neither evil nor good, but the way we construct it in our head.

Ultimately, according to cognitivists, the fate of a person is in his hands. The inner world of man is subjective and is his own creation. Each person perceives and interprets external reality through their own inner world.

Thus, according to cognitive theory, personality is a system of organized personal constructs in which a person's personal experience is processed (perceived and interpreted). The structure of the personality within the framework of this approach is considered as an individually peculiar hierarchy t constructs .

.1.2 Piaget's cognitive theory

The theory of J. Piaget is one of the most notable milestones in the development of cognitive psychology. His theory is the opposite of behaviorism. Piaget assumed radical changes at different age stages of intellectual development. Children actively interact with the world, adapt the information they receive to the knowledge and concepts they already have, constructing knowledge of reality from their own experience. Postulating predispositions of cognitive functions on the organization and adaptation of experience, Piaget believed that learning should be based on the achieved level of development.

According to Piaget's theory, children, as their brains develop and experiences expand, go through four long-term stages, each characterized by qualitatively different ways of thinking. At the sensorimotor stage, cognitive development begins with the child's use of feelings and movements to explore the world. These motor patterns refer to the symbolic, but not logical, thinking of the preschooler in the preoperative stage. Piaget developed special methods for studying the ways children think. Early in his career, he carefully studied the behavior of his three infants and gave them daily tasks, such as pointing out an attractive object that could be grabbed, put in his mouth, tossed, and then searched for. Based on these reactions, Piaget formed an idea of ​​the cognitive changes that occur in children in the first two years of life. Despite Piaget's significant contributions, his theory has been criticized in recent years. Research shows that Piaget underestimated the capabilities of infants and preschoolers. When young children are presented with tasks ranked by degree of difficulty, their understanding of the problem seems closer to that of an older child or adult than Piaget thought. This discovery led many researchers to the conclusion that the maturity of children's thinking may depend on the degree of familiarity with the task and the nature of the acquired knowledge. Moreover, many studies show that as a result of training, it is possible to improve the results that children show when solving Piaget problems. These data challenge Piaget's assumption that learning through discovery, rather than adult learning, is the best way to promote development.

At present, researchers of child development are divided according to their attitude towards Piaget's ideas. Those who continue to see the progressive aspects of Piaget's approach adhere to a modified view of his cognitive stages, according to which qualitative changes in children's thinking occur gradually, not as quickly as Piaget believed. Others are inclined to believe that changes in the cognitive sphere of children occur continuously, and not in stages: information processing theories. Some researchers pursue theories that focus on the role of social and cultural contexts in child development.

1.2 The field of cognitive psychology

Modern cognitive psychology borrows theories and methods from 10 major research areas: perception, pattern recognition, attention, memory, imagination, language functions, developmental psychology, thinking and problem solving, human intelligence, and artificial intelligence.

1.2.1 Perception

The branch of psychology directly concerned with the detection and interpretation of sensory stimuli is called the psychology of perception. From perceptual experiments, we know about the sensitivity of the human body to sensory signals and how these sensory signals are interpreted. It is proved that human perception has a creative power, the actions of which are subject to certain objective laws.

The perception system is divided into subsystems: visual, olfactory, auditory, skin-kinesthetic and gustatory. They are adaptive systems capable of learning and anticipating situations. The purpose of these systems is to provide high accuracy and speed of perception.

The general model of perception is as follows: receptors carry out the primary coding of external information and its analysis in terms of physical qualities (intensity, duration).

Further, information on nerve fibers enters the parts of the brain located in the back of the cerebral hemisphere. These departments are responsible for deep multi-stage processing of information. In the same place, a plan of perceptual actions is formed and images are formed.

The process is controlled by innate and acquired skills, as well as with the help of attention, which in turn depends on the tasks solved by the individual and his volitional efforts. By studying innate and acquired skills, it is possible to reconstruct the algorithm of their work.

Perceptual research alone cannot adequately explain expected actions; other cognitive systems are also involved, such as pattern recognition, attention, and memory.

Thus, perception is a holistic reflection of objects, situations and events arising from the direct impact of physical stimuli on the receptor surfaces of the sense organs. Feelings and perceptions are inextricably linked and interdependent.

It should also be noted that perception is influenced by a person's previous experience.

1.2.2 Pattern recognition

Environmental stimuli are not perceived as single sensory events; most often they are perceived as part of a larger pattern. What we sense (see, hear, smell, or taste) is almost always part of a complex pattern of sensory stimuli.

This entire process, performed daily by billions of people, takes a fraction of a second, and it is simply amazing when you consider how many neuroanatomical and cognitive systems are involved in it.

Pattern recognition is a process of perceptual categorization, assigning a perceived object to one of a variety of classes based on perceived features, i.e. the process of perception and identification of forms and objects. For example, reading requires remembering a set of meaningful patterns (images) consisting of combinations of lines and curves.

There are several theoretical approaches to explain the human ability to identify and process visual patterns.

-According to the theory of Gestalt psychology, it is assumed that the perception of visual patterns is organized according to the principles of proximity, similarity and spontaneous organization.

-Information processing occurs according to the principle "from particular to general" or "from general to particular". Experiments show that the perception of an object is significantly influenced by hypotheses determined by the context.

-Comparison with the standard assumes that pattern recognition occurs in the case of an exact match of the sensory stimulus with the corresponding internal form.

-The principle of detailed analysis states that pattern recognition occurs only after stimuli have been analyzed in terms of their elementary components (similar to processing according to the "from particular to general" principle).

-According to the prototyping hypothesis, pattern perception occurs as a result of comparing stimuli with abstractions stored in memory and serving as ideal forms.

The essence of visual pattern recognition is visual analysis at the input stage and storage of information in long-term memory.

.2.3 Attention

Attention is the process and state of adjustment (concentration) of the subject to the perception of priority information and the fulfillment of tasks. R. Solso gives a more concise definition: attention is the concentration of mental efforts on sensory or mental events.

The ability to process information is obviously limited at two levels - sensory and cognitive. If too many sensory cues are imposed at the same time, "overload" may occur; and if you try to process too many events in memory, there is also an overload. This may result in a malfunction.

Psychologists study the following aspects of attention:

-Consciousness, in the sense of awareness of external and internal information. There are several levels of consciousness corresponding to episodic, semantic and procedural memory systems.

-Bandwidth and selective attention. Studies have shown that there is a "bottleneck" in the structure of information processing. It is assumed that the signals have different activation thresholds. The selectivity of attention singles out essential information for its further processing.

-Excitation level (interest) - supports the ability to perceive sensations and exert mental effort. It is necessary to pay attention to the relationship between arousal and performance indicators. An increase in excitation to a certain level improves activity, its further increase leads to a deterioration in activity.

-Attention management. There are two types of attention control: automatic and controlled processing of information.

-One of the important properties of attention is its volume. It is measured by the number of objects that a person is able to correctly perceive with a short simultaneous presentation.

-The process of attention is also characterized by such characteristics as switchability (the ability to quickly switch off from one type of activity and join in new ones that correspond to changed conditions) and distribution of attention (the ability to keep attention on several objects at the same time, at least two)

.2.4 Memory

Memory is the actual information that is stored and retrieved as needed. Memory connects the subject's past with his present and future. It is the most important cognitive function underlying development and learning. Memory and perception work together.

There are four main processes in memory:

1.Memorization is a process aimed at storing the impressions received in memory. There are voluntary and involuntary, mechanical and meaningful memorization.

2.Preservation is a process of active processing and systematization of the received material.

.The processes of recognition and reproduction are the processes of identification, actualization and exteriorization of the perceived object. Simply put, these are the processes of restoring previously perceived information (skills).

.Forgetting is the process of gradually reducing the possibility of recognizing and reproducing past information or skills.

Due to the fact that memory is present in all life processes, its study is interdisciplinary.

Psychologists distinguish between voluntary and involuntary memory, according to the nature of the manifestation, they distinguish figurative, verbal-logical, mechanical, emotional and conditioned reflex memory, according to the type of perception - visual, auditory, olfactory and motor memory. One of the main characteristics of memory is time, or the duration of information storage. According to the time of storage, memory is divided into short-term and long-term.

Despite the active and comprehensive study of memory, it cannot be said that everything is known about this process. But the studies carried out have made it possible to apply knowledge about memory processes in practice.

1.2.5 Language

Language plays an important role in many human activities such as communication, thinking, perception and presentation of information. This is one of the main means of human communication, information exchange.

The development of language in humans is a unique kind of mental selection, the mechanism of which serves as the basis for cognition.

Language influences perception, which is a fundamental aspect of cognition. Some scholars suggest that language is used by humans to describe the world and directly affects the perception of this world. There is also an opposite point of view, that it is the development of language that depends on the perception of the world.

For cognitive psychologists, the study of human language is interesting for the following reasons:

Language development in homo sapiens is a unique type of abstraction, the mechanism of which serves as the basis of cognition. Other species (bees, birds, dolphins, prairie dogs, etc.) also have complex means of communication, and monkeys even use something like linguistic abstractions, but the degree of abstraction of human language is much higher.

Language processing is an important component of information processing and storage.

Language is involved in various kinds of human thinking and problem solving. Many, if not most, of the kinds of thinking and problem solving occur "internally" - in the absence of external stimuli. Abstractions expressed in verbal symbols allow us to judge these events.

Language is one of the main means of human communication, the exchange of information most often occurs with its help.

Language affects perception, which is a fundamental aspect of cognition. Some scholars argue that the language used by a person to describe the world affects how a person perceives this world. On the other hand, the development of language is largely based on the perception of the world. Therefore, the components of the perceptual-linguistic process are interdependent: one of them significantly affects the other. From this point of view, language is analogous to a window on the world.

Word processing, speech, and semantics appear to involve specific areas of the brain and thus provide an important link between neuroanatomical structures and language. In addition, studies of brain pathology have often found clear changes in language functions, as in the case of aphasia.

.2.6 Developmental psychology

This is another area of ​​cognitive psychology that has been studied extensively. Recently published theories and experiments in cognitive developmental psychology have greatly expanded our understanding of how cognitive structures develop.

The process of developmental psychology has been forming for a long time, but has not received due recognition due to the fact that it was too "physiological" for psychological theories. However, we now recognize that the biological development of the brain, both prenatal and postnatal, is an integral part of cognitive development. In addition to this theoretical argument, the neurocognitive approach to developmental cognitive psychology has become increasingly important in view of recent discoveries in brain scanning techniques, some of which have already been discussed in other chapters of this textbook.

1.2.7 Thinking

Thinking is an intellectual activity based on the ability to operate with external and internal experiences and sensations. In other words, thinking is a generalized reflection of the surrounding reality, mediated by the word and past human experience.

Advances in cognitive psychology, especially in the last 20 years, have resulted in a huge arsenal of research methods and theoretical models that help to identify and explain some of the facts about thinking, as well as to place them in a quite convincing framework of a logical psychological theory.

Thinking can be characterized by the following main points:

1.Thinking is cognitive, occurs "internally", in the mind, but it is judged by the behavior of the subject.

2.Thinking is a process in which some manipulation of knowledge takes place.

.Thinking is directed, its results are manifested in behavior that "solves" some problem or is aimed at solving it.

.Thinking is an integral part and a special object of a person's self-consciousness, the structure of which includes understanding oneself as a subject of thinking, differentiation of "one's own" and "alien" thoughts.

Many features of the thinking process are not yet fully understood.

1.2.8 Problem solving

Problem-solving activities permeate every nuance of human behavior and serve as a common denominator for a wide variety of human activities.

Humans, great apes, and many other mammals are curious and, for survival reasons, seek new stimulation and resolve conflicts through creative problem solving throughout their lives.

Many early problem-solving experiments asked the question: What happens when a person solves a problem? Such a descriptive approach helped to define these phenomena, but it did not contribute to obtaining new information about what cognitive structures and processes underlie them.

Problem solving - this is thinking aimed at solving a specific problem and including the formation of responses, as well as the choice of possible reactions.

In everyday life, we face countless challenges that force us to formulate response strategies, select possible responses, and test responses. Try, for example, solving the following problem: a six-foot rope is tied to the neck of a dog, and a saucepan is ten feet away

1.2.9 Human intelligence

Despite the widespread use of the word intelligence, psychologists have not come to a unified definition of it. R. Solso considers human intelligence as a working definition as the ability to acquire, reproduce and use knowledge to understand concrete and abstract concepts and relationships between objects and ideas and to use knowledge in a meaningful way.

The human intellect, or the ability of abstract thinking, is one of the most important essential properties of a person. Man, from the standpoint of scientific materialism, is not a local and random episode of evolution, but a necessary result of the endless development of matter, its "highest color" that arises "with an iron necessity" embedded "in the very nature of matter." The statement about the random nature of the emergence of man in the world, expressed by some philosophers and naturalists, is in clear contradiction with the deep tendencies of modern science, which in the era of the modern scientific and technological revolution has convincingly shown that man is the result of a single regular world process formed by the necessary sequence of physical , chemical and biological forms of matter.

1.2.10 Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is a field of research focused on the development of computer programs capable of performing functions usually associated with human intellectual actions: analysis, learning, planning, decision, creativity.

The most productive areas of work on artificial intelligence are related to the development of:

) expert systems (allowing middle-skilled workers to make decisions available to narrow specialists),

) databases (allowing you to analyze information in different ways and choose options, evaluating the consequences of decisions made),

) research models that allow you to visualize a reality that is inaccessible to direct observation.

Works on artificial intelligence are based on the idea of ​​isomorphism between the brain and physical devices, corresponding to the unified structure of the world and the unity of the laws of nature, society and thinking. Works on artificial intelligence contribute to the mutual enrichment of technical and psychological knowledge.

At the first stages of work on artificial intelligence, human thinking was taken as a model, for an ideal created by nature and society over millions of years of evolution and millennia of social development. Subsequently, starting with the work of Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert, computer programs are considered not only as a tool for explaining the processes of thinking, but also as a means of changing and improving intellectual procedures.

Works on artificial intelligence have opened the prospects for the development of modern thinking associated with its unique character. Under the influence of works on artificial intelligence, the understanding of learning tasks is changing: a person must master not so much the ways of solving problems as the ways of setting them, he must be able to choose a style of thinking that is adequate to a specific problem. A person's thinking should acquire an epistemological character, that is, be aimed at understanding the principles of the work of his intellect and the knowledge of his individual characteristics.

1.3 Cognitive Models

Conceptual sciences, including cognitive psychology, are metaphorical in nature. Models of natural phenomena, in particular, cognitive models, are auxiliary abstract ideas derived from inferences based on observations. The structure of the elements can be represented in the form of a periodic table, as Mendeleev did, but it is important not to forget that this classification scheme is a metaphor. And the claim that conceptual science is metaphorical does not diminish its usefulness in the least. One of the challenges of model building is to better understand what is being observed. But conceptual science is needed for something else: it gives the researcher a certain scheme within which specific hypotheses can be tested and which allows him to predict events based on this model. The periodic table served both of these tasks very elegantly. Based on the arrangement of elements in it, scientists could accurately predict the chemical laws of combination and substitution, instead of conducting endless and messy experiments with chemical reactions. Moreover, it became possible to predict yet undiscovered elements and their properties in the complete absence of physical evidence of their existence. And when dealing with cognitive models, we should not forget the analogy with the Mendeleev model, since cognitive models, like models in the natural sciences, are based on the logic of inference and are useful for understanding cognitive psychology.

Thus, models are based on inferences drawn from observations. Their task is to provide an intelligible representation of the nature of what is observed and to help make predictions when developing hypotheses. Consider several models used in cognitive psychology. There is a rather rough version of the model that divided all cognitive processes into three parts: stimulus detection, stimulus storage and transformation, and response generation (Fig. 1):

This model was often used in one form or another in previous ideas about mental processes. And although it reflects the main stages in the development of cognitive psychology, but it has so few details that it is hardly capable of enriching the "understanding" of cognitive processes. It is also unable to generate any new hypotheses or predict behavior.

This primitive model is analogous to the ancient concept of the universe as consisting of earth, water, fire and air. Such a system does represent one possible view of cognitive phenomena, but it misrepresents their complexity.

One of the first and most frequently cited cognitive models concerns memory. In 1890, James expanded the concept of memory, dividing it into "primary" and "secondary" memory. He assumed that primary memory deals with past events, while secondary memory deals with permanent, "indestructible" traces of experience. This model looked like this (Fig. 2):

Later, in 1965, Waugh and Norman proposed a new version of the same model, and it turned out to be largely acceptable. It is understandable, it can serve as a source of hypotheses and predictions, but it is also too simplistic. Can it be used to describe all the processes of human memory? Hardly; and the development of more complex models was inevitable. A modified and supplemented version of the Waugh and Norman model is shown in Fig. 3. Note that a new storage system and several new information paths have been added to it. But even this model is incomplete and needs to be expanded.

Over the past decade, building cognitive models has become a favorite pastime of psychologists, and some of their creations are truly magnificent. Usually the problem of overly simple models is solved by adding one more "block", one more information path, one more storage system, one more element worth checking and analyzing.

Now we can conclude that the invention of models in cognitive psychology is out of control. This is not entirely true, since this is such a vast task - i.e. an analysis of how information is found, appears to be converted into knowledge, and how that knowledge is used, that no matter how much we limit our conceptual metaphors to simplified models, we still will not be able to fully explain the entire complex field of cognitive psychology.

1.4 Cognitive psychocorrection

Cognitive psychology emerged as a response to behaviorism and Gestalt psychology. Therefore, in cognitive psychocorrection, the main attention is<#"justify">Conclusion

So cognitive psychology is a field of psychology that studies the processes of cognition in humans. In the English-language literature, the term cognitive sciences is more accepted, denoting a set of areas for the study of cognition and thinking, which, in addition to psychology, includes cybernetics, computer science, some areas of logic, as well as a number of areas of philosophy of mind.

Cognitive psychology studies how people get information about the world, how this information is represented by a person, how it is stored in memory and converted into knowledge, and how this knowledge affects our attention and behavior.

Cognitive psychology covers the full range of psychological processes - from sensation to perception, pattern recognition, attention, learning, memory, concept formation, thinking, imagination, memory, language, emotions and developmental processes; it covers all sorts of areas of behavior.

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The name "cognitive psychology" comes from the English, cognition- knowledge. This approach developed in the 1960s. 20th century returns psychology to the theme of the early stages, when the main problem was the problem of cognition, and the central concept was the concept of "mind" (or "higher mental processes"). We are talking mainly about Antiquity and the New Age, but it can be said with confidence that cognitive processes have been a key topic of psychology throughout its history.

The subject of cognitive psychology is all cognitive processes from sensations and perceptions to attention, memory, thinking, imagination, speech. It studies how people get information about the world, what a person's ideas about this information are, how it is stored in memory, converted into knowledge, and how this knowledge affects human behavior. The methods of cognitive psychology are mainly experiment, observation.

Significant predecessors of cognitive psychology were: Wundt and the structuralists, who experimentally studied sensory processes; American functionalists, who were looking for answers to the question of how the psyche helps to adapt to reality; Gestaltists who studied the structure of the problem field, problems of perception and thinking; representatives of the Würzburg school, who for the first time began an experimental study of the process of thinking.

Rice. 10.19.

The most important figure in this series is that of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-

1980). Piaget, a biologist by training, began researching children's thinking in the 1920s. 20th century

Working as an assistant in the psychological laboratory at the Sorbonne under the supervision of A. Wiene and testing the intelligence of children using the "metric scale of intellectual development", young Piaget (Fig. 10.19) drew attention not to success, but to typical mistakes that children of a certain age make, answering test questions.

Piaget's first works concerned the study of individual elements of children's thinking: "Speech and Thinking of the Child" (1923), "Judgment and Inference in the Child" (1924), "The Child's Representation of the World" (1926), "Physical Causality in the Child" (1927) . They are written based on the results of studies of spontaneous speech reactions of children in free conversation. From the observations and subsequent experimental studies of children's thinking, the Geneva School of Genetic Psychology was formed, the concept of intelligence as a tool for maintaining the balance of the individual in the environment and a remarkable theory of the stages of cognitive development of children were born.

60s 20th century were a period of rapid development of computer technology, the metaphor of "clock", characteristic of the 17th century, was replaced by the metaphor of "computer" in psychology. There is a concept of "information" and attempts to describe the cognitive activity of a person using a computer metaphor. The conceptual apparatus of psychology was filled with new terms, such as "information input" and "output", "bit of information", "channel information capacity", "interference in the transmission of information", "a person as a source and recipient of information", "feedback", "artificial intelligence", etc.

In the atmosphere of a new spiritual climate, theories are born that aim to study and describe human cognitive processes using new terminology.

One of the first cognitive psychologists was the American psychologist Ulrich Neisser (1928-2012), who initially chose physics as the subject of his interest. Under the influence of K. Koffka's book "Principles of Gestalt Peihology", he continued his education with W. Köhler, and after defending his doctoral dissertation, began working under A. Maslow. In 1967, he published a book called "Cognitive Psychology", where he defined a new approach, and at one fine moment found that he was called the "father of cognitive psychology" . Neisser defined cognition as the process by which incoming sensory signals are transformed, reduced, processed, accumulated, reproduced, and then used. In 1976, Neisser's second major work Cognition and Reality (Russian translation 1981) was published, in which the author seriously criticized the obsession with behaviorism in American psychology and feared that behavioral science would soon be widely used to manipulate people. In this paper, Neisser also discusses the topic environmental validity psychological experiments. He writes that modern studies of cognitive processes usually use abstract, discrete stimulus material, far from culture and the real circumstances of everyday life. This discrepancy between the tasks presented in the experiment and those that a person has to solve in life leads Neisser to the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe "ecological disability" of models of modern experiments. One of the basic concepts of W. Neisser's concept is the concept of "perceptual scheme". A scheme is understood as an internal structure that develops in a person as experience is gained, it is a means of selectively extracting information from the outside world and itself changes under the influence of the information received. Neisser believes that the main cognitive process is perception (perception), which gives rise to other types of mental activity (the basic thesis of empirical psychology). From the point of view of biology, the circuit is a part of the nervous system with its peripheral and central links. The body has many circuits that are related to each other in complex ways. For example, motives are also circuits that receive information and direct actions on a larger scale.

Another representative of cognitive psychology is George Miller(1920-2012), who started as a specialist in speech communication and then, together with Jerome Bruner, created the Center for Cognitive Research at Harvard University. Miller was engaged in computer modeling of the process of thinking, information theory and the use of statistical methods to study the learning process.

Jerome Bruner(1915-2016) - one of the prominent representatives of cognitive psychology and a follower of J. Piaget. He was educated and initially worked in the USA (Harvard University), since 1972 - in the UK (Oxford University). Early work in the 1940s summarized his experience in studying the process of perception in refugees from fascist Germany. The result of these studies was the conclusion that the perception of people who have experienced severe stress distorts reality. In particular, Bruner showed that the greater the subjective value attributed to an object, the greater its physical size seems to be, that stress leads to the fact that neutral words are perceived as threatening. To indicate the dependence of perceptual processes on personal experience, he introduces the concept of "social perception". In The Study of Cognitive Growth (1966), Bruner identifies three forms of knowledge that correspond to three stages of cognitive development and three forms of children's representation of reality:

• at the age of three years, the reflection of reality is carried out in the form of imitating actions. For example, a child cannot explain how a bird flaps its wings when flying, but can show how it does it;
• at the age of three to seven years, the child is able to create images that can be reflected in drawings or stored in the imagination;
• after seven or eight years, children are able to use symbols that suggest abstract thinking.

Bruner believes that the essence of the educational process is the provision of tools and methods for translating human experience into symbols and ordering them. In the book “Psychology of Cognition” (1977) translated into Russian, Bruner explores the process of perception as an act of categorization, the phenomena of inadequate perception and cultural differences in perception (visual perception of fish harpooners who perceive the target through a distorting prism - the water column; sorting skins by reindeer herders according to the specifics patterns, etc.). The author understands the process of thinking as a process of forming concepts and, in order to study it, modifies the well-known experimental procedure of Narcissus Ach, widely known in Russian literature as a method of forming artificial concepts.

The student of cognitive, i.e. cognitive processes of human consciousness. Research in this area is usually related to issues of memory, attention, feelings, representation of information, logical thinking, imagination, decision-making ability. Cognitive psychology studies how people get information about the world, how this information is represented by a person, how it is stored in memory and converted into knowledge, and how this knowledge affects our attention and behavior.

Cognitive psychology as we know it today took shape over the two decades between 1950 and 1970. Three main factors influenced its appearance. The first was human performance research, intensively conducted during World War II, when data was desperately needed on how to train soldiers to use sophisticated equipment and how to deal with attention deficits. Behaviorism was of no help in answering such practical questions.

The second approach, closely related to the information approach, is based on advances in computer science, especially in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The essence of AI is to make computers behave intelligently. The third area that influenced cognitive psychology was linguistics. In the 1950s N. Chomsky, a linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, began to develop a new way to analyze the structure of a language. His work showed that language was much more complex than previously thought, and that many of the behaviorist formulations could not account for these complexities.

After the First World War and until the 60s. Behaviorism and psychoanalysis (or their offshoots) have so dominated American psychology that cognitive processes have been almost completely forgotten. Not many psychologists have been interested in how knowledge is acquired. Perception - the most fundamental cognitive act - has been studied mainly by a small group of researchers who followed the "Gestalt" tradition, as well as by some other psychologists who were interested in the problems of measurement and the physiology of sensory processes.

J. Piaget and his collaborators studied cognitive development, but their work was not widely recognized. Attention work was missing. Memory research never completely stopped, but it was mainly focused on the analysis of the memory of "nonsense syllables" in well-defined laboratory situations, in relation to which only the results obtained made sense. As a result, in the eyes of society, psychology turned out to be a science dealing mainly with sexual problems, adaptive behavior and behavior control.

In the past few years, the situation has changed radically. Mental processes again found themselves in the center of lively interest. A new field has emerged called cognitive psychology.

This course of events was due to several reasons, but the most important of them was, apparently, the appearance of electronic computers (computers). It turned out that the operations performed by the electronic computer itself are in some respects similar to cognitive processes. The computer receives information, manipulates symbols, stores elements of information in “memory” and retrieves them again, classifies input information, recognizes configurations, and so on.

The advent of the computer has long been a necessary confirmation that cognitive processes are quite real, that they can be investigated and even, perhaps, understood. Along with the computer also came a new vocabulary and a new set of concepts related to cognitive activity; terms such as information, input, processing, coding, subroutine have become commonplace.

As the concept of information processing evolved, trying to follow the flow of information in a "system" (i.e., the brain) became the primary goal in this new field.

When analyzing the historical conditions that prepared the emergence of cognitive psychology, the fact that this was preceded by an intensive deployment of work on measuring the reaction time of a person, when he, in response to incoming signals, must press the appropriate button as soon as possible, remains in the shade. Such measurements were carried out a long time ago, even in the laboratories of W. Wundt. But now they have taken on a different meaning.

It is impossible to bypass one more undeservedly forgotten circumstance that preceded the emergence of cognitive psychology and influenced the formation of its "outward appearance". A feature of the scientific product of the cognitivists is its visible and strict outlines in the form of geometric figures, or models. These models consist of blocks (R. Solso often uses the expression "boxes in the head"), each of which performs a strictly defined function. Links between blocks indicate the path of information flow from the input to the output of the model. The representation of work in the form of such a model was borrowed by cognitivists from engineers. What engineers called flowcharts, cognitive scientists called models.

What is cognitive psychology for? The basic mechanisms of human thought that cognitive psychology seeks to understand are also important for understanding the various types of behavior studied by other social sciences. For example, knowledge of how people think is important for understanding certain thought disorders (clinical psychology), the behavior of people when they interact with each other or in groups (social psychology), persuasion processes (political science), economic decision making (economics). , reasons for the greater effectiveness of certain ways of organizing groups (sociology) or features of natural languages ​​(linguistics).

Cognitive psychology is thus the foundation on which all other social sciences stand, just as physics is the foundation for other natural sciences.

Concepts of individual representatives of cognitive psychology. The theory of personality constructs George Kelly (1905-1967)

The main provisions are set out in the work "Psychology of Personal Constructs" (1955):

Human behavior in everyday life resembles research activities;

The organization of a person's mental processes is determined by how it anticipates (constructs) future events;

Differences in anticipation of people depend on the characteristics of personality constructs.

A personal construct is a standard of classification and evaluation of phenomena or objects created by the subject according to the principle of their similarity or difference from each other (for example, Russia is similar to Belarus and Ukraine, and is not similar to the United States on the basis).

Personal constructs function on the basis of the following postulates:

The postulate of constructivity: a person anticipates events, constructing his behavior and reactions, taking into account external events;

The postulate of individuality: people differ from each other by the nature of personal constructs;

Postulate of dichotomy: constructs are built in polar categories (white - black);

Postulate of order: the construct ensures the perception of only those phenomena that fall under its characteristic (for example, cheerful);

Postulate of experience: the system of personal constructs changes depending on the experience gained;

The postulate of fragmentation: an individual can use subsystems of constructs that are in conflict with each other;

Generality postulate: under the influence of the same events, similar constructs are formed in people;

The postulate of sociality: a person understands another person as much as he can discover his internal constructs.

People, according to Kelly, differ from each other in how they interpret events.

On the basis of constructs, a person interprets the world around him.

The system of personal constructs is characterized by such a parameter as cognitive complexity (the term was proposed by W. Bayeri). Cognitive complexity reflects the degree of categorical differentiation of human consciousness. Cognitive complexity is characterized by the number of classification bases that a person consciously or unconsciously uses when analyzing the facts of the surrounding reality (the opposite quality is cognitive simplicity).

Kelly developed the “role construct repertoire test” (or the “repertory grids” method), with the help of which the system of human personality constructs is diagnosed.

Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance

The main provisions are set out in the works "Theory of cognitive dissonance" (1957), "Conflict, decision and dissonance" (1964).

Cognitive dissonance is a tense uncomfortable state of a person, due to the presence in his mind of conflicting knowledge (information) about the same object (phenomenon) and prompting a person to remove this contradiction, that is, to achieve consonance (compliance). In addition, the existence of dissonance encourages a person to avoid situations and information that lead to an increase in this dissonance.

Sources of dissonance:

Logical inconsistency ("people are mortal, but I will live forever");

Inconsistency with cultural patterns (for example, when a teacher yells at students, there is a dissonance with ideas about the image of a teacher);

The inconsistency of this cognitive element with a more general, wider system of cognitions (Mr. "X" always leaves for work early in the morning, but this time he went in the evening);

Inconsistency with past experience of new information.

Theory of causal attribution

The theory of causal attribution (from the Latin causa - cause, attribuo - I attach, endow) is a theory of how people explain the behavior of others. The foundations of this direction were laid by Fritz Heider, continued by Harold Kelly, Edward Johnson, Daniel Gilbert, Lee Ross and others.

The theory of causal attribution proceeds from the following provisions:

People, observing the behavior of another person, seek to find out for themselves the reasons for this behavior;

Limited information encourages people to formulate probable reasons for another person's behavior;

The reasons for the behavior of another person, which people determine for themselves, affect their attitude towards this person.

Haider believed that it was necessary to study the "naive psychology" of the "man in the street" who uses common sense to explain the behavior of other people. The scientist came to the conclusion that the opinion about a person (a good person - a bad person) automatically applies to all his behavior (does the right thing - does the wrong thing).

In the process of attribution (the term was proposed by Lee Ross in 1977), a person often has a fundamental error, that is, a tendency to underestimate situational causes and overestimate dispositional (intrapersonal) causes that affect human behavior. At the same time, a person explains his own behavior mainly from the point of view of the influence of the situation.

The Swiss Jean Piaget (1896-1980) became the creator of the most profound and influential theory of the development of intelligence.

Jean Piaget was born on August 9, 1896. in Switzerland. in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. His father, Arthur Piaget, was a professor of medieval literature. In 1907, when he was 11 years old, his small scientific note was published in the journal of natural history. Piaget's first scientific interests were in biology.

Piaget received his PhD from the University of Neuchâtel. At this time, he begins to get involved in psychoanalysis, a very popular area of ​​\u200b\u200bpsychological thought at that time.

After receiving his degree, Piaget moved from Switzerland to Paris, where he taught at a school for boys directed by Alfred Binet, the creator of the IQ test. While helping to process the results of the IQ test, Piaget noticed that young children constantly give incorrect answers to some questions. However, he focused not so much on the wrong answers, but on the fact that children make the same mistakes that are not typical of older people.

This observation led Piaget to theorize that the thoughts and cognitive processes of children differ significantly from those of adults. Later, he created a general theory of stages of development, stating that people who are in the same stage of their development exhibit similar general forms of cognitive abilities. In Paris, he worked a lot in the clinic, studied logic, philosophy, psychology, conducted experimental research on children, begun without enthusiasm. However, Piaget soon found his own field of study. This was the end of the theoretical and the beginning of the experimental period in the work of Piaget as a psychologist.

Already the first facts from the field of psychology, obtained by Piaget in experiments with children on the standardization of the so-called "reasoning tests" by C. Bert, confirmed this idea of ​​his. The facts obtained showed the possibility of studying the mental processes underlying logical operations. Since then, Piaget's central task has been to study the psychological mechanisms of logical operations, to establish the gradual emergence of stable logical integral structures of the intellect.

In 1921, Piaget returned to Switzerland and became director of the Rousseau Institute in Geneva. 1921-1925 - Piaget, with the help of the clinical method, established new forms in the field of child development. The most important of these are the discovery of the egocentric nature of children's speech, the qualitative features of children's logic, and the child's ideas about the world that are unique in their content. This discovery - the main achievement of Piaget, which made him a world-famous scientist - the discovery of the child's egocentrism.

In 1929, Piaget accepted an invitation to become director of the UNESCO International Bureau of Education, at the head of which he remained until 1968.

Working in psychology for almost sixty years, Piaget wrote over 60 books and hundreds of articles. He studied the development of a child's play, imitation, speech. In the field of his attention were thinking, perception, imagination, memory, consciousness, will. In addition to psychology, Piaget conducted research in the field of biology, philosophy, logic, turned to sociology and the history of science. In order to understand how human cognition develops, he studied the development of the intellect in the child.

He transformed the basic concepts of other schools: behaviorism (instead of the concept of reaction, he put forward the concept of an operation), gestaltism (gestalt gave way to the concept of structure). The main idea developed in all Piaget's works is that intellectual operations are carried out in the form of integral structures. These structures are achieved through the equilibrium towards which evolution strives.

Piaget built his new theoretical ideas on a solid empirical foundation - on the material of the development of thinking and speech in a child. In the works of the early 1920s, Speech and Thinking of a Child, Judgment and Inference in a Child, and others, Piaget, using the method of conversation (asking, for example: Why do clouds, water, wind move? Where do dreams come from? Why does a boat float? and etc.), concluded that if an adult thinks socially (i.e., mentally addressing other people), even when he is alone with himself, then the child thinks selfishly, even when he is in the company of others. (He speaks aloud to no one. This speech of his was called egocentric.)

The principle of egocentrism (from the Latin "ego" - I and "centrum" - the center of the circle) reigns over the thought of a preschooler. He is focused on his position (interests, inclinations) and is not able to take the position of another (“decenter”), critically look at his judgments from the outside. These judgments are ruled by the "logic of a dream", which takes away from reality. Egocentrism is the main feature of thinking, the hidden mental position of the child. The peculiarity of children's logic, children's speech, children's ideas about the world are only a consequence of this egocentric mental position. The verbal egocentrism of the child is determined by the fact that the child speaks without trying to influence the interlocutor, and is not aware of the difference between his own point of view and the point of view of others.

These Piagetian conclusions, in which the child looked like a dreamer ignoring reality, were criticized by Vygotsky, who gave his own interpretation of the child's egocentric (not addressed to the listener) speech (see below). At the same time, he highly appreciated the works of Piaget, since they did not talk about what a child lacks compared to an adult (knows less, thinks shallowly, etc.), but about what a child has, what is its internal mental organization. Responding many years later to the critical remarks of L. S. Vygotsky, J. Piaget recognized them to a large extent as fair. He, in particular, agreed that in his early work he "exaggerated the similarities between egocentrism and autism."

Piaget singled out a number of stages in the evolution of children's thought (for example, a kind of magic, when a child hopes to change an external object with a word or gesture, or a kind of animism, when an object is endowed with will or life: "the sun moves because it is alive").

Piaget introduced the concept of grouping into psychology. Before the child establishes logical operations, he performs groupings - combines actions and objects according to their similarity and difference, which, in turn, generate arithmetic, geometric and elementary physical groups.

Being unable to think in abstract terms, to correlate them, etc., the child relies in his explanations on concrete cases. Piaget further identified four stages. Initially, a child's thought is contained in objective actions (up to two years), then they are internalized (pass from external to internal), become pre-operations (actions) of the mind (from 2 to 7 years), at the third stage (from 7 to 11 years) concrete operations, on the fourth (from 11 to 15 years old) - formal operations, when the child's thought is able to build logically sound hypotheses, from which deductive (for example, from general to particular) conclusions are made.

Operations are not performed in isolation. Being interconnected, they create stable and at the same time mobile structures.

The development of a system of mental actions from one stage to another - this is how Piaget presented a picture of consciousness. At first, Piaget was influenced by Freud, believing that the human child, being born, is driven by one motive - the desire for pleasure, not wanting to know anything about reality, which is forced to reckon with only because of the demands of others. But then Piaget recognized as the starting point in the development of the child's psyche the child's real external actions (sensory-motor intelligence, i.e., the elements of thought given in movements that are regulated by sensory impressions).

To identify the mechanisms of a child's cognitive activity, Piaget developed a new method of psychological research - the method of clinical conversation, when not symptoms (external signs of a phenomenon) are studied, but the processes leading to their occurrence. This method is extremely difficult. It gives the necessary results only in the hands of an experienced psychologist.

According to Piaget, the S → R formula is not sufficient to characterize behavior, since there is no one-sided influence of the object on the subject, but there is an interaction between them. Therefore, it is more correct to write this formula as follows: S↔R or S→(AT)→R, where (AT) is the assimilation of the stimulus S to the structure T. In another version, this formula is written as S→(OD)→R, where (OD) is the organizing activity of the subject.

The limitation of the formula S → R is determined, according to Piaget, by the following circumstance. In order for a stimulus to elicit a response, the subject must be sensitive to that stimulus.

What does Piaget's genetic psychology study? The object of this science is the study of the origin of the intellect. It studies how fundamental concepts are formed in a child: object, space, time, causality. She studies the child's ideas about natural phenomena: why the sun and moon do not fall, why clouds move, why rivers flow, why the wind blows, where does the shadow come from, etc. Piaget is interested in the features of children's logic and, most importantly, the mechanisms of the child's cognitive activity, which hidden behind the outer picture of his behavior.

Let's take a brief look at the ideas of cognitive psychology: what is its meaning and ideas.

Cognitive psychology is a modern (do not rush to spit and close the article) direction of psychology that studies cognitive processes. The word "cognitive" is, translated from Latin ( cognitio), cognitive.

It's time to mention the now very popular expression the cognitive dissonance, which implies mental discomfort from the collision of opposing ideas about something. For example, a granny brought up on Soviet traditions can experience a monstrous cognitive dissonance if our outgoing youth does not give her a place in public transport. And advanced people often catch dissonances, when the smartest-looking person, whom we considered a guru in all matters, is mistaken in questions that are unambiguous for any student.

Let's get back to the point Let's list the main ideas of cognitive psychology:

1. The main objects of study are cognitive processes: memory, thinking, perception, attention, speech, imagination. In addition, she considers pattern recognition, developmental psychology, the emotional sphere of personality, human and artificial intelligence.
2. The main idea of ​​cognitive psychology is study and analysis of cognitive processes as functions of a computing device. Roughly speaking, psychologists consider the cognitive processes of the human psyche in the same way that an electronics engineer studies a computer. The computer performs operations related to receiving, storing in memory, processing and issuing information. The cognitive functions of the human psyche perform essentially the same job.
3. From the second idea, the third follows - information in the psyche is processed step by step. All stimuli received from the outside world go through a chain of ordinal transformations.
4. Assumption about limiting capacity of mental systems data processing. From here it becomes clear and the direction of activity, the purpose of the work of cognitive psychologists. The main task is to find the most effective and natural methods of working with information entering the psyche.
5. Data received through cognitive processes in the psyche, encoded and displayed in it in a special way.
6. Surveys are being carried out chronometric means. The exact response time to the proposed task or the speed of response to a signal is estimated. Introspective (self-observation of mental processes, without the use of tools and standards) technologies are denied as not distinguished by the necessary accuracy.

We conclude that cognitive psychology is modern in the good sense of the word - this is not a newfangled express training that eliminates all problems, but at the same time from adequacy. Cognitive psychology is the most serious branch of scientific psychology that studies the cognitive processes of the psyche and draws conclusions from this on an evidence-based basis.

cognitive psychology is the scientific study of the thinking mind; it deals with the following issues:

How do we pay attention to information about the world and collect it?

How does the brain store and process this information?

How do we solve problems, think and formulate our thoughts with the help of language?

Cognitive psychology covers the entire range of mental processes, from sensation to perception, neuroscience, pattern recognition, attention, consciousness, learning, memory, concept formation, thinking, imagination, memory, language, intelligence, emotions, and developmental processes; it concerns all kinds of spheres of behavior.

Rice. one . Main areas of research in cognitive psychology

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Cognitive psychology emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s. On September 11, 1956, a special group of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, dealing with information theory, met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is believed that this meeting marked the beginning of the cognitive revolution in psychology. The cognitive direction in psychology does not have a “founding father”, like, for example, psychoanalysis. However, we can name the names of scientists who laid the foundation of cognitive psychology with their work. George Miller, Jerome Bruner, Ulrik Neisser, George Kelly, Herbert Simon, Allen Newell, Noam Chomsky, David Green, John Sweets. George Miller and Jerome Bruner founded the Center for Cognitive Research in 1960, where they developed a wide range of problems: language, memory, perceptual and concept formation processes, thinking and cognition. On August 22, 1966, Jerome Bruner's book "Studies in Cognitive Growth" was published. In 1967, Ulrik Neisser published the book "Cognitive Psychology", in which he tried to constitute a new direction in psychology. 1976 W. Neisser "Knowledge and Reality".

The main prerequisites for its emergence: - the inability of behaviorism and psychoanalysis to explain human behavior without referring to the elements of consciousness; - development of communications and cybernetics; - development of modern linguistics.

In the late 70s - early 80s, within the framework of cognitive psychology, a movement appeared for a "new look" in psychology, that is, the adoption of a computer metaphor (or the consideration of the human psyche by analogy with the functioning of a computer), the absolutization of the role of knowledge in human behavior.

Cognitive psychology owes its awareness of its subject and method to Neisser and his book Cognitive Psychology (1967). Like Piaget, he proved the decisive role of the cognitive component in the structure of the psyche, in the activities of people. Neisser defined cognition as a process by which incoming sensory data is subjected to various types of transformation for the convenience of their accumulation, reproduction and further use. He suggested that cognitive processes are best studied by modeling the flow of information through various stages of transformation. To explain the essence of the ongoing processes, he proposed the terms: "iconic memory", "echoic memory", "pre-tuning processes", "figurative synthesis", and developed methods for studying them - visual search and selective observation. Initially, he was also engaged in the study of "artificial intelligence", but later criticized (for narrowness) - the abundance of informational stimuli that a person receives is underestimated.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) is a prominent representative of the cognitive direction and child psychology in general, who combined biology with the science of the origin of knowledge (epistemology). J. Piaget, a student of P. Janet, at the beginning of the 20th century worked with A. Binet and T. Simon in their Paris laboratory to develop tests. Then he headed the Institute Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Geneva and the International Center for Genetic Epistemology. He was attracted not by standards, but by the patterns of erroneous answers, and he applied the method of clinical conversation or probing interview to reveal what is hidden behind the wrong answer, and used logical models in the analysis.

J. Piaget considers the development of intelligence as a form of adaptation to the environment by balancing assimilation and accommodation, assimilation of information and improvement of schemes, methods of its processing. This allows a person to survive as a biological species. At the same time, while emphasizing the role of the child's own efforts, J. Piaget clearly underestimated the influence of adults and the social environment.

The development of intelligence, according to J. Piaget, goes through four stages.

I. Sensorimotor intelligence (from 0 to 2 years) is manifested in actions: patterns of looking, grasping, circular reactions are learned when the baby repeats the action, expecting that its effect will be repeated (throws the toy and waits for the sound).

P. Preoperative stage (2-7 years). Children learn speech, but in a word they combine both essential and external features of objects. Therefore, their analogies and judgments seem unexpected and illogical: the wind blows because the trees sway; the boat floats because it is small and light, but the ship floats because it is big and strong.

III. Stage of concrete operations (7-11 years). Children begin to reason logically, they can classify concepts and give definitions, but all this is based on specific concepts and illustrative examples.

IV. Stage of formal operations (from 12 years old). Children operate with abstract concepts, categories of "what will happen if ...", understand metaphors, can take into account the thoughts of other people, their roles and ideals. This is the intelligence of an adult.

To illustrate the cognitive theory of development, J. Piaget proposed a famous experiment to understand the phenomenon of conservation. Understanding the conservation of matter (volume, quantity) when changing shape, location, appearance is the separation of the essential properties of the object from the non-essential. The children were shown two glasses of colored water and asked if the amount of water in the two glasses was the same. After the child agreed, the water from one glass was poured into a taller and narrower one. The same question was asked again. Children up to 6-7 years old said that there is more water in a tall glass. Even if the transfusion was repeated several times, they still said that there was more in a narrow glass. Only 7-8 year olds noticed the same volume. And this has been repeated in different countries and cultures.

Fritz Heider's theory of structural balance. The main tenet of this theory is that people tend to develop an orderly and coherent view of the world; in this process, they build a kind of "naive psychology", seeking to understand the motives and attitudes of another person. Naive psychology strives for an internal balance of objects perceived by a person, internal consistency. Imbalance causes tension and forces that lead to restoration of balance. Balance, according to Haider, is not a state that characterizes the real relationships between objects, but only the person's perception of these relationships. The main scheme of Heider's theory: P - O - X, where P is the perceiving subject, O is the other (perceiving subject), X is the object perceived by both P and O. The interaction of these three elements constitutes a certain cognitive field, and the task of the psychologist is to to reveal what type of relationship between these three elements is stable, balanced, and what type of relationship makes the subject (P) feel uncomfortable and his desire to change the situation.

The Theodore Newcomb Theory of Communicative Acts extends Haider's theoretical propositions to the area of ​​interpersonal relationships. Newcomb believed that the tendency towards balance characterizes not only intrapersonal, but also interpersonal systems of relations. The main position of this theory is as follows: if two people perceive each other positively, and build any relationship to a third person (person or object), they tend to develop similar orientations regarding this third. The development of these similar orientations can be enhanced by the development of interpersonal relationships. The consonant (balanced, non-contradictory) state of the system arises, as in the previous case, when all three relations are positive, or one relation is positive and two are negative; dissonance occurs where two relationships are positive and one is negative.

Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance is perhaps the most well-known cognitive theory to a wide range of people. In it, the author develops Haider's ideas regarding the relationship of balance and imbalance between the elements of the subject's cognitive map of the world. The main position of this theory is the following: people strive for some internal consistency as a desired internal state. In the event of a contradiction between what a person knows, or between what he knows and what he does, a person experiences a state of cognitive dissonance, subjectively experienced as discomfort. This state of discomfort causes behavior aimed at changing it - a person seeks to achieve internal non-contradiction again.

Dissonance can occur:

from logical inconsistency (All people are mortal, but A will live forever.);

from the inconsistency of cognitive elements with cultural patterns (The parent yells at the child, knowing that this is not good.);

from the inconsistency of this cognitive element with some broader system of ideas (a Communist votes for Putin (or Zhirinovsky) in presidential elections);

from the inconsistency of this cognitive element with past experience (always violated the rules of the road - and nothing; but now they were fined!).

The way out of the state of cognitive dissonance is possible as follows:

through a change in the behavioral elements of the cognitive structure (A person stops buying a product that, in his opinion, is too expensive (poor quality, unfashionable, etc.);

through a change in cognitive elements related to the environment (A person continues to buy a certain product, convincing others that this is what you need.);

through the expansion of the cognitive structure in such a way that it includes previously excluded elements (Gets out facts indicating that B, S and D buy the same product - and everything is fine!).

The theory of congruence by Ch. Osgood and P. Tannenbaum describes additional ways out of the situation of cognitive dissonance. According to this theory, other options for getting out of the state of dissonance are possible, for example, through a simultaneous change in the attitude of the subject to both another subject and the perceived object. An attempt is made to predict changes in attitudes (attitudes) that will occur in the subject under the influence of the desire to restore consonance within the cognitive structure.

The main provisions of the theory: a) the imbalance in the cognitive structure of the subject depends not only on the general sign of the relationship, but also on their intensity; b) the restoration of consonance can be achieved not only by changing the sign of the subject’s relationship to one of the elements of the triad “P, O, X”, but also by simultaneously changing both the intensity and the sign of these relationships, moreover, simultaneously to both members of the triad.