Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 exploring internal mental processes.
It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.

Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways.

• It accepts the use of the scientific method
  Scientific method
  Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
  
  , and generally rejects introspection
  Introspection
  Introspection is the self-observation and reporting of conscious inner thoughts, desires and sensations. It is a conscious and purposive process relying on thinking, reasoning, and examining one's own thoughts, feelings, and, in more spiritual cases, one's soul...
  
   as a valid method of investigation - in contrast with such approaches as Freudian psychology.
• It explicitly acknowledges the existence of internal mental states (such as belief
  Belief
  Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.-Belief, knowledge and epistemology:The terms belief and knowledge are used differently in philosophy....
  
  , desire
  Preference
  -Definitions in different disciplines:The term “preferences” is used in a variety of related, but not identical, ways in the scientific literature. This makes it necessary to make explicit the sense in which the term is used in different social sciences....
  
  , idea
  Idea
  In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...
  
  , knowledge
  Knowledge
  Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
  
   and motivation
  Motivation
  Motivation is the driving force by which humans achieve their goals. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. The term is generally used for humans but it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation...
  
  ).

In its early years, critics

Behaviorism

Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking, and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior...

 held that the empiricism of cognitive psychology was incompatible with its acceptance of internal mental states. However, the sibling field of cognitive neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain...

 has provided evidence of physiological brain states that directly correlate with mental states - thus providing support for the central assumption of cognitive psychology.

The school of thought arising from this approach is known as cognitivism

Cognitivism (psychology)

In psychology, cognitivism is a theoretical framework for understanding the mind that came into usage in the 1950s. The movement was a response to behaviorism, which cognitivists said neglected to explain cognition...

. Cognitive psychology has also influenced the area of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) where the combination of cognitive and behavioral psychology are used to treat a patient.

History

Ulric Neisser

Ulric Neisser

Ulric Neisser is an American psychologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a faculty member at Cornell University. In 1995, he headed an American Psychological Association task force that reviewed The Bell Curve and related controversies in the study of intelligence. The task...

 coined the term "cognitive psychology" in his book Cognitive Psychology, published in 1967 wherein Neisser provides a definition of cognitive psychology characterizing people as dynamic information-processing systems whose mental operations might be described in computational terms. Also emphasizing that it is a "point of view" that postulates the mind as having a certain conceptual structure. Neisser's point of view endows the discipline with a scope beyond high-level concepts such as "reasoning" that other works often espouse as defining psychology. Neisser's definition of "cognition" illustrates this well:

The term "cognition" refers to all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used. It is concerned with these processes even when they operate in the absence of relevant stimulation, as in images and hallucinations... Given such a sweeping definition, it is apparent that cognition is involved in everything a human being might possibly do; that every psychological phenomenon is a cognitive phenomenon. But although cognitive psychology is concerned with all human activity rather than some fraction of it, the concern is from a particular point of view. Other viewpoints are equally legitimate and necessary. Dynamic psychology, which begins with motives rather than with sensory input, is a case in point. Instead of asking how a man's actions and experiences result from what he saw, remembered, or believed, the dynamic psychologist asks how they follow from the subject's goals, needs, or instincts.

Cognitive psychology is one of the more recent additions to psychological research, having only developed as a separate area within the discipline since the late 1950s and early 1960s following the "cognitive revolution

Cognitive revolution

The cognitive revolution is the name for an intellectual movement in the 1950s that began what are known collectively as the cognitive sciences. It began in the modern context of greater interdisciplinary communication and research...

" initiated by Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...

's 1959 critique of behaviorism and empiricism more generally. The origins of cognitive thinking such as computational theory of mind

Computational theory of mind

In philosophy, the computational theory of mind is the view that the human mind is an information processing system and that thinking is a form of computing. The theory was proposed in its modern form by Hilary Putnam in 1961 and developed by Jerry Fodor in the 60s and 70s...

 can be traced back as early as Descartes in the 17th century, and proceeding up to Alan Turing

Alan Turing

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...

 in the 1940s and '50s. The cognitive approach was brought to prominence by Donald Broadbent

Donald Broadbent

Donald Eric Broadbent FRS was an influential English experimental psychologist. His career and his research work bridged the gap between the pre-Second World War approach of Sir Frederic Bartlett and its wartime development into applied psychology, and what from the late 1960s became known as...

's book Perception and Communication in 1958. Since that time, the dominant paradigm

Paradigm

The word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...

 in the area has been the information processing

Information processing

Information processing is the change of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process which describes everything which happens in the universe, from the falling of a rock to the printing of a text file from a digital computer system...

 model of cognition that Broadbent put forward. This is a way of thinking and reasoning about mental processes, envisioning them as software running on the computer that is the brain. Theories refer to forms of input, representation, computation or processing, and outputs. Applied to language as the primary mental knowledge representation system, cognitive psychology has exploited tree and network mental models. Its singular contribution to AI

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 and psychology in general is the notion of a semantic network

Semantic network

A semantic network is a network which represents semantic relations among concepts. This is often used as a form of knowledge representation. It is a directed or undirected graph consisting of vertices, which represent concepts, and edges.- History :...

. One of the first cognitive psychologists, George Miller is well known for dedicating his career to the development of WordNet

WordNet

WordNet is a lexical database for the English language. It groups English words into sets of synonyms called synsets, provides short, general definitions, and records the various semantic relations between these synonym sets...

, a semantic network for the English language. Development began in 1985 and is now the foundation for many machine ontologies.

This way of conceiving mental processes has pervaded psychology more generally over the past few decades, and it is not uncommon to find cognitive theories within social psychology

Social psychology

Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...

, personality psychology

Personality psychology

Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and individual differences. Its areas of focus include:* Constructing a coherent picture of the individual and his or her major psychological processes...

, abnormal psychology

Abnormal psychology

Abnormal psychology is the branch of psychology that studies unusual patterns of behavior, emotion and thought, which may or may not be understood as precipitating a mental disorder...

, and developmental psychology

Developmental psychology

Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...

. In fact, the neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development

Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development has been criticized on many grounds. One criticism is concerned with the very nature of development itself. It is suggested that Piaget's theory does not explain why development from stage to stage occurs. The theory is also criticized for ignoring...

 have fully integrated the developmental conception of changes in thought with age with cognitive model

Cognitive model

A cognitive model is an approximation to animal cognitive processes for the purposes of comprehension and prediction. Cognitive models can be developed within or without a cognitive architecture, though the two are not always easily distinguishable.In contrast to cognitive architectures, cognitive...

s of information processing. The application of cognitive theories to comparative psychology

Comparative psychology

Comparative psychology generally refers to the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human animals. However, scientists from different disciplines do not always agree on this definition...

 has driven many recent studies in animal cognition

Animal cognition

Animal cognition is the title given to the study of the mental capacities of non-human animals. It has developed out of comparative psychology, but has also been strongly influenced by the approach of ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology...

. However, cognitive psychology dealing with the intervening constructs of the mental presentations is not able to specify: "What are the non-material counterparts of material objects?" For example, "What is the counterpart of a chair in mental processes, and how do the non-material processes evolve in the mind that has no space?" Further, what are the very specific qualities of the mental causalities, in particular, when the causalities are processes? The plain statement about information processing awakes some questions. What information is dealt with, its contents, and form? Are there transformations? What are the nature of process causalities? How do subjective states of a person transmute into shared states, and the other way around? Finally, yet importantly, how is it that we who work with cognitive research are able to conceptualize the mental counter concepts to construct theories that have real importance in real every day life? Consequently, there is a lack of specific process concepts that lead to new developments, and create grand theories about the mind and its abysses.

The information processing approach to cognitive functioning is currently being questioned by new approaches in psychology, such as dynamical systems, and the embodiment

Embodied cognition

Philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists and artificial intelligence researchers who study embodied cognition and the embodied mind believe that the nature of the human mind is largely determined by the form of the human body. They argue that all aspects of cognition, such as ideas,...

 perspective.

Because of the use of computational metaphors and terminology, cognitive psychology was able to benefit greatly from the flourishing of research in artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 and other related areas in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, it developed as one of the significant aspects of the inter-disciplinary subject of cognitive science

Cognitive science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...

, which attempts to integrate a range of approaches in research on the mind and mental processes.

Major research areas

Perception

Perception

Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...

• General perception
  Perception
  Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
  
  
• Psychophysics
  Psychophysics
  Psychophysics quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they effect. Psychophysics has been described as "the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation" or, more completely, as "the analysis of perceptual...
  
  
• Attention
  Attention
  Attention is the cognitive process of paying attention to one aspect of the environment while ignoring others. Attention is one of the most intensely studied topics within psychology and cognitive neuroscience....
  
   and Filter theories (the ability to focus mental effort on specific stimuli whilst excluding other stimuli from consideration)
• Pattern recognition
  Pattern recognition
  In machine learning, pattern recognition is the assignment of some sort of output value to a given input value , according to some specific algorithm. An example of pattern recognition is classification, which attempts to assign each input value to one of a given set of classes...
  
   (the ability to correctly interpret ambiguous sensory information)
• Object recognition
• Time sensation (awareness and estimation of the passage of time)
• Form Perception
  Form perception
  Form perception is the ability of the human mind and senses to perceive the shapes of physical objects and outlines observed in the environment. It is a complex mental process studied in neurology.-Development:...
  
  

Categorization

Categorization

Categorization is the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Categorization implies that objects are grouped into categories, usually for some specific purpose. Ideally, a category illuminates a relationship between the subjects and objects of knowledge...

• Category induction and acquisition
  Concept learning
  Concept learning, also known as category learning, concept attainment, and concept formation, is largely based on the works of the cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner...
  
  
• Categorical judgement and classification
• Category representation and structure
• Similarity (psychology)
  Similarity (psychology)
  -Cognitive psychological approaches to similarity:Similarity refers to the psychological nearness or proximity of two mental representations. Research in cognitive psychology has taken a number of approaches to the concept of similarity...
  
  

Memory

Memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....

• Aging and memory
• Autobiographical memory
  Autobiographical memory
  Autobiographical memory is a memory system consisting of episodes recollected from an individual's life, based on a combination of episodic and semantic memory.-Formation:Conway and Pleydell-Pearce proposed that autobiographical...
  
  
• Constructive memory
• Emotion and memory
  Emotion and memory
  Emotion can have a powerful impact on memory. Numerous studies have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events, which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail than neutral events....
  
  
• Episodic memory
  Episodic memory
  Episodic memory is the memory of autobiographical events that can be explicitly stated. Semantic and episodic memory together make up the category of declarative memory, which is one of the two major divisions in memory...
  
  
• Eyewitness memory
  Eyewitness memory
  Eyewitness memory refers to episodic memories that occur most frequently to the witness of a crime or dramatic event. These witness testimonies are highly relied upon in the judicial system. However, their validity is sometimes questioned due to the many influences that may take part in creating...
  
  
• False memories
• Firelight memory
• Flashbulb memory
  Flashbulb memory
  A flashbulb memory is a highly detailed, exceptionally vivid 'snapshot' of the moment and circumstances in which a piece of surprising and consequential news was heard. Flashbulb memory is an appropriate name for the phenomenon in that it suggests surprise, an indiscriminate illumination, and...
  
  
• List of memory biases
• Long-term memory
  Long-term memory
  Long-term memory is memory in which associations among items are stored, as part of the theory of a dual-store memory model. According to the theory, long term memory differs structurally and functionally from working memory or short-term memory, which ostensibly stores items for only around 20–30...
  
  
• Semantic memory
  Semantic memory
  Semantic memory refers to the memory of meanings, understandings, and other concept-based knowledge unrelated to specific experiences. The conscious recollection of factual information and general knowledge about the world is generally thought to be independent of context and personal relevance...
  
  
• Short-term memory
  Short-term memory
  Short-term memory is the capacity for holding a small amount of information in mind in an active, readily available state for a short period of time. The duration of short-term memory is believed to be in the order of seconds. A commonly cited capacity is 7 ± 2 elements...
  
  
• Spaced repetition
  Spaced repetition
  Spaced repetition is a learning technique that incorporates increasing intervals of time between subsequent review of previously learned material; this exploits the psychological spacing effect...
  
  
• Source monitoring
  Source-monitoring error
  A source monitoring error is a type of memory error where a specific recollected experience is incorrectly determined to be the source of a memory. This error occurs when normal perceptual and reflective processes are disrupted, either by limited encoding of source information or by disruption to...
  
  
• Working memory
  Working memory
  Working memory has been defined as the system which actively holds information in the mind to do verbal and nonverbal tasks such as reasoning and comprehension, and to make it available for further information processing...
  
  
• Short-term memory
  Short-term memory
  Short-term memory is the capacity for holding a small amount of information in mind in an active, readily available state for a short period of time. The duration of short-term memory is believed to be in the order of seconds. A commonly cited capacity is 7 ± 2 elements...
  
  

Knowledge representation

Knowledge representation

Knowledge representation is an area of artificial intelligence research aimed at representing knowledge in symbols to facilitate inferencing from those knowledge elements, creating new elements of knowledge...

• Mental image
  Mental image
  A mental image is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of perceiving some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses...
  
  ry
• Propositional encoding
• Imagery versus proposition debate
• Dual-coding theories
  Dual-coding theory
  Dual-coding theory, a theory of cognition, was first advanced by Allan Paivio of the University of Western Ontario. The theory postulates that both visual and verbal information are processed differently and along distinct channels with the human mind creating separate representations for...
  
  
• Media psychology
  Media Psychology
  Media Psychology seeks an understanding of how people perceive, interpret, use, and respond to a media-rich world. In doing so, media psychologists can identify potential benefits and problems and promote the development of positive media ....
  
  

Numerical cognition

Numerical cognition

Numerical cognition is a subdiscipline of cognitive science that studies the cognitive, developmental and neural bases of numbers and mathematics. As with many cognitive science endeavors, this is a highly interdisciplinary topic, and includes researchers in cognitive psychology, developmental...

Language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

• Grammar
  Grammar
  In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
  
   and linguistics
  Linguistics
  Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
  
  
• Phonetics
  Phonetics
  Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...
  
   and phonology
  Phonology
  Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
  
  
• Language acquisition
  Language acquisition
  Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...
  
  

Thinking

• Choice
  Choice
  Choice consists of the mental process of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one of them. While a choice can be made between imagined options , often a choice is made between real options, and followed by the corresponding action...
  
   (see also: Choice theory
  Choice theory
  This article is about choice theory in psychology and education. For choice theory in economics, see rational choice theory.The term choice theory is the work of William Glasser, MD, author of the book so named, and is the culmination of some 50 years of theory and practice in psychology and...
  
  )
• Concept formation
• Decision making
  Decision making
  Decision making can be regarded as the mental processes resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios. Every decision making process produces a final choice. The output can be an action or an opinion of choice.- Overview :Human performance in decision terms...
  
  
• Judgment and decision making
• Logic
  Logic
  In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
  
  , formal and natural reasoning
  Psychology of reasoning
  The psychology of reasoning is the study of how people reason, often broadly defined as the process of drawing conclusions to inform how people solve problems and make decisions...
  
  
• Problem solving
  Problem solving
  Problem solving is a mental process and is part of the larger problem process that includes problem finding and problem shaping. Consideredthe most complex of all intellectual functions, problem solving has been defined as higher-order cognitive process that requires the modulation and control of...
  
  

Influential cognitive psychologists

• John R. Anderson
• Alan Baddeley
  Alan Baddeley
  Alan David Baddeley FRS, CBE is a British psychologist. He is professor of psychology at the University of York. He is known for his work on working memory, in particular for his multiple components model.-Education:...
  
  
• Albert Bandura
  Albert Bandura
  Albert Bandura is a psychologist and the David Starr Jordan Professor Emeritus of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford University...
  
  
• Frederic Bartlett
  Frederic Bartlett
  Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett FRS was a British psychologist and the first professor of experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge. He was one of the forerunners of cognitive psychology...
  
  
• Elizabeth Bates
  Elizabeth Bates
  Elizabeth Bates was a Professor of psychology and cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego...
  
  
• Donald Broadbent
  Donald Broadbent
  Donald Eric Broadbent FRS was an influential English experimental psychologist. His career and his research work bridged the gap between the pre-Second World War approach of Sir Frederic Bartlett and its wartime development into applied psychology, and what from the late 1960s became known as...
  
  
• Jerome Bruner
  Jerome Bruner
  Jerome Seymour Bruner is an American psychologist who has contributed to cognitive psychology and cognitive learning theory in educational psychology, as well as to history and to the general philosophy of education. Bruner is currently a senior research fellow at the New York University School...
  
  
• Gordon H. Bower
  Gordon H. Bower
  Gordon H. Bower is a cognitive psychologist studying human memory, language comprehension, emotion, and behavior modification. He received his Ph.D. in learning theory from Yale University in 1959. He currently holds the A. R. Lang Emeritus Professorship at Stanford University...
  
  
• Susan Carey
  Susan Carey
  Susan E. Carey is an American psychologist. She is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. She is an expert in language acquisition and is known for introducing the concept of fast mapping, whereby children learn the meanings of words after a single exposure. Carey received a B.A. from...
  
  
• Noam Chomsky
  Noam Chomsky
  Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
  
  
• Fergus Craik
• Antonio Damasio
  Antonio Damasio
  Antonio Damasio is David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, where he heads USC's Brain and Creativity Institute and Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute. Prior to taking up his posts at USC, in 2005, Damasio was M.W...
  
  
• Hermann Ebbinghaus
  Hermann Ebbinghaus
  Hermann Ebbinghaus was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory, and is known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. He was also the first person to describe the learning curve...
  
  
• William Estes
  William Estes
  William Estes may refer to:*William Kaye Estes , American scientist*William Lee Estes , U.S. federal judge...
  
  
• Michael Gazzaniga
  Michael Gazzaniga
  Michael S. Gazzaniga is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he heads the new SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind. He is one of the leading researchers in cognitive neuroscience, the study of the neural basis of mind...
  
  
• Dedre Gentner
  Dedre Gentner
  Dedre Gentner is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University. She is a prominent researcher in the study of analogical reasoning. Her work on structure-mapping theory was foundational for the development of the structure mapping engine by Ken Forbus...
  
  
• Keith Holyoak
  Keith Holyoak
  Keith James Holyoak is a researcher in cognitive psychology and cognitive science, working on human thinking and reasoning. Holyoak's work focuses on the role of analogy in thinking...
  
  

• Philip Johnson-Laird
  Philip Johnson-Laird
  Philip Johnson-Laird is a professor at Princeton University's Department of Psychology and author of several notable books on human cognition and the psychology of reasoning....
  
  
• Daniel Kahneman
  Daniel Kahneman
  Daniel Kahneman is an Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel laureate. He is notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology....
  
  
• Nancy Kanwisher
  Nancy Kanwisher
  Nancy Kanwisher is a Professor in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. She studies the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying human visual perception and cognition. Her work investigates object recognition, visual attention, and perceptual awareness, as well as response selection,...
  
  
• Eric Lenneberg
  Eric Lenneberg
  Eric Heinz Lenneberg was a linguist and neurologist who pioneered ideas on language acquisition and cognitive psychology, particularly in terms of the concept of innateness....
  
  
• Elizabeth Loftus
  Elizabeth Loftus
  Elizabeth F. Loftus is an American psychologist and expert on human memory. She has conducted extensive research on the misinformation effect and the nature of false memories. Loftus has been recognized throughout the world for her work, receiving numerous awards and honorary degrees...
  
  
• Brian MacWhinney
  Brian MacWhinney
  Brian James MacWhinney is a Professor of Psychology and Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University. He specializes in first and second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and the neurological bases of language, and he has written and edited several books and over 100 peer-reviewed...
  
  
• George Mandler
  George Mandler
  George Mandler is Distinguished Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego.Mandler was born in Vienna on 11 June 1924. He received his B.S. from New York University and his Ph. D. degree from Yale University in 1953. He served in the U.S. Army Military Intelligence...
  
  
• Jean Matter Mandler
  Jean Matter Mandler
  Jean Matter Mandler is Distinguished Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego and Visiting Professor at University College London....
  
  
• James McClelland
• George Armitage Miller
• Ken Nakayama
  Ken Nakayama
  Ken Nakayama is the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Harvard University. He is most recently known for his work on prosopagnosia, an inability to recognize faces....
  
  
• Ulrich Neisser
• Allen Newell
  Allen Newell
  Allen Newell was a researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, Tepper School of Business, and Department of Psychology...
  
  
• Stephen Palmer
  Stephen Palmer
  Stephen Palmer or Steve Palmer may refer to:* Stephen Palmer * Stephen Palmer of The High Strung* Steve Palmer, footballer...
  
  
• Allan Paivio
  Allan Paivio
  Allan Urho Paivio is an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario. He earned his Ph.D. from McGill University in 1959 and taught at the University of Western Ontario from 1963 until his retirement.-Early life:...
  
  
• Seymour Papert
  Seymour Papert
  Seymour Papert is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. He is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, as well as an inventor of the Logo programming language....
  
  
• Charles Sanders Peirce
• Jean Piaget
  Jean Piaget
  Jean Piaget was a French-speaking Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology"....
  
  
• Steven Pinker
  Steven Pinker
  Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
  
  

• Michael Posner
  Michael Posner (psychologist)
  Michael I. Posner is the editor of numerous cognitive and neuroscience compilations and is an eminent researcher in the field of attention...
  
  
• Henry L. Roediger III
  Henry L. Roediger III
  Henry L. "Roddy" Roediger III , is James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. He is a pioneer and an internationally-renowned expert in the study of human memory processes...
  
  
• Eleanor Rosch
  Eleanor Rosch
  Eleanor Rosch is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in cognitive psychology and primarily known for her work on categorization, in particular her prototype theory, which has profoundly influenced the field of cognitive psychology...
  
  
• David Rumelhart
  David Rumelhart
  David Everett Rumelhart was an American psychologist who made many contributions to the formal analysis of human cognition, working primarily within the frameworks of mathematical psychology, symbolic artificial intelligence, and parallel distributed processing...
  
  
• Eleanor Saffran
  Eleanor Saffran
  Eleanor M. Saffran was a researcher in the field of Cognitive Neuropsychology. Her interest in Neuropsychology began at the Baltimore City hospitals of Johns Hopkins University, where her research unit focussed on neurological patients with language or cognitive impairments. In papers published...
  
  
• Daniel Schacter
  Daniel Schacter
  Daniel Lawrence Schacter is an American psychologist. He is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. His research has focused on psychological and biological aspects of human memory and amnesia, with a particular emphasis on the distinction between conscious and nonconscious forms of...
  
  
• Roger Shepard
  Roger Shepard
  Roger Newland Shepard is a cognitive scientist and author of Toward a Universal Law of Generalization for Psychological Science. He is seen as a father of research on spatial relations....
  
  
• Herbert Simon
  Herbert Simon
  Herbert Alexander Simon was an American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist, and professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, public administration, economics,...
  
  
• Elizabeth Spelke
  Elizabeth Spelke
  Elizabeth Shilin Spelke is an American cognitive psychologist at the Department of Psychology of Harvard University and director of the Laboratory for Developmental Studies....
  
  
• George Sperling
  George Sperling
  George Sperling is an American cognitive psychologist. He is a Distinguished Professor of both Cognitive Science and Neurobiology & Behavior at the University of California, Irvine. Sperling documented the existence of iconic memory...
  
  
• Robert Sternberg
  Robert Sternberg
  Robert Jeffrey Sternberg , is an American psychologist and psychometrician and Provost at Oklahoma State University. He was formerly the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, IBM Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale University and the President of the American Psychological...
  
  
• Saul Sternberg
  Saul Sternberg
  Saul Sternberg is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology and former Paul C. Williams Term Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a pioneer in the field of cognitive psychology in the development of experimental techniques to study human information processing...
  
  
• Larry Squire
  Larry Squire
  Larry Squire is a Professor of Psychiatry, Neuroscience, and Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. He is a leading expert on the neurological bases of memory, which he investigates using animal models and human patients with amnesia. Squire received a B.A. from Oberlin College...
  
  
• Endel Tulving
  Endel Tulving
  Endel Tulving is an experimental psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist whose research on human memory has influenced generations of psychological scientists, neuroscientists, and clinicians...
  
  
• Anne Treisman
  Anne Treisman
  Anne Marie Treisman FRS is a psychologist currently at Princeton University's Department of Psychology. She researches visual attention, object perception, and memory. One of her most influential ideas is the feature integration theory of attention, first published with G. Gelade in 1980...
  
  
• Amos Tversky
  Amos Tversky
  Amos Nathan Tversky, was a cognitive and mathematical psychologist, a pioneer of cognitive science, a longtime collaborator of Daniel Kahneman, and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his early work concerned the foundations of measurement...
  
  
• Lev Vygotsky
  Lev Vygotsky
  Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist, the founder of cultural-historical psychology, and the leader of the Vygotsky Circle.-Biography:...
  
  

External Links

• Laboratory for Rational Decision Making