Who decided to conduct the first research in the field of human cognition, and what results did the bold experiments of innovators bring? Behaviorism and psychoanalysis have not been able to explain human behavior without interpreting processes in the mind. Gradually, interest led humanity to the emergence of a new direction, which affected not only cybernetics, biology, neurophysiology, but also linguistics.

The path of the formation of a new science

Cognitive psychology originated in the middle of the 20th century, in an era of rapid development of technology and computers. Scientists are faced with the need to justify the interaction of man and modern technologies from a psychological perspective. The main interest of the new field was the study of cognitive, that is, human cognitive abilities. Perception was considered as a fundamental act on which the basis of the human psyche is built. All sorts of experiments and studies have been carried out in order to explore the possible limits of human abilities in relation to processing and storing information in their memory.

It is worth noting that psychologists Fritz Heider (the theory of cognitive balance) and Leon Festinger (the theory of cognitive dissonance) are among the founders of science. But a noticeable progress was facilitated by a meeting in 1956 in Institute of Technology Massachusetts, where representatives of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, specialists in the field of information theories gathered. This meeting is still considered a real revolution in cognitive psychology, where questions of the formation of language and memory under the influence of computer technology were raised.

Cognitive psychology got its name from the researchers Jerome Bruner (The Study of Cognitive Development, 1967) and Ulrik Neisser (Cognition and Reality, 1976), who published their work, telling the public about the subject of their research. Subsequently, the Center for Cognitive Psychology was organized, where the processes of cognition, thinking, aspects of developmental psychology, etc. were studied.

By choosing the term "cognitive ..", we have opposed ourselves to behaviorism. Initially, we thought about the use of the concept of "mentality". But "mental psychology" sounded too ridiculous, and "psychology of common sense" would send us to the field of anthropological research, "folk psychology" is similar to Wundt's social psychology. As a result, we settled on the term "cognitive psychology".

George Miller, co-founder of the Center for Cognitive Psychology

One of the famous psychologists working in this field was the Swiss Jean Piaget. The Ph.D. of the University of Neuchâtel devoted himself for a long time to his passion for psychoanalysis, which was fashionable at that time. Working with children, Piaget conducted a number of interesting experiments. Through tests, he established the chain of logical operations and the integrity of the overall structure of the child's thinking.

Piaget talked about the changes in the human intellect and its possible adaptation to the environment with each stage of development. He deduced four cognitive stages:

• Sensorimotor - external manipulation and the emergence of work with internal symbols (0-2 years).
• Preoperative - building associative links and transductive reasoning (transitional processing of information from one image to another), centralization of consciousness on catchy objects, attention to the external state (2-7 years).
• Stage of specific operations - a system of integrated actions is formed, logical operations with classes are established, their hierarchy is built, operations occur only with specific objects of study (7-11 years).
• The stage of formal operations is the transformation of consciousness into a hypothetical-deductive one, the construction of mental sentences and reasoning, the systematic selection of variables, their combination (11-15 years).

In 1925, Piaget, after a series of significant experiments, came to the discovery of children's egocentrism. His theory states that children up to a certain age are focused only on themselves and their inner experiences. Often you can see a picture of how a small child or teenager, being next to a parent, another child, or even alone, talks about his experiences or simply voices his thoughts, without any need for feedback.

Unusual experiment

With the gradual decline of the dominance of behavioral concepts in 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University decides to take a bold step. The purpose of the study: to study the behavioral characteristics of a person in cruel conditions (limited freedom of action and will, pressure on moral principles). The recruitment of volunteers was carried out for about a month, not everyone was ready to calmly go to torture and obey any instructions. A total of twenty-four people were selected. In order to maintain the purity of the experiment, the candidates were divided into two groups. The guards entered the first half, and the so-called prisoners entered the other half. The laboratory assistant and assistant psychologist acted as the main guards, Zimbardo himself became the manager of this research prison.

The test subjects were "arrested" at their homes under false pretenses and under the direction of the Palo Alto police. The prisoners were transported to a fenced area, processed, assigned a number and placed in compartments. From the first minutes scientist started fix the mental reactions of the participants in the experiment and observe their behavior.

Initially, the experiment was designed for two weeks, but ended after only six days due to the fact that everything quickly got out of control. The “prisoners” were abused, humiliated and even physically abused. The "guards" quickly got used to the role and began to show sadistic inclinations, depriving the prisoners of sleep, forcing them to keep their hands in the air for a long time, etc. Many "prisoners" already on the third day of the experiment had a strong emotional disorder and feeling overwhelmed.

A significant result of the experiment can be considered a book by F. Zimbardo called "The Lucifer Effect" (2007), in which he described the effect of cognitive dissonance (a conflict of emotional reactions in a person's mind) and a person's obedience to a clear personal authority. Special attention was given to the influence of public opinion and the degree of state support, which can justify or reject the views of the individual.

This was the most striking experiment in the field of cognitive psychology. For ethical reasons, no one else made similar attempts to repeat the experiment.

Further development of interest

In the subsequent years of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, researchers increasingly delved into the field of human-computer interaction. A theory has gained wide popularity that depicts the psyche as a kind of center that can perceive a finite number of signals emanating from environment, and then processed by the human brain. The human cognitive system was considered like a computer system, with input and output devices and places for storing information.

Psychologist George Miller conducted a number of interesting tests to determine the human ability to remember. So, as a result of the experiment, Miller found out that we can remember no more than 7-9 characters at a time. It can be nine numbers, eight letters, or five or six simple words.

New phase of research

American neurophysiologist, physician and psychologist Carl Pribram, collaborating with well-known researcher in behavioral psychology Carl Lashley, developed a holographic model of the functioning of the human psyche, which led to a unique discovery. Memory is not concentrated in separate parts of the brain, but is distributed over all departments. This discovery revolutionized cognitive psychology, since it was previously believed that it was the middle lobes of the brain that were responsible for the perception and storage of information. The theory and results of Pribram's experiments are not fully recognized, but are indirectly confirmed by most subsequent experiments.

Interaction with other sciences

It is now believed that cognitive psychology and neuroscience are developing in parallel with each other. This is due to the fact that both sciences study similar areas of the human brain. The difference lies in the focus of psychology - on the study of the reactions of the human psyche to external stimuli, and neurobiology - on the study of the reactions of brain neurons. At the same time, many psychologists, such as S. Gerber and A. Newell, do not consider the results of research in the field of neurobiology applicable to human psychology, because the answers to the questions of one science are almost impossible to adapt to another.

Conclusion

Nearly fifty years have passed since the Stanford prison experiment, but the psychological community is still discussing its results and citing the decisive act of the researcher as an example. During the experiment, the really frightening properties of the human psyche were revealed. People, chosen at random and showing no signs of violence, were able to become sophisticated sadists in just a day. Guided by the justification of his own actions and succumbing to his inner nature, a person allowed an extreme degree of anger. And these are clearly not the defense mechanisms that Sigmund Freud described.

Cognitive psychology has made its contribution to science and, despite the frightening findings, still continues to arouse the interest of researchers. Perhaps very soon this relatively new area psychology will give humanity the opportunity to look deeper into the origins of human behavior and learn its fundamental laws.

Literature sources:

• 1. Druzhinin V.N. Ontology of Psychic Reality// Series-14. General psychology. - 1995. - No. 13. – S. 67-485.
• 2. Cognitive psychology. John Anderson. - St. Petersburg. Series-2. - 2014. - S. 24-45.
• 3. Cognitive psychology. R. Solso. - St. Petersburg. - Series No. 4 - 2014. - S. 234-342.
• 4. Jean Piaget. "Favorites". Ed. Obukhova S.V. // Moscow University Publishing House.
• 5. Introduction to general psychology. Abdurakhmanov R.A. - Moscow-Voronezh. pp. 345-454.

Editor: Chekardina Elizaveta Yurievna

Psychology is one of the youngest sciences, which is not always given due attention. However, its rapid development last years just impossible. But until now, scientists do not consider it a single science, because at the moment it has many directions that put forward their own theories of the organization and perception of mental reality by a person. This prevents representatives of different areas from sharing knowledge and enriching each other with it.

The cognitive of this trend is actively working on its development, developing a methodology) is the direction that is more interesting than others scientific world. And this is not at all surprising, because it reveals a person as a thinking being and constantly analyzing his activity. This is the basis of the entire cognitive-behavioral psychology, which originated in the middle of the last century and is still in the stage of active development. From the article, readers will have the opportunity to get to know this relatively new trend in science. And also learn about the main representatives of cognitive psychology, its provisions and tasks.

General characteristics of the new direction

Cognitive psychology (representatives of this direction have done a lot to popularize it and set the main tasks) today occupies a rather large section in psychology as a science. The very name of this movement was formed from Latin word denoting "knowledge". After all, it is to him that representatives of cognitive psychology most often refer.

The conclusions that were made by this scientific movement later became widely used in other disciplines. First of all, of course, psychological. They are regularly addressed by social psychology, educational psychology and psycholinguistics.

The main difference between this direction and others is the consideration of the human psyche as a certain set of schemes that are formed in the process of knowing the world. Followers and representatives of cognitive psychology, unlike their predecessors, pay great attention to cognitive processes. After all, they provide the necessary experience and the opportunity to analyze the situation in order to make the right decision. In the future, the same algorithm of actions will be applied in similar situations. However, under changing conditions, it will also change. That is, human behavior is determined not so much by the inclinations and influences of the external environment embedded in it, but by mental processes and abilities.

Cognitive psychology and its representatives (W. Neisser, for example) believe that all knowledge acquired by a person during his lifetime is transformed into certain schemes. They are stored in certain memory locations and retrieved from there if necessary. We can say that all the activity of the individual takes place precisely within these frameworks. But you can not assume that they are static. Cognitive activity occurs constantly, which means that new schemes appear regularly and old ones are updated. Representatives of cognitive psychology do not consider attention as something isolated. It is studied in the aggregate of all cognitive processes, such as thinking, memory, perception, and so on.

The history of the scientific direction

It can be said that cognitive psychology owes its origin to American scientists. It was they who in the forties of the last century showed a serious interest in human consciousness.

Over time, this interest has generated a large number of research work, experiments and new terms. Gradually, the concept of knowledge firmly enters psychology. It begins to act as a determinant not only of human consciousness, but also of almost all of its actions. Of course, it was not yet cognitive psychology. Neisser laid the foundation for serious research in this direction, which later began to overlap with the work of other scientists. They also put in the first place the knowledge of a person about himself and the world around him, which allows him to create new behavioral patterns and acquire certain skills.

It is interesting that initially this direction was difficult to consider homogeneous. This trend has continued to this day, because cognitive psychology is not unified school. Rather, it can be described as a wide range of tasks, united by a common terminology and study methodology. With their help, certain phenomena of psychology are described and explained.

Cognitive psychology: main representatives

Many consider this branch of psychology to be unique, because it practically does not have a founder who inspired others. We can say that different scientists created scientific works at approximately the same time, united by a single idea. In the future, they became the basis for a new direction.

Therefore, among the representatives of cognitivism, it is necessary to single out several names that have made a serious contribution to the development of this trend. For example, George Miller and Jerome Bruner organized a specialized science Center, who took up the study of problems and the formulation of tasks of a new direction. These include memory, thinking, language and other cognitive processes.

Seven years after the start of research, W. Neisser published a book in which he spoke in detail about the new direction in psychology and gave its theoretical justification.

Simon also made a great contribution to cognitive psychology in the middle of the last century. Its representatives, I would like to note, often began to engage in their research quite by accident. They were led to cognitivism by their interest in certain aspects of human consciousness. This is exactly what happened with He worked on the creation of the theory of managerial decisions. He was very interested in decision-making processes and organizational behavior. Despite the fact that his scientific work was aimed at supporting the scientific theory of management, it is also very actively used by representatives of cognitive psychology.

Key Ideas

In order to more accurately imagine what is within the scope of interests of this trend in psychology, it is necessary to identify its main ideas:

• cognitive processes. These traditionally include thinking, memory, speech, imagination, and so on. In addition, cognitive psychology also considers the emotional sphere of personality development, because without it it is impossible to create behavioral patterns. Intelligence also takes part in this process, and cognitivism is very interested in the study of artificial intelligence.
• The study of cognitive processes from the point of view of a computing device. Psychologists draw a parallel between human cognitive processes and modern computers. The fact is that an electronic device collects, processes, analyzes and stores information in much the same way as the human psyche.
• The third idea is the theory of staged information processing. Each person works with the received data in several stages, most of this process happens unconsciously.
• Elucidation of the capacity of the human psyche. Scientists believe that it has a certain limit. That's just what it depends on and how different it is for people, at the moment it is not clear. Therefore, psychologists are trying to find mechanisms that in the future will allow the most efficient processing and storage of incoming information.
• The fifth idea is to encode all processed data. Cognitive psychology broadcasts the theory that any information receives a special code in the human psyche and is sent for storage to a certain cell.
• One of the ideas of a new direction in psychology is the need to conduct research only with the help of chronometric means. In cognitivism, the time that a person spends looking for a solution to a given problem is considered important.

The ideas listed above seem very simple only at first glance, but in reality they are the basis on which a complex chain of scientific research and research is built.

Cognitivism: Provisions

The main provisions of cognitive psychology are quite simple and understandable even to a person far from science. It is noteworthy that the main goal of this direction is to find explanations of human behavior in terms of cognitive processes. Scientists do not focus on inherent character traits, but on experience and knowledge acquired as a result of conscious activity.

The main provisions of cognitive psychology can be represented as the following list:

• study of the sensory process of cognition of the world;
• study of the process of assignment by people of certain qualities and characteristics to other individuals;
• the study of memory processes and the creation of a certain picture of the world;
• understanding the unconscious perception of events and so on.

We decided not to list all the provisions of this scientific trend, but only highlighted the main ones. But even after studying them, it becomes clear that cognitivism studies the processes of cognition from different angles.

Methodology

Almost any study in cognitive psychology must first of all include a laboratory experiment. In this case, a number of installations are distinguished, most often they consist of three components:

• all data is extracted from mental formations;
• behavior is a consequence of knowledge and experience;
• the need to consider behavior as something holistic and not to dissect it into its constituent elements.

Features of cognitive psychology

Interestingly, scientists have managed to identify a special scheme that controls the behavior of an individual in certain situations. Cognitivists believe that impressions are primary in human cognition of the surrounding world. It is sensory perception that launches processes that further transform knowledge and impressions into a kind of chain. It regulates human behavior, including social.

Moreover, these processes are in constant motion. The fact is that a person strives for inner harmony. But in connection with the acquisition of new experience and knowledge, a person begins to experience a certain disharmony. Therefore, he seeks to streamline the system and gain even more knowledge.

Cognitive dissonance: definition

The desire of the individual for inner harmony and the discomfort experienced at this moment in psychology is called " the cognitive dissonance". Everyone experiences it at different times in their lives.

It arises as a result of contradictions between knowledge about the situation and reality, or knowledge and actions of the individual. At the same time, the cognitive picture of the world is disturbed, and the same discomfort arises, pushing a person to a series of actions in order to re-enter a state of harmony with himself.

Causes of dissonance

As you already understood, it is impossible to avoid this state. In addition, there are a lot of reasons for its appearance:

• logical inconsistency;
• inconsistencies in behavior with samples taken as a standard;
• contradiction of the situation to past experience;
• the occurrence of disturbances in the habitual pattern of cognitive behavior.

Any item on the list can seriously affect the behavior of a person who begins to actively look for ways out of an unpleasant state for him. At the same time, he considers several possible algorithms for solving the problem.

Getting out of cognitive dissonance

According to scientists, there are quite a few exit options. But most often a person chooses the following:

• changing the behavioral scheme to a new one;
• change of certain elements of the cognitive scheme;
• expansion of the scheme and the inclusion of new elements in it.

Cognitive approach: a brief description

Cognitive scientists are very interested in conscious human behavior. This is what becomes the main subject of research. scientific direction. But this is done from a certain point of view, in order to reveal the main tasks set by psychology as best as possible.

The cognitive approach allows us to understand exactly how a person perceives, deciphers and encodes information extracted from the outside world. So with the help of this approach, the process of comparison and analysis of the obtained data is revealed. In the future, they help make decisions and create behavioral patterns.

Psychology of personality constructors

It is impossible to consider cognitivism without the theory of personality constructors. It is the basis for the study of human behavior in different situations. To describe it briefly, we can say that people brought up and living in different conditions cannot perceive and evaluate reality in the same way. Therefore, when they get into equal conditions, they often perceive the situation in completely different ways and make different decisions.

This proves that the person acts as a researcher who relies only on his knowledge, and this allows him to find the right solution. In addition, the individual can calculate subsequent events arising from decision. Thus, certain schemes are formed, called personality constructors. If they justify themselves, then they continue to be used in identical situations in the future.

Albert Bandura's theory

Even before the advent of cognitive psychology, the scientist developed a theory that now forms the basis of the scientific direction. The theory is based on the fact that basic knowledge about the surrounding world arises in the process of observation.

Bandura argued in his writings that, first of all, the social environment gives the individual an incentive for growth. Knowledge is drawn from it and the first chains are built, which in the future will act as a regulator of behavior.

At the same time, thanks to observations, a person can predict how his actions will affect other people. This allows you to regulate yourself and change the model of behavior depending on a particular situation.

In this theory, knowledge and the ability to self-regulate are predominant in relation to intuition and inherent by nature instincts. All of the above is in perfect harmony with the main provisions of cognitivism. Therefore, Albert Bandura himself is often ranked among the founders of a new trend in psychology.

Cognitive psychology is a very interesting scientific trend that allows you to better understand a person and the motives that prompt him to act in accordance with certain rules.

Cognitive psychology covers the entire spectrum of human cognitive processes: attention, consciousness, behavior, way of thinking, and many others. The main emphasis is on studying how people acquire, analyze, store information and, most importantly, use the acquired knowledge. This direction is the foundation upon which all social Sciences, since it is cognitive psychology that teaches how to change a person's behavior with the help of his knowledge, get rid of fears and anxieties, and also direct thoughts in a positive direction.

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What is cognitive psychology?

Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology that deals with the study of cognitive processes that occur in the human mind. At the present stage, cognitive or cognitive processes include memory, attention, perception, pattern recognition, speech, imagination - everything that is associated with the acquisition, structuring and use of knowledge.

Initially, science was born as a kind of protest against behaviorism, since the latter did not include some mental functions in the subject of study, for example, attention or the use of language for conversation.

W. Neisser, J. Kelly, J. Rotter, A. Bandura are considered to be the founders of this trend. In their studies, they singled out the main problem of the organization of knowledge in the memory of the subject and argued that all mental processes "are determined by conceptual schemes in the same way as the organization of the organism by the genotype."

The main goal is to understand how processes can be decomposed into simple steps.

Basic ideas of cognitivism and scientific theories

The main ideas of this direction include:

• cognitive processes, which are the foundation of cognitive psychology; these include the emotional sphere of personality development and intellect, with special emphasis on the study of artificial intelligence;
• drawing a parallel between the cognitive processes of the human brain and modern computer; it is argued that the electronic device works with information, analyzes, stores and uses it in almost the same way as a person;
• the theory of step-by-step information processing: all the knowledge gained sequentially goes through several stages of analysis, some of them unconsciously;
• calculation of the limit of the capacity of the human psyche: this limit exists, but what it depends on and what different people have, scientists do not yet know; it is important to determine the mechanisms that will allow the most efficient processing and storage of all knowledge;
• encoding of processed data: there is a theory that any information receives a code and is stored in a certain cell of human memory;
• chronometric data: the time spent searching for a solution to the problem is considered important.



Fritz Heider's structural balance theory

People incline towards an ordered view of the world, they build the so-called "naive psychology", which strives for an internal balance of perceived objects. Imbalance, on the other hand, causes tension aimed at restoring balance - a characteristic of a person's perception of relations between objects. A simplified scheme of this theory: a perceiving subject - another perceiving subject - an object perceived by two subjects. The main task is to identify relationships between elements that are stable or, conversely, cause discomfort.



The Theodore Newcomb Theory of Communicative Acts

Newcomb expands Haider's position on the interpersonal system of relations. That is, when two people positively relate to each other and build any relationship to the third (person or object), they have similar orientations relative to this third.

A balanced state will be observed only in the following cases:

• all three relationships are positive;
• one is positive and two are negative.

If two relationships are positive and one is negative, an imbalance arises.

Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance

Like other representatives, Festinger develops the theory of internal balance, believing that a person perceives internal consistency as a desired state. Again, the emergence of contradictions in knowledge or in actions leads to cognitive dissonance, perceived as an uncomfortable state. Dissonance "calls" for a change in behavior to achieve internal balance.

Cognitive dissonance can occur:

• from logical inconsistency;
• from the discrepancy between cognitive elements and cultural patterns;
• from the inconsistency of this element with a broad system of views;
• their inconsistencies of the element with past experience.

In the same theory, several options for getting out of dissonance are proposed:

• change in the behavioral components of the cognitive structure;
• change in cognitive elements related to the environment;
• expansion of the cognitive structure so that it includes previously absent elements.

The theory of congruence by Ch. Osgood and P. Tannenbaum

Accordingly, the restoration of balance can be achieved by changing the sign of the subject's relationship to the other elements of the triad or the intensity and sign of the relationship at the same time.

Basic aspects and methods of cognitive psychology

The main goal of this scientific trend is to explain human behavior based on the cognitive processes of the individual. The study of the foundations of perception, memory processes, ways of constructing a cognitive picture of the world - all this is possible through the use of a laboratory experiment. The main ones for scientists are:

• mental formations as a source of data;
• the fact that cognition determines behavior;
• acceptance of behavior as a holistic phenomenon.

The priority and determining fact is that the cognitive structure of a person should not be in a disharmonic state. And if this is the case, then a person seeks to direct maximum efforts to change this state up to achieving complete harmony and balance.

Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychotherapy

Cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy explores the individual's perception of circumstances and the form of his thinking, and also contributes to the development of a more realistic view of what is happening. As a result of the formation of an adequate perception of newly occurring events, appropriate behavior arises. Most often, cognitive psychotherapy works in circumstances that require new forms of behavior and thinking, is aimed at finding solutions to problem situations.

Psychologists use different methods of psychotherapy. These include:

• struggle with negative thoughts;
• alternative ways of perceiving the problem;
• re-experiencing situations that occurred in childhood;
• turning on the imagination.

Practically, it was found that cognitive transformation directly depends on the degree of emotional experience of the individual.

For the most part, therapy counteracts the individual's tendency to negatively interpret events or himself. But it is aimed at working with what the patient "tells himself." That is, one of the foundations is the patient's recognition of his own thoughts, during which it is possible to change them, thereby preventing possible adverse consequences.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is based on this same method. It is aimed at correcting the patient's unconscious, automatically arising conclusions. In the course of work, he independently and with the doctor find out the circumstances under which "automatic thoughts" arise and determine how they affect behavior. The psychotherapist makes up individual program, which includes tasks that require performance in places or circumstances that cause anxiety in a person. It is these tasks that allow the formation of new skills and behavior. In the course of classes, the patient ceases to be categorical, he looks at everyday situations differently. Emotional status also changes.

Cognitive Behavioral Exercises Used in Therapy

To correct the automatic, sometimes negative conclusions of the personality, psychotherapists use a certain set of exercises. Each patient requires an individual approach, and the complex can change directly during treatment.

To get rid of anxiety

When this feeling arises, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

1. 1. Am I spoiling my present by constantly focusing on the future?
2. 2. Why does anxiety arise: because I exaggerate the problem or because I delay making a decision?
3. 3. Is there anything I can do right now to stop worrying?

Sometimes it pays to try to experience anxiety in the "here and now" despite the fact that it's not that easy. But it is necessary to pay attention to the surroundings and inner world, describe your own emotions and feelings, fully focus on yourself and your body.

To overcome fear

There are several techniques for gradually getting rid of the feeling of fear, which is most often caused by irrational ideas:

• laugh at your panic and fear;
• tell someone about shameful feelings and show your frustration from emotional disturbances;
• identify personal irrational ideas about what is due, which are the root cause of fear ("I should not ...");
• replace unreasonable ideas about what should be rational;
• constantly observe yourself, admit that fear arises because of small things.

To increase creativity

If the problem is complex, it is worth using the model of the so-called " brainstorming".In this case, all ideas must sequentially go through three stages:

1. 1. Generation of ideas. Quickly write down absolutely everything that comes to mind regarding the problem, without fear of denial, failure, inappropriate idea.
2. 2. Critically analyze all written ideas, evaluate on a five-point scale.
3. 3. Select the best option, if necessary, you can combine several ideas into one.

Exercise "swing" for a stressful situation

Two slides are required. One shows the problem in dark color, and the second shows the desired situation in the form of a large picture painted in bright colors that evokes pleasant emotions. When a visually negative image appears in the mind, with one stroke, you need to change it to the desired one.

This exercise should be repeated regularly in order to consolidate a positive result in the displacement of a problematic negative image.

Emergency psychological self-help

It is realized through a mental dialogue with a mirror. Sequencing:

1. 1. Take a comfortable position and close your eyes.
2. 2. Imagine yourself as if from the outside, as a reflection in the mirror (the emotions experienced at this moment are often reflected in the mental image of oneself: posture, facial expression).
3. 3. Transfer all attention to bodily sensations, highlight manifestations of physical discomfort that are associated with emotional.
4. 4. Mentally address the interlocutor in the mirror, pronounce the words that you would like to hear in real life- praise, compliment, approval - they could console, cheer up. These words should be filled with the same emotions that accompany them in real life.
5. 5. Switch your attention back to bodily sensations associated with emotions.

If the image "in the mirror" reacted to the mental dialogue, then the manifestations of negative emotions should subside.

You can repeat the exercise until all manifestations of emotional discomfort disappear.

" Main directions

Cognitive psychology (cognitivism)

Cognitive psychology is a branch of modern psychological science that studies cognitive processes. It originates from the writings of Wolfgang Köhler (1917) on the great apes and Jean Piaget's observations on the development of children's intelligence (1927).

As an independent industry, it took shape in the 1950s and early 1960s, when D. Miller, together with D. Bruner, created the first Center for Cognitive Research at Harvard University in 1960.

Famous representatives of cognitivism are also R. Atkinson, L. Festinger, D. Kelly and others.

The main prerequisites for its occurrence:

• the inability of behaviorism and psychoanalysis to explain human behavior without referring to the elements of consciousness;
• development of computing systems and cybernetics;
• development of modern linguistics.

The most famous achievements of cognitive psychology:

• causal attribution theory (the theory of how people explain the behavior of others);
• the theory of personal constructs by D. Kelly (claims that each event is perceived and interpreted by different people in different ways, since each individual is endowed with unique system constructs or schemes).

The word "cognitive" comes from the Latin verb coghoscere, to know.

Cognition is a collective designation of purposeful efforts made to find, recognize, recognize, understand, distinguish, classify, discuss objects, and also process them, that is, change them by mental operations(from concretization to abstraction).

Psychologists who have united around this approach argue that a person is not a machine that blindly and mechanically responds to stimuli (internal factors or events in the outside world). On the contrary, much more is available to the human mind: to analyze information about reality, to make comparisons, to make decisions, to solve problems that arise before it every minute.

Thus, cognitivism is based on the interpretation of a person as a being who understands, analyzes, because he is in the world of information that needs to be understood, evaluated, used.

In other words, cognitive psychology differs from behavioral theories " stimulus - response the fact that it does not imply a unilinear direction of the causality of behavior, but is guided by the theory of self-regulation and self-organization of the systems under study. From here, other methodological paradigms of cognitivism are distinguished, aimed at complex systemic connections in the process of cognition.

The main objects of study are such cognitive processes as perception, memory, thinking, attention, imagination and speech. Pattern recognition, artificial and human intelligence are also areas of interest for cognitive psychology.

In system psychological knowledge special place occupies such a branch as cognitive psychology.

This direction can be called fairly modern with interesting methods and theories. Cognitive psychology - what is it?

What is cognitive science? Learn about it from ours.

concept

Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that deals with study of cognitive processes that take place in the mind of the individual.

Its essence lies in the study of man as a kind of computer, which is based on thinking and reason.

He perceives various signals coming from the outside world, perceives and converts them into information, processes, analyzes and organizes it.

The subject of cognitive psychology is the study of such elements as imagination, consciousness, attention, memory, sensation, as well as other thought processes.

History of occurrence

This direction was born not so long ago, in the middle of the 20th century. Researchers became interested cognitive abilities individual and how they functioned.

Perception was singled out as a fundamental act of the foundations of the human psyche. Scientists conducted various experiments to identify the limits of the abilities of the mind, attention, memory.

Psychologists are the founders of cognitive psychology. F. Haider and L. Festinger.

But further development direction was helped by a meeting held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956.

It addressed the issues of the functioning of memory and the formation of language. A little later it was created Center for Cognitive Psychology who studied the processes of thinking and cognition.

What is cognitive psychology, where did it come from and where is it going? Find out from the video:

Sections

The structure of modern cognitive-behavioral psychology includes the following sections:

Basic provisions and methods

As the main position of cognitive psychology, one can single out protest against the ideas of behaviorism, the statement that a person's behavior comes from the thinking abilities of the individual.

The main concepts of this direction are the processes of cognitivism, which include imagination, memory, thinking. They form certain conceptual schemes with the help of which behavior is built.

The main method of cognitive psychology is the replacement of a personal construct.

In other words, this comparative analysis how different individuals perceive information coming from the external environment and subsequently interpret it. This method consists of the following steps:

There are other methods, the choice of which should be based on the type of mental behavior of a person. For example, methods of purposeful repetition, decentration, role reversal or emotion substitution.

What ideas is being explored and considered?

As noted earlier, the objects of study in cognitive psychology are various cognitive processes. She also looks at emotional, developmental psychology, and pattern recognition.

The main idea is to study the cognitive processes of the human psyche by analogy with the functions of a computing device.

In other words, computer performs various operations for receiving, processing, storing and issuing information.

Cognitivists believe that the human mind works on a similar concept and cognitive ones work in a similar way.

Another idea is the gradual processing of information in the human psyche. That is, all stimuli coming from outside go through a certain chain of transformations.

There is still idea of ​​a limiting volume information processing systems. From this follows the main direction of activity of cognitive psychologists, which consists in the search for natural and most effective methods of working with information that enters the psyche of an individual.

Notable Representatives

The emergence of this direction was facilitated by the activity W. Neisser, who outlined its main points, and J. Miller, who is the founder of the Center for Cognitive Psychology.

Also among the most famous representatives of cognitive psychology are the following: J. Sperling, J. Bruner, R. Solso, S. Herbert, K. Pribram, A. Newell.

They made a significant contribution to the study of the patterns of cognitive processes and cognition in general.

Attention Models

Attention problems are often studied in the field of cognitive psychology.

It was the representatives of this industry that developed the most interesting models of attention. The main ones include:

• selective models of attention;
• attention as a perceptual action;
• attention as a mental effort.

selective

Selective Attention Patterns Associated With Names D. Broadbent, C. Cherry.

The main idea of ​​this theory is that the structure of information processing has a certain bottleneck or filter, a funnel.

The main subject of discussion of selective attention models is to identify the location of this filter (at what stage of information processing) and What are the principles for selecting information?, that is, its selection.

perceptual action

Considered attention as a perceptual action W. Neisser who criticized the selective model.

He believed that attention is the focus of the main flow of information processing activity on a limited part of the available input. That is, he defined it in as an active choice process.

mental effort

Attention as a mental effort is also called the capacitive model. D. Kahneman.

He noted the existence of a limitation in the ability of the individual to perform mental work.

By D. Kahneman's attention he understood a certain internal effort A that requires resources to run. Thus, the act of attention depends to a greater extent not on the desires of the individual, but on the objective complexity of the task assigned to him.

This video is about metaphors and models of attention in cognitive psychology:

Cognitivism in social psychology: pros and cons

It occupies a significant place in the field of social psychology.

Its main principle is to consider the social behavior of the individual based on cognitive processes person.

The direction of study lies in the interaction between various cognitive structures, the existence of correspondences and inconsistencies between them.

According to cognitive fit theories, the main motivating factor in human behavior is the need to form a balance and correspondence of the cognitive structures of the individual.

All of these theories try to explain the social behavior of the individual through the prism of cognitive abilities.

Their disadvantages include the fact that the idea that all actions and deeds are performed to form a connected picture of the world in the mind of an individual makes the theories methodologically vulnerable, since this formation is not connected with the real world.

Despite this, cognitivism in social psychology has become quite widespread. This can be explained by the fact that he emphasizes the special role of cognitive formations in explaining the social behavior of an individual.

It is necessary to note a certain inconsistency of this position and a complex circle of contradictions in which the cognitivist approach falls.

However, attention to the issues of rational behavior of the individual, the role of thinking and reason for explaining the world around us make this approach quite significant in the field of social psychology.

So, cognitive psychology occupies an important place in the system of psychological sciences.

Its main points often used in other directions eg social psychology, educational psychology, personality psychology.

Briefly about the cognitive direction in social psychology: