The art of thinking · 1 · Foundations
Cognitive psychology
Also known as: Psychology of cognition
German: Kognitionspsychologie
Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that studies how people perceive, attend to, remember, understand language, think, decide and solve problems, by modeling the mental processes that lie between what a person perceives and what the person does.
- Cognitive psychology
- Foundations
In one sentence
Cognitive psychology studies perception, attention, memory, language, thinking and problem solving as mental processes (Neisser, 1967).
Example
An experiment measures how long readers need to find a value in two versions of a table. The researchers explain the difference with a model of visual search and working memory, not only with the observed behavior.
What the research shows
Ulric Neisser's book Cognitive Psychology (1967) gave the field its name and defined cognition as all the processes by which sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered and used. The field grew out of the shift away from behaviorism, which had restricted psychology to observable stimuli and responses. George A. Miller (2003) dated this “cognitive revolution” to the mid-1950s, when information theory, linguistics, computer science and experimental psychology began to describe the mind in terms of representations and processes.
Its core topics are perception and attention, memory (working memory and long-term memory), language and reading comprehension, concepts and categories, reasoning, judgment and decision making, and problem solving. Its methods are mainly laboratory experiments (reaction times, error rates, recall), computational models and, increasingly, neuroimaging in cognitive neuroscience. Related fields are cognitive science, human factors and ergonomics, and educational psychology.
Evidence status
Cognitive psychology is an established empirical discipline with textbooks, journals and professional bodies. Its findings differ greatly in strength: some effects (for example the limits of attention or the advantage of recognition over recall) have been replicated for decades, others are disputed or bound to laboratory tasks. Since the 2010s the replication debate in psychology has led to large multi-lab replication projects; individual entries in this glossary name their evidence status. Popular claims such as fixed “learning styles” or a universal “seven plus or minus two” rule are not supported by the research they are often attributed to.
How it applies
This glossary holds the theory: what research shows about how people take in, keep, understand and act on information. What technical communication does with it — design principles, practices and evaluation methods, each with the theory it rests on and its limits — is in the glossary “Applied cognitive psychology for information use”. The existing entry Mental model covers the cognitive-science sense of mental models. No cognitive principle replaces a risk assessment or required safety information.
External references
How to read this pool
Entries, context cards and transitional topics
The art of thinking explains ways of thinking — where a method comes from, what it asks of you and how it was adapted later. You meet four kinds of content here, each with its own job:
- Glossary entry
- Defines one concept or method of thinking: its origin, an example and how it relates to neighboring ideas. “X vs. Y” sections set two methods side by side.
- Context card of the art of thinking
- A short, self-contained answer to one question about a way of thinking — its lineage, its steps, its limits. These cards are listed on The art of thinking only.
- Transitional topicBridges both pools
- A context card that bridges both pools: it shows how a way of thinking was adapted into documentation, analysis or quality practice. It sits with the reference context cards and is marked as transitional wherever it appears.
- Reference entry or context card
- Belongs to the Glossary & Norms Space on regulation, norms and engineering. Entries here link to one only where a method is also an established tool of documentation or quality work, such as the five whys or a user’s mental model.