cognitive psychology

Study of information-processing functions in humans and animals, covering their role in learning, memory, reasoning, and language development. Cognitive psychologists use a number of experimental techniques, including laboratory-based research with normal and brain-damaged subjects, as well as computer and mathematical models to test and validate theories.

The study of cognition was largely neglected by psychologists for the early part of the 20th century after the demise of introspection as a method of investigation and the rise of behaviourism. However, several influential theorists, such as US psychologist Edward Chase Tolman (1886-1959), continued to argue that in order to comprehend fully the determinants of behaviour, cognitive processes must be studied and understood, and in 1957 Noam Chomsky's examination of behaviourist approaches to language acquisition appeared. With the rise of telecommunications technology and digital computing, such theorists as English psychologist Donald Broadbent (1926- ) developed information-processing models of the brain, later elaborated, for example, by German-born US psychologist Ulrich Neisser (1928- ). More recently, the limitations of these approaches, for example, in elaborating the role of emotion and motivation in cognitive processes, have become the focus of attention.