Main characteristics of consciousness

Consciousness (lat) - shared knowledge divided between people.

Consciousness (Descartes) is knowledge with me, knowledge of direct experience in me, personal knowledge that directly belongs to me at a given moment in time.

A distinctive characteristic of consciousness is the ability to separate the relation of the subject from the object (distinguishing between "I" and "not I").

Consciousness as:

Attitude to own experiences

About myself and the world

Purposeful activity

Reflective ability

Properties of Consciousness: (James)

Consciousness is changeable

Consciousness is continuous

Consciousness is dynamic

Consciousness is voluminous

Consciousness in Cognitive Psychology:

1. Consciousness - awareness, i.e. knowledge about the events and stimuli of the surrounding world and about their cognitive processes.

2. Controlling yourself and your environment. Controlling the onset and ending of behavior.

3 types of consciousness according to Tulving:

1. Anoetic (reflects procedural memory) - the simple presence of knowledge about our actions, performed and manifested in our skills and habits.

2. Noetic (reflects semantic memory) - knowledge about objects, events, connections between them.

3. Autonoetic (reflects episodic memory) - knowledge of personal experiences, events, connects with personal identity.

Activity and activity of the subject

Activity appears in relation to activity. Activity is characterized by:

To a greater extent - the conditionality of the actions performed by the specifics of the internal states of the subject directly at the moment of action - in contrast to reactivity, when actions are due to the previous situation.

Arbitrariness - the conditionality of the subject's cash goal.

Oversituation - going beyond the original goals.

Significant sustainability of activities in relation to the adopted goal.

It should be noted that an exhaustive definition of activity as a directed motivated activity of the subject links together the concepts of activity motivation, the goals of each of its constituent actions and the means to achieve them.

In addition to actions in the structure of activity, it is necessary to single out such elements as operations, which are also actions, only automated or never realized. In any case, action is a process of solving a problem, consisting of goal setting, search or creation of means to solve the problem.

The cultural-historical (Vygotsky) approach identifies two types of activity regulation: external and internal. Will and emotions constitute two forms of internal regulation.

If emotions involuntarily reflect the current state of needs and the meaning of motivation, volitional processes, on the contrary, are conscious efforts to focus attention on the desired object and have the ability to delay the spontaneous affective process, thereby reinforcing the meaning of the action being performed.

According to Leontiev, activity is a form of activity. Activity is driven by need, i.e. a state of need in certain conditions of the normal functioning of the individual. The main characteristics of activity: objectivity and subjectivity.

Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive psychology is engaged in research in the field of psychology of thinking and consciousness, studies all cognitive mental processes(memory, perception, thinking, attention, speech, etc.).

Cognitive psychology is focused on the formation, emergence and dynamics of images of perception, memory, thinking, etc.

Any fact of behavior is regulated by consciousness. Behavior and consciousness are inseparable.

Cognitive psychology of memory

Cognitive memory is the process of storing knowledge. The knowledge gained in the process of learning first acts as something external in relation to the individual, then gradually turns into the experience and beliefs of a person.

two forms of cognitive memory

Sensory-perceptual (figurative) Figurative memory is the result of the perception of sensory information and can manifest itself in the form of storage of visual, auditory, olfactory and other sensations or in the form of complex synthetic images that include a complex of various sensory characteristics.

Verbal-logical (mental)

Verbal-logical memory fixes verbal information and conceptual designations of external objects and actions.

Memory system

Human experience is represented by 2 types of memory: primary (everything that is updated from secondary memory, directly what we know about ourselves, the current experience of consciousness) and secondary (all available human knowledge in the field of preconsciousness)
Information entering the primary memory lasts about 20-30 seconds, if it is repeated, then it flows into long-term memory, or is retained and then forgotten.

Memory system according to the three-component structure:

3 independent storages and a system of processes that take place within each storage and between them.

Component processes occur with each of the storages:

The process of entering information into a given structure (coding process)

Storage

extraction

Deletion, forgetting

storage functions

sensory memory - provides a continuous image of perception, sensory imprint (maximum 2 sec-vision, 4-hearing).

Processing levels theory

Structural theories of Norman. The structure is - KP, SP, DP. These structures (systems) have different functions and mechanisms of their manifestation, but there is interaction between them. The first class of theories is the theory of duality: there is a structure of primary (short-term) and secondary (long-term) memory. All information coming from outside passes through the CP and is either pushed out or transferred to the DP through the process of repetition. Repetition is an operation that performs three functions: 1. resistance to the fading of traces in the CP

2. prevent material from being ejected

3. translation of content from CP to DP. When moving to DP, information is fixed.

The three-component theory (multiplicity theory) of Atkinson ("Memory and learning processes") assumes the presence of an ICD (sensory), which receives information from the outside, the structure of the CP, the structure of the DP, to which information can get both from the CP and from the ICP. Any output knowledge is the result of transformation through the three systems. There are three ways to prove the existence of these structures: functional (according to the different principles of the functioning of these systems), experimental, and pathology materials.

Functional:

1. These structures perform different tasks: the ICD ensures the normal operation of perception, pattern recognition (preventing the CP from piling up information and allowing you to correlate sensory features with the existing standards in the experience for recognition).

2. CP (15-30 seconds without repetition) - serves a short-term thought process (suggestions and hypotheses held; solving arithmetic problems in the mind).

3. DP - the function of acquiring personal memory, individual experience.

Ways of functioning (using different component processes): different ways of encoding input, storage, output, and forgetting in all three structures. In the UKP, the input is in the corresponding specific modality (visual - retinal processes, etc.). In CP, regardless of the modality of information from the outside, it is mainly encoded acoustically by articulatory methods (by pronunciation). In DP, input is carried out through the transformation of meanings, meanings (semantic codes; for speech, concepts).

The volume of storage in the PCD depends on the amount of stimulation, but it is larger than the volume of the PC.

Extraction of information from the UKP occurs by parallel reading (from the internal icon;). Based on the laws of Sternberg (chronometry method), a consistent search for information is carried out from the CP. Reading from the DP is carried out by sequential enumeration.

Forgetting in the PCD is fading, fading, masking by another stimulus. In CP -- pushing out old information with new if there is no repetition. There are many reasons for forgetting in DP: motivational forgetting (Freud), interference ( mutual influence new and old information): retro and proactive interference.

Methods for studying memory in cognitive psychology

Structural theories of Norman and Waugh. First of all, memory is studied here, which is based on the time of information storage. This is the most wounded and widely accepted theory. These structures are called KP, SP, DP. These structures (systems) have different functions and mechanisms of their manifestation, but there is interaction between them. The first class of theories is the theory of duality: there is a structure of primary (short-term) and secondary (long-term, reflecting all experience) memory. All information coming from the outside passes through the CP and is either pushed out or transferred to the DP through the process of repetition. Repetition is an operation that performs three functions: 1. resisting the extinction of traces in the CP, 2. preventing material from being pushed out, 3. transferring the content from the CP to the DP. When moving to DP, information is fixed.

Experiment of Vygotsky and Leontiev on the ratio of natural and mediated memory. (The goal is achieved through the mastery of a mnemonic tool).

Zinchenko and Smirnov studied involuntary memory depending on the content, structure and motivation of activity.

Cognitive psychology of attention

Attention is the concentration of mental efforts on sensory or mental events. Many theories of attention are based on the assumption that the ability of an information processing system to cope with the flow of input information is determined by the limitations of the system itself.

Attention studies include four main aspects: consciousness, throughput and selective attention, arousal level and attention control.

Limitations on the volume and selectivity of attention mean that there is a “bottleneck” in the structure of information processing. The two models suggest a different location: according to one, it is in perceptual analysis or immediately before it, according to the other, all information is analyzed, and the bottleneck is associated with the choice of response or immediately precedes it.

The divider-based model of selective attention suggests that there is a perceptual filter located between the input signal and the verbal analysis, this filter carefully scans the input information, selectively adjusting the "power" of the message. It is assumed that stimuli have a different activation threshold, which explains how we can hear something without paying attention to it.

Attention as selection

Models of selective attention

1. model of early selection. It was created by Broadbent in his work "Perception and Communication". The functioning of attention was compared with the work of an electromechanical device - a filter that selects information based on sensory features and works on the principle of "all or nothing". He proceeded from the following: a processing, perceptual system is a channel with limited bandwidth (perception of a limited amount of information per unit of time). A limited ability is determined by the presence of a certain block, a mechanism in front of this channel, called a filter, working according to certain patterns of the task, its settings. Information enters from the outside into the sensory register, then into the CP (here the information enters and is stored completely and processed in parallel), after the filter, part of the information remains, since the filter is associated with a long-term memory system that determines what needs to be extracted from this information flow. Thus, attention is a filter in the information processing system, allowing perception in a system with limited bandwidth, tuned to certain aspects of stimulation (physical signs: left-right, louder-quieter, male-female). However, the problem arises precisely of the physical signs of tuning. And here comes the idea of ​​tuning the filter to semantic features and the controversy about where the filter is located - either before the perceptual processing system, or right before the answer. Norman and Deutsch's theory: attention is not a filter and the entire perceptual system works in parallel, and attention is an adjustment at the response level. There are central detectors in memory, the activation of which serves with the mechanism of perception. These structures are under the influence of two flows of information - peripheral and central, the last flow is determined by the integral characteristic of the significance of a given message or object - the model of relevance. A. Treisman took an intermediate position: there is also a filter tuned to physical features and to more complexly organized aspects of information (phonetic, grammatical, semantic) and, depending on the importance of the signal, processing is possible even from a non-relevant channel. This is a "tree" model - there are several levels of filtering depending on the complexity of the task, meaning, expectations - at any level, information that was previously delayed could be missed. Thus, selective theories of attention are models in which important role plays the mechanism of screening out one information and skipping another. The problem was in the place of the filter or in the level organization of the filter.

Attention as a resource

Theories aimed at studying the power characteristics of Kahneman's attention answered the question of what determines the policy of distributing the degree of attention, energy to different objects.

Attention is the expenditure of mental strength on something, and the act of attention is correlated with mental effort (activation), which is determined not so much by the desires and conscious intentions of the subject, but by the objective complexity of the task. The equivalent of expended mental energy in physiology is activation. (An illustration of this thesis is possible on the example of the Yerse-Dodson law: where the activation is high, there the efficiency of activity or the expenditure of attention is the strongest. Where the activation is low, then there is little mental energy, for example, during light, automated work. At the maximum activation, the solution is destroyed difficult task). Attention is spent on focusing on some motivational aspect and it is not enough for the rest.

The laws of distribution of psychic energy resources make it possible to build a model: the policy of distribution of attention resources allows one to select and implement specific forms of response activity. Resources (or activation) are limited at any given moment depending on the state of the subject (sleep, arousal, hyperarousal, etc.). The main factor in the distribution of resources for a person is the block for assessing the requirements of the task to attention resources. This is a control block that determines the complexity, the necessity of the task. Here there is another block, "permanent rules", which works according to the laws of involuntary attention and can intervene at the moment of solving a problem, take into account changes in the situation and redistribute energy between tasks. Also, the distribution of energy is influenced by the block of intentions acting at the moment, working on the principle of arbitrary actions. The policy is also affected by the overall activation state. If it falls below a certain value, tasks cannot be completed. For activation in general view influence any factors - determinants of activation. The activation itself can manifest itself not only in productive problem solving during the distribution of attention, but also in the manifestation of physiological indicators of activation (evoked potentials, alpha waves, changes in pupil diameter.

The question of the possibility of distributing attention to several tasks (which in the Broadbent model cannot be distributed, but can only be quickly switched) is solved by Kahneman by introducing a hypothetical ratio of the efforts expended and required for the task. Graph of the relationship between the actual effort expended and the objective complexity of the task, including the concepts of resource limits and delta resources. Thus, attention can be distributed if there are sufficient resources to solve them. To verify this, an experimental study of the situation of two tasks was carried out: the primary task (which is motivated: for a successful solution for a long time, $ 10-15 was added for every hour with a successful solution of the main task). The task consisted of easy (requiring few resources) and difficult (resource-selecting) tasks. (Graph of results). The percentage of errors was plotted along the y-axis. The second task is to observe various objects on the screen with instructions for an immediate response to the appearance of the letter D. On the OX axis, the effectiveness of solving both problems. In solving the main problem - a small percentage of errors, on the second a sharp increase in the number of errors in the transition from perception to counting. Conclusions: a sharp increase in the number of errors during the transition to the difficult part of the main task indicates that all the attention of the subject has switched to the main task and resources to additional task not left.

All these stimuli have a specific effect on the nervous system: the intensity of excitation, the special sensitivity of the NS, the summation of excitations, the sequence of excitations without fatigue and adaptation, the coincidence of excitations.

The current state of the study of attention in cognitive psychology is similar in scope to that of the psychology of consciousness.

Attention as action

The central concept of Neisser's approach was the idea of ​​schemas or internal cognitive structures involved in the processing of input stimulation, anticipation and search for the necessary information in environment. W. Neisser writes: "In my opinion, the most important cognitive structures for vision are anticipatory schemes that prepare the individual to receive information

strictly defined, and not of any kind, and thus control visual activity. Since we can only see what we can see with our eyes, it is these schemas (together with the information currently available) that determine what is perceived. Perception, indeed, is a constructive process, but it is by no means a mental image that arises in consciousness that is constructed,

where he is admired by some inner man. At each moment, the perceiver constructs anticipations of some information, making it possible for him to

accepting it when it becomes available. To make this information available, he often has to actively explore the optical flow by moving his eyes, his head, or his whole body. This exploratory activity is guided by the same anticipatory schemes, which are a kind of plans for perceptual actions, as well as the readiness to isolate optical

some types of structures. The result of the survey of the environment - the extracted information - modifies the original schema. Thus modified, it directs further examination and is ready

For additional information". The author calls the described process a perceptual cycle and presents it in the form of a model

The selection and selective use of information is not determined by the existence of any limits within the scheme, but by the purpose and specificity of its structure, which has developed in the course of learning or in the process of repeatedly performing a certain range of tasks.

From this it follows that no special selection mechanisms exist at all, and the difficulties of performing two activities simultaneously can, provided there is no peripheral interference, be overcome by exercise.

In order to empirically test the main provisions of this hypothesis, a number of experiments were carried out using a selective viewing technique similar to binaural listening, in which two moving images superimposed on each other were presented. According to W. Neisser, the results of experiments with superposition

images indicate that the selection is relevant visual information occurs independently of hypothetical filtration mechanisms. Selectivity is one of the aspects of perception, provided by the anticipation of the necessary information and the continuous adjustment of the perceptual circuit that serves the solution of this problem. The main condition for the selective tuning of the scheme in the experiments described above is probably the perception of information about the movement as the most specifying the course and events of the relevant game.

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 Modern times, but we can say with confidence that cognitive processes have been a key theme 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 intellectual development”, young Piaget (Fig. 10.19) drew attention not to success, but to typical mistakes that children of a certain age make when 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 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 was a period of rapid development computer science, 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) is published, in which the author seriously criticizes the obsession with behaviorism in American psychology and fears that behavioral science will 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 real circumstances. 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 ​​the “ecological disability” of the 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 accumulated, it is a means of selective extraction of information from outside world and itself changes under the influence of the received information. 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 application 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 survived severe stress distorts reality. In particular, Bruner showed that the more subjective value is attributed to an object, the more it seems to him. physical quantity that stress causes neutral words to be 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 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 fish harpooners who perceive the target through a distorting prism - the water column; sorting of skins by reindeer herders according to the specifics of the pattern, etc.). The author understands the process of thinking as a process of formation of concepts and, for the purpose of its study, modifies the well-known experimental procedure of Narcissus Ach, widely known in Russian literature as a method for the formation of artificial concepts.

Cognitive psychology (CP) is a branch of psychological science that studies the cognitive processes of the human psyche. Its purpose is to study the role of knowledge in the behavior of the individual.

The objects of cognitive psychology are:

• memory;
• imagination;
• attention;
• perception;
• recognition of images, sounds, smells, taste;
• thinking;
• speech;
• development;
• intelligence.

"Cognitive" in translation means "cognitive". If to speak in simple words, according to the ideas of the CP, a person receives signals from the outside (light, image, sound, taste, smell, temperature sensation, tactile sensations), analyzes the action of these stimuli, remembers them, creates certain patterns of his response to external influence. Creating templates allows you to speed up the response to a subsequent similar impact. However, if the initial creation of the template is incorrect, failures in the adequacy of the perception of an external stimulus occur. Finding the wrong template and replacing it with the right one is the KP method. Cognitive psychology studies both conscious and unconscious psychological processes, however, the unconscious is treated here as automatic thoughts.

History of cognitive psychology

Start modern psychology was established in the middle of the 19th century, by the end of the 19th century there was a clear preponderance of the physiological approach in describing the human psyche. Pavlov's research prompted J. Watson to the idea of ​​behaviorism with the "stimulus-response" scheme. The subconscious, soul, consciousness, as quantities that cannot be measured, were simply written off. In contrast to this concept, there was Freudianism, aimed at studying inner world human, but completely subjective.

Cognitive psychology arose as a result of the crisis of the ideas of behaviorism and the development of artificial intelligence, when in the 60s scientists came up with the idea of ​​a person as a biocomputer. Thinking processes are described similarly to the processes produced by computers. The most significant theory of behaviorism in the 50s had as its object externally observed human behavior, in contrast to them, cognitive psychology took up internal processes in the psyche of the individual.

The most active cognitive psychology was developed by the efforts of American researchers. The period from 1950 to 1970 is called the cognitive revolution. The term "cognitive psychology" was first used by the American Ulric Neisser.

The advantages of KP are:

• visualization of the scheme of brain processes;
• the presence of a backbone theory;
• creation of a general model of the psyche;
• explanation of the philosophical question about the connection between being and consciousness - they are connected through information.

Names of cognitive psychology

George Armitage Miller (1920-2012, USA) - his most famous work is devoted to short-term human memory (formula "7 +/- 2").

Jerome S. Bruner (1915-2016, USA) - explored cognitive processes, made a significant contribution to the theory of learning, the psychology of pedagogy.

Ulrik Neisser (Neiser) (1928-2012, USA) - in 1976, in his book Cognitive Psychology, he first used this term to describe a psychological theory recent years, pointed out its main problems, making an impetus to further development KP. He also described the phenomenon of information anticipation.

Based on the KP, a direction of cognitive psychotherapy arose, the founders of which are recognized as Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck.

Features of cognitive psychology

The most striking features of this direction of psychology are:

• computer metaphor in the description of thinking processes;
• symbolic approach;
• chronometric experiments on the reaction rate.

Axioms of Cognitive Psychology

A.T. Beck suggested that mental deviations are due to a violation of the process of self-consciousness, an error in the processing of external data. For example, a woman with anorexia perceives herself as too fat, and it is possible to cure her by identifying a failure in judgment. That is, cognitive psychology considers the existence of objective reality an axiom. Cognitive psychotherapy solves the problem of irrational ideas.

Haber in 1964 formulated the following principles-axioms of KP:

• Information is collected and processed in consciousness in a strict sequence (similar to processes in a computer).
• The possibilities for storing and processing information are limited (compare with the memory capacity of electronic devices), which is why the brain selectively approaches signals from the outside world, looking for effective ways work with incoming data (strategy).
• Information is stored in encrypted form.

Directions of cognitive psychology

Modern SP deals with the study of the psychology of the development of cognitive structures, language and speech, and theories of intelligence.

The following areas of CP can be distinguished:

• Cognitive-behavioral psychology is a branch of cognitive psychology based on the assumption that an individual's personality problems are due to his incorrect behavior. The purpose of working with the patient is to find errors in behavior, teaching the correct models.
• Cognitive social psychology - its task is the social adaptation of the individual, assistance in the social growth of a person, by analyzing the mechanisms of his social judgments.

Modern cognitive psychology is closely related to research in neuroscience. The latter is a field of science that studies the structure and functioning of the nervous system of organisms. Gradually, the two fields of science are intertwined, while cognitive psychology is losing ground, giving way to cognitive neuroscience.

Criticism of cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology does not take into account the emotional components of the process of cognition, abstracts from the intentions and needs of a person, tries to schematize cognitive processes that cannot always be put into a schema. Cognitivists claim the "automaticity" of processing the received external data, ignoring the conscious choice of the individual. These are the main points for which she is criticized. The limited approach of the KP led to the development of genetic psychology (J. Piaget), cultural-historical psychology (L. Vygotsky), activity approach (A. Leontiev).

Despite criticism, cognitive psychology is the leading modern direction sciences about the process of cognition. KP shows excellent results in the treatment of patients with depression, people with low self-esteem. CP has become the basis for the development of cognitive linguistics, neuropsychology, and cognitive ethology (the study of the cognitive activity of animals). These CPs are used to build curricula, to improve the effectiveness of courses, for example, to study foreign languages. KP has an impact in all areas of psychology, psychotherapy.

The term "cognitive" in translation into Russian means cognitive. cognitive psychology is the psychology of knowledge.

The cognitive direction in psychology arose in American science in the 1960s as an alternative to the dominance of behavioral concepts. In 1967, Neisser's book of the same name appeared, which gave its name to a new direction in psychological science.

The emergence of cognitive psychology is sometimes called a kind of revolution in foreign (primarily American) psychological science. Indeed, since the 1920s the study of attention, thinking, perception was sharply slowed down, and in American psychology these processes were actually ignored altogether. In behaviorism, which dominated American psychology in the first half of the 20th century, such a view was due to the very interpretation of the subject of psychology. Cognitive psychology has rehabilitated the concept of the psyche as a subject scientific research. She returned the subjective aspect to the subject of psychology.

Essence of cognitive psychology

cognitive psychology is the psychology of cognition, it studies how people receive information about the world, how this information is presented by a person, how it is stored in memory and converted into knowledge, and how this knowledge affects our attention and behavior. Thus, almost all cognitive processes are covered - from sensations to perception, pattern recognition, memory, concept formation, thinking, imagination. The main directions of cognitive psychology, which has become widespread in many countries over several decades, also usually include research on the problems of the psychology of the development of cognitive structures, on the psychology of language and speech, and on the development of cognitive theories of human and artificial intelligence.

Cognitive psychology considers a person as a being who actively perceives, processes and produces information, guided in his mental activity by certain cognitive schemes, rules, strategies.

Method of analysis of the psyche as a cognitive system in cognitive psychology has become a microstructural analysis of cognitive processes.

Cognitive psychology considers a person as a cognitive system and interprets the processes taking place in this system as information processing by analogy with information processing in a computer - computer metaphor. The limitations of this analogy are now increasingly recognized. However, the use of complex dynamic information models for the description of thought processes has played and continues to play a significant positive role.

A serious advantage of cognitive psychology is the accuracy and specificity of the data obtained, which partially brings psychology closer to that unattainable ideal of objective science, to which it has been striving for many centuries. However, in this case, as in other similar ones, accuracy is achieved by simplifying and ignoring the ambiguity of the human psyche.

Cognitive psychology assumes that information is processed step by step, and at each stage, the processing stage, it is for a certain time and is presented in various forms. It is processed using various regulatory processes (pattern recognition, attention, repetition of information, etc.). At the same time, individual cognitive processes ensure the implementation of different stages of information processing. Therefore, the results of research in the field of cognitive psychology, as a rule, are presented in the form of models of information processing. Models consist of blocks, each of which performs strictly defined functions. Links between blocks mean the path of information flow from the input to the output of the model.

Jean Piaget as the founder of cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology began with the works of the outstanding Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who studied intelligence and its development in ontogeny. His works are reflected in many works of this school.

From Piaget's point of view, human intelligence changes and adapts to the environment. Adaptation intelligence to the environment in the perception of new information is carried out through two main processes: assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation- this is the process of incorporating new information as an integral part into the mental structures already existing in a person; accommodation is a change in existing mental structures in order to combine old and new experience.

Piaget's theory of cognitive development also suggests that the development of intelligence is carried out not only through adaptation, but also through organizations, that is, the construction of increasingly complex integrated mental representations of operations. Cognitive development is characterized by quantitative linear changes occurring within one stage, and qualitative changes at four main stages of intelligence development: sensorimotor (0-2 years), preoperative (2-7 years), stage of specific operations (7-11 years) and stage formal operations (11-15 years).

1. sensorimotorstage. During the period of sensorimotor intelligence, the organization of perceptual and motor interactions with the outside world gradually develops. This development proceeds from being limited by innate reflexes to the associated organization of sensorimotor actions in relation to the immediate environment. At this stage, only direct manipulations with things are possible, but not actions with symbols, representations in the internal plan.
2. On stages of pre-operational representations a transition is made from sensorimotor functions to internal - symbolic, that is, to actions with representations, and not with external objects. This stage of the development of the intellect is characterized by the dominance of preconceptions and transductive reasoning; egocentrism; focusing on the conspicuous features of the object and neglecting the rest of its features in reasoning; focusing on the states of a thing and inattention to its transformations.
3. On stages of specific operations actions with representations begin to be combined, coordinated with each other, forming systems of integrated actions called operations. The child develops special cognitive structures called groupings (for example, classification), thanks to which the child acquires the ability to perform operations with classes and establish logical relationships between classes, uniting them in hierarchies, whereas earlier his capabilities were limited to transduction and the establishment of associative links. The limitation of this stage is that operations can be performed only with concrete objects, but not with statements. Operations logically structure the performed external actions, but they cannot yet structure verbal reasoning in a similar way.
4. The main ability that appears on stages of formal operations- the ability to deal with the possible, with the hypothetical, and perceive external reality as a special case of what is possible, what could be. Cognition becomes hypothetical-deductive. The child acquires the ability to think in sentences and establish formal relationships (inclusion, conjunction, disjunction, etc.) between them. The child at this stage is also able to systematically identify all the variables that are relevant to the solution of the problem, and systematically go through all possible combinations of these variables.

Other founders of cognitive psychology

Haider (the theory of cognitive balance) and Festinger (the theory of cognitive dissonance) are also among the founders of cognitive psychology.

Essence theories of cognitive balance Hyder is as follows. A person strives for a correct agreed opinion about the world around him. To achieve such an opinion, a person determines one or another basic concept (the so-called center of the causal nature of the world), on the basis of which he interprets all the events that occur. This concept acts as the core on which the attention of a person is concentrated and around which all other events are perceived as superficial, less significant.

Essence theories of cognitive dissonance Festinger is that a person strives for a consistent picture of the world, and therefore each new information, before being learned, must find its connections in the cognitive system of this person. If the information contradicts the learned system of concepts and images, there is a significant psychological stress, called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is accompanied by the emergence of protective motives aimed at relieving psychological stress and bringing new information into line with existing information.

Merits of cognitive psychology

Despite a number of limitations and shortcomings of cognitive psychology, its representatives obtained a lot of important data that make the process of cognition as a whole more understandable, and many patterns of individual cognitive processes were established. In addition, the relationship of various cognitive processes is convincingly shown. A large number of methods have been developed in cognitive psychology. pilot study cognitive processes.

Today it is impossible to talk about psychology as a single science. Each direction in it offers its own understanding of psychic reality, its functioning and approach to the analysis of certain aspects. Relatively young, but quite popular and progressive is cognitive psychology. We will briefly get acquainted with this scientific branch, its history, methods, main provisions and features in this article.

Story

The beginning of cognitive psychology was laid by a meeting of young specialists in electronic engineering at the University of Massachusetts on November 11, 1956. Among them were the well-known psychologists Newell Allen, George Miller and They for the first time raised the question of the influence of subjective cognitive processes of a person on objective reality.

Important for the understanding and development of the discipline was the book "The Study of Cognitive Development" by J. Bruner, published in 1966. It was created by 11 co-authors - specialists from the Harvard Research Center. However, the book of the same name by Ulrik Neisser is recognized as the main theoretical work of cognitive psychology - American psychologist and lecturer at Cornell University.

Key points

The main provisions of cognitive psychology can briefly be called a protest against the views of behaviorism (the psychology of behavior, the beginning of the 20th century). The new discipline stated that human behavior is a product of human thinking abilities. "Cognitive" means "knowledge", "knowledge". It is his processes (thinking, memory, imagination) that stand above external conditions. They form certain conceptual schemes with the help of which a person acts.

The main task of cognitive psychology can be briefly formulated as understanding the process of deciphering the signals of the external world and interpreting them, comparisons. That is, a person is perceived as a kind of computer that reacts to light, sound, temperature and other stimuli, analyzes all this and creates action patterns to solve problems.

Peculiarities

Incompetent people often equate behaviorism and cognitive direction. However, as mentioned above, these are separate, independent disciplines. The first is focused only on the observation of human behavior and external factors (stimulus, manipulation) that shape it. Today, some of its scientific provisions are recognized as erroneous. Cognitive psychology can be briefly and clearly defined as a science that studies the mental (internal) states of a person. It is distinguished from psychoanalysis scientific methods(but not subjective feelings) on which all studies are based.

The range of topics covered by the cognitive direction is perception, language, memory, attention, intelligence, and problem solving. Therefore, this discipline often resonates with linguistics, behavioral neuroscience, artificial intelligence issues, etc.

Methods

The main method of cognitivists is the replacement of a personal construct. Its development belongs to the American scientist J. Kelly and dates back to 1955, when a new direction had not yet been formed. However, the author's work has largely become decisive for cognitive psychology.

Briefly, the personality construct is comparative analysis as various people perceive and interpret external information. It includes three stages. At the first stage, the patient is given certain tools (for example, a thought diary). They help to identify erroneous judgments and understand the causes of these distortions. Most often, they are states of affect. The second stage is called empirical. Here the patient, together with the psychotherapist, works out techniques for the correct correlation of the phenomena of objective reality. For this, the formulation of adequate arguments for and against, a system of advantages and disadvantages of behavior models, and experiments are used. The final step is the patient's optimal awareness of his response. This is a pragmatic step.

In short, Kelly's cognitive psychology (or personality theory) is a description of the very conceptual scheme that allows a person to comprehend reality and form certain behaviors. It was successfully picked up and developed by the scientist revealed the principles of "learning by observation" in behavior modification. Today, the personality construct is actively used by specialists all over the world to study depressive states, phobias of patients and to identify/correct the causes of their low self-esteem. In general, the choice of cognitive method depends on the type of mental conduct disorder. These can be methods of decentration (with social phobia), the replacement of emotions, role reversal, or purposeful repetition.

Connection with neuroscience

Neurobiology deals with the study of behavioral processes in a broader sense. Today, this science is developing in parallel and actively interacting with cognitive psychology. Briefly, it affects the mental level, and puts more emphasis on the physiological processes in nervous system person. Some scientists even predict that in the future the cognitive direction may be reduced to neuroscience. The obstacle to this will be only the theoretical differences of disciplines. Cognitive processes in psychology, in short, are more abstract and irrelevant to the views of neuroscientists.

Problems and discoveries

The work of W. Neisser "Cognition and Reality", published in 1976, identified the main problems in the development of a new discipline. The scientist suggested that this science cannot solve everyday problems of people, relying only on laboratory methods of experiments. He also gave a positive assessment of the theory of direct perception developed by James and Eleanor Gibson, which can be successfully used in cognitive psychology.

Briefly, the American neurophysiologist Karl Pribram touched upon cognitive processes in his developments. His scientific contribution is related to the study of the "languages ​​of the brain" and the creation of a holographic model of mental functioning. In the course of the last work, an experiment was carried out - resection of the brain of animals. After extensive areas were removed, the memory and skills were preserved. This gave grounds to assert that the whole brain, and not its separate areas, is responsible for cognitive processes. The hologram itself worked on the basis of the interference of two electromagnetic waves. When separating any part of it, the picture was preserved in its entirety, although less clearly. Pribram's model has not yet been accepted by the scientific community, however, it is often discussed in transpersonal psychology.

What can help?

The practice of personality constructs helps psychotherapists treat mental disorders in patients, or smooth out their manifestation and reduce the risk of future relapses. In addition, the cognitive approach in psychology briefly but precisely helps to increase the effect of drug therapy, correct erroneous constructs and eliminate psychosocial consequences.