When people are thinking about how best to solve a mathematical problem, trying to remember the title of a book, planning their next holiday, retelling a joke they have heard or deciding which car to buy, they are involved in cognitive processing. Cognitive psychology concerns itself with the structure and functions of the mind. Cognitive psychologists are involved in finding out how the human mind comes to know things about the world and how it uses this knowledge.

The cognitive approach to understanding behaviour developed around the 1950s as a result of an increasing dissatisfaction with behaviourism, which was the dominant school of scientific psychology.  Behaviourists argued that only behaviour that could be observed should be studied. B. F. Skinner argued that the mind was a "black box" - that is, input enters and output exits the mind, but the processes that take place within the mind with regard to that input cannot be examined.

Cognitive psychologists argued that scientific psychology should include research on mental processes and how humans process information and create meaning. According to cognitive psychologists, the mind can be conceptualized as a set of mental processes that are carried out by the brain. These mental processes include perception, thinking, decision making, problem-solving, memory, language, and attention. The concept of cognition refers to such processes. Cognition is also related to one's personal experience. As we interact with the world around us, we create mental representations - that is, conceptual understandings of how the world works. Since people have different experiences, they have different mental representations - for example, of what is right or wrong, or about what boys and girls can and cannot do. This will influence the way they think about the world and behave. Cognitive psychologists believe that mental processes can, to some extent, be studied scientifically.

Assumptions of the cognitive approach

One assumption of the cognitive approach is that we are information processors. It was John von Neumann's book The Computer and the Brain that gave psychologists a metaphor and a set of terminology for explaining cognitive processes. Psychologists argue that we are not passive responders to the environment, but we actively organize and manipulate information that we receive. Cognitive psychologists see the mind as an information-processing machine using hardware (the brain) and software (mental representations).  The "input" is sensory information that comes to us through our interaction with the environment. This is referred to as bottom-up processing.  This information is then processed in the mind by top-down processing via pre-stored information in memory. Finally, there is some output in the form of behaviour.

A second assumption of the cognitive approach is that cognitive processes can be studied scientifically by scientific research methods. This is demonstrated in theories and models of cognitive processes that are continuously tested both in laboratories and in naturalistic settings. As our understanding of cognition has increased, models have been changed. Early models of cognition were overly simplistic, but they helped researchers to propose hypotheses and test different aspects of cognitive processes. 

Cognitive psychologists have to a large extent used the experimental method because it was assumed to be the most scientific method. However, the experimental tasks did not always resemble what people did in their daily lives. The cognitive psychologist Ulric Neisser was one of the first to argue that cognitive psychology had become too artificial and that researchers should not forget that cognition cannot be isolated from our everyday experience. This is why cognitive psychologists now study cognition in the laboratory as well as in a daily context.

A final assumption is that mental representations guide behaviour. The way that we process and organize our information determines how we behave.  We process new information through the filter of past experience and understanding. This then determines how we attend to, perceive and remember new information. This assumption plays a key role in understanding all types of behaviour.  For example, a student might keep procrastinating when he should be writing his extended essay.  This could be explained by his past experience.  Maybe his past experience has been a lot of feedback that he is a poor writer.  Because of this, he wants to avoid the task in order to avoid further failure.  Maybe his past experience has been that when he has done things last minute, he seems to get better grades.  Then his procrastination is seen as a "success strategy".

Cognitive psychologists also recognize that we are bombarded with information in our environment every day.  If we paid attention to all of the stimulation in our surroundings, we would be overwhelmed.  As a result, Fiske and Taylor (1991) argue that we are cognitive misers - that is, we often make the choice not to actively process information because we want to save time and effort. In other words, we use mental short-cuts to make decisions because of three factors:  knowledge, motivation, and economy. To make this clearer you could use the following mantra:

• I don't know.
• I don't care.
• I don't have time.

For example, we all know that a healthy diet is important.  However, when it comes to grocery shopping, too many shoppers do not read the labels of the food that they buy.  Why not?  First, there is the problem of knowledge. Even if you read the labels on many foods, would you be able to really understand the ingredients?  Second, many people don't have the motivation to do so.  If they are young and healthy, then the fact that they like the taste of something is enough to justify buying it.  They don't care about the levels of fat or salt in the product.  However, once the motivation changes, let's say because of a new health problem, then they take the time to read the labels.  Finally, there is the question of economy.  Shoppers may make the decision to buy what they have also bought because they don't have time to spend hours on the Internet doing research or even reading labels in the grocery store.  It could also be that they don't have the financial resources to afford better quality food, so they rationalize the decision to keep buying unhealthy options.

 Teacher only box

Failing to invest money in a retirement plan.

I don't know what is the best accounts or plans for saving money for retirement; I am too young to worry about this - the world could change a lot between now and when I retire!; Investment means reading up on the options, maybe taking a course, maybe finding a financial consultant - I don't have the time right now to do that!

The way that people vote in presidential elections.

I don't know much about the candidates (so I base my decision on past voting practice or the looks of the candidate); I don't think that who wins the election will make any difference.  All politicians are the same; voting means that I may have to take time off from work - or I will have to do some research to figure out how to get an absentee ballot and then go to the post office to send it off.  It is really all too much bother...

Why it is difficult to get people to exercise.

I don't know what type of exercise is the best for me and if I should be exercising (because of some health issue). I also don't know which gyms offer the best program and how much I should pay for a gym. I also don't know any running routes or bike routes in my neighborhood; I am "fit enough" for my age.  When I look around me I see that a lot of people are in much worse physical shape than I am.  This is not my priority; I don't have the time to dedicate to working out three times a week. By the time I finish work, go to the gym, and come home to make dinner, it will already be around 7:30 pm.  I don't have the time to do this.

Checking for understanding

Schema theory