Cognitive Definition

. Cognitive Psychology definition is the processes that include thinking, knowing, remembering, judging, and problem solving. Cognitive Psychology is referring to the mental processes that are involved in gaining knowledge while using comprehension to solve a problem. These are functions within the brain that enforces things such as language, imagination, perception, and planning. There are four major milestones within psychology includes Descartes, Piaget, Wundt, and Watson. There are also a couple more who contributed to the field of cognitive Psychology such as Freud, B.F. Skinner, John Mill, and William James. I chose to discuss in my paper Jean Piaget, John B. Watson and William Wundt and Albert Bandura and their contribution in cognitive psychology.

Piaget had been the very first too study cognitive development as a science. His contributions involved the theory of cognitive child development, the details of his observational studies on children and their cognitive abilities. Piaget's made an assumption that children are more advanced thinkers more so than adults. Piaget also showed that children think in completely different ways than adults do. Piaget declares that, children are born with the basic brain functions and structures which is genetically inherited by his or her parents and is well evolved. Piaget's Theory is different from other psychologists in different ways. His idea had been to understand children, rather than adults. He focuses more on the development of children rather than focusing on the learning aspects, he does not address just learning, he focused most of his attention on the behaviors of children. His purpose had not been done discretely but in stages of development, or in the number of behaviors, concepts, and ideas the goal of Piaget's theory is to explain the behavior of how a child acts, and how he or she develops into an individual who can reason in different situations.

Piaget's, cognitive development had been one of progressive reorganization of the mental processes as a result of environmental experience as well as hereditary. Children have an understanding of the world around them, but they also acknowledge a behavior is learned from experience but there will always be discrepancies between what they already know and what they will learn from their environment.

(Piaget, J. (1932). The moral judgment of the child, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).

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Albert Bandura believes that behavior is learned from the environment, for example what we see as children is learned whether good or bad by our parents, peers, and teachers. As we watch these behaviors we learn to mimic them, we also learn from television, and video games. Reinforcements that were used in Bandura's findings had been from the reinforcement theory of behavior.

First, a child is more likely to initiate a person's behavior that is by either a parent or another adult who is either male or female most generally a child will follow the parent they are most close to. This example could be a male child who copies everything his father does whether it is good or bad. Such as talking with foul language, or fighting. A male child will follow in their father's footsteps same as a female child will follow her mother's footsteps.

Secondly, the people that are around the child, while they are showing a these behaviors he or she will imitate a behavior which will involve reinforcement or punishment. If a child imitates a behavior that involves a reward that child will continue to display that behavior, If the parent notices their child cleaning his or her room, the child will then be rewarded for doing something good which will entice the child to continue this behavior. Another example would be a child who had done something wrong this would call for a punishment; such as a little brother hit his younger sister with a toy the punishment would be taking his toys away. This child will see that when he does something bad he will lose his toys or he will be sent to his room, this tells the child to behave. A child understands that whether he or she is good or bad their behavior will have consequences whether it will be reinforced or a punishment will be given.

McLeod, S. A. (2011). Albert Bandura | Social Learning Theory.