Cognition as Explained by Different Schools of Thought

Cognitive psychology is one of the more recent additions to psychological research, developed as a separate area since the late 1950s and early 1960s. Neisser coined the term 'cognitive psychology' m his book Cognitive Psychology m 1965. According to him cognition refers to all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used. This way of conceiving mental processes has pervaded psychology m such a way that it is not uncommon to find cognitive concepts with in psychoanalytical, behavioural, humanistic, personality and developmental psychology Analyzing psychoanalytical perspective minutely, one can find traces of cognition m it. Freud, Jung, Adler and Sullivan talked of memory and retrieval ability m terms of unconscious and conscious experiences, visual perception s were mentioned with relation to its distortions (hallucinations) and creativity and imagination was considered to be an important aspects office association and creative self They also talked about reasoning m dream interpretations and analytical deductions. Behaviouristic theorists like Thorndike, Pavlov, Skinner, Dollard & Miller, Bandura also had a flavor of cognitionmt heir thoughts. Bandura talked about cognitive rehearsal. They all spoke about visual perception m observational and vicarious learn which is based on perceiving others. Perceived selfefiicacy, perception of CS and UCS were also important models of behaviorist. Bandura talked about reasoning with symbolic coding and cognitive organization before responding. Humanistic theories were also not devoid of the concept of cognition. Maslow mentioned about creativity. According to him, constructive creativity occurs with openness. He also addressed the notion of B cognition, form of thinking common during peak experiences and D cognition that is routine form of thinking. Maslow's self esteem comes from evaluating and reasoning. Piaget m developmental perspective brought out development of different aspects of cognition like language, perception, reasoning and creativity. He demonstrates Muller Lyer illusion and object permanence, which is related to memory. He talked about systematic reasoning and logical thought processes. He stated that childis able to classify things in this concrete operational stage. All this had an essence of cognition. Assessment of cognition m today's scenario should take cognizance of all the schools of thought to have comprehensive cognitive profile of the individual.