The Cognitive School of Psychology

Significant People: Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky

Cognitive psychology is the study of internal mental processes—all of the workings inside your brain, including perception, thinking, memory, attention, language, problem-solving, and learning. Learning about how people think and process information helps researchers and psychologists understand the human brain and assist people with psychological difficulties.

Cognitive psychology appeared during the 1950s, partly as a critical response to Behaviorism. Critics of Behaviorism felt that it failed to account for internal conditions and feelings of the individual. Researchers became more interested in the internal processes that affect behavior instead of just the behavior itself. This shift is often referred to as the “Cognitive Revolution” in psychology. 

I got my masters degree at Northern Illinois University in 1957 and my doctorate at NIU in 1966. I became a member of the Perceptualist Chapter of ASCD while I was there. I was immersed in the cognitive world of education. My coaching and teaching world was changed from teacher-based to learner-based. Individualized learning replaced whole-class teaching.

Cognitive psychology explored a wide variety of topics including Attention, Making decisions, Memory, Perception, and Problem-Solving. Students changed from Passive to Active learners. Recall here the child’s discipline/behavior beliefs and actions recommended by Rudolf Dreikurs that we explored recently.

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development proposed that children progress through universal stages — developing distinct ways of understanding the world through 1) sensory experiences, 2) symbolic thought, 3) logical reasoning, and 4) abstract thinking as they mature. Lev Vygotsky, a Belarus-born psychologist created a theory, known as Sociocultural Theory, which still defines our understanding of cognitive development. Building on the belief that children are intrinsically motivated to learn, he asserted that interactions with more competent peers and elders was a primary method of knowledge acquisition. The interactions adults share with children bolster the knowledge those children can acquire. Simply stated Cognitive Psychology focuses on how we think, learn, perceive, and solve problems. Good Luck and avoid Cognitive Dissonance.

“In play, a child is always above his average age, above his daily behavior; in play, it is as though he were a head taller than himself.” — Lev Vygotsky