Evolution of Cognitive

Introduction

Cognitive Psychology (CP) is one of the most dynamic fields into his discipline of psychology. What is it about? Why is it of great interest to practitioners and to researchers as well as to other disciplines? Why are studies and theories in this particular discipline of applicable and relevant in business studies? In organizational studies? In general, counseling practices as well as specialized treatment of a host of disorders? How the discipline did first came about? These questions are the ones that have come to guide this short essay that provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of the discipline. Naturally, because the topic and the history of the discipline is broad, information discussed here is limited to the most relevant. Touching the core ideas however mean an insight into the history and relevance of the discipline in current practice and the social sciences.

On Interdisciplinary Perspective

When we talk of interdisciplinary sciences, we are referring to the convergence and amalgamation and utilization of innovation, ideas, knowledge and discoveries coming from a host of disciplines into a research effort or scientific investigation. across the broad field of the sciences, one element unite researchers and thinkers the scientific approach, which is a process of investigating, knowing and coming to learn of the world (by uncovering and finding an explanation for phenomenon). The scientific process allows for knowledge gained to be easily validated, to be subject to rigorous testing over and over again ensuring that the results are valid and reliable. This leads to the establishment of certain theories (the case in the social sciences) and 'scientific laws' (which is the case in the natural sciences) that explain the how's and why's of certain phenomenon experienced in reality (i.e. the establishment of positivist theory to study the social scientific subject matter, the establishment of Newton's law of gravity). But the fact that all scientific studies utilize the scientific approach means that there are similarities as well as applicability's of discovered and emergent knowledge from related disciplines to other disciplines that can utilize certain theories and innovations to develop their studies and scientific investigations and approaches further. Consider for example the collaboration between chemists and archaeologists studying the chemical composition and implications of the presence of chemicals found in an ancient Roman jar from Pompeii the specializations of these fields have come together to investigate a phenomenon making it an interdisciplinary undertaking.

So what then is the purpose of an interdisciplinary perspective? The word perspective here denotes viewing it prescribes the need to think about the world using multi-perspectives, not being confined to just one. No one singular discipline can explain the realities and phenomenon of the social world. Disciplines would always fall short if made to meet such task. Teachers have long recognized that learning about the world requires viewing it from a host of perspectives. This then is what we refer to, what educators refer to as the interdisciplinary perspective. "The National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE 1995) explain, educational experiences are more authentic and of greater value to students when the curricula reflects real life, which is multi-faceted rather than being compartmentalized into neat subject-matter packages". The world is complex and requires man to use all his facilities, all the knowledge that he has come to discover so far in order to comprehend and understand it. Understanding the world and all its phenomenon is a task so complex that it cannot altogether happen in our time. Somehow however, humans are imbued with the facility to know and to investigate. So, while we might not know everything, we can still come to discover a little at a time. By using all that we can, as teachers have come to discover, students find tasks of learning and comprehending far easier, and their studies more compelling. Why is this important for Cognitive Psychology (CP)?

Learning is the central theme in this discipline being that it is the most important element of the human condition - we know, we are sentient, we learn, we feel, we are aware.

On Cognitive Psychology

If learning is the most central of human conditions, then CP is all about investigating the way we learn, the way we know, the way we reason and the way we feel. Additionally, it is also an investigation of the why, why do we feel? Why do we think? Why do we reason? Why do we remember? Above all, why and how do we understand? CP comes from this particular interest among psychologists to investigate cognition and perception, as well as memory, feels, thought and awareness. Cognition stems from the Latin root word cognoscere which means 'to know'. How exactly do we know and then utilize knowledge/information? Why then is it highly interdisciplinary? The lessons of memory, of individual wits and human condition are not a unique interest to psychologists alone. In the field known as cognitive sciences, we have such disciplines as AI (artificial intelligence), linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, computer science, linguistics, physics, chemistry, biology and the neurosciences influencing it. Basically, innovations and investigations from these sciences that can affect the field of cognitive sciences contribute towards its interdisciplinary nature and the exchange and adaptation of important elements, theories, innovations and practices of certain ideas affect the research and practice of CP. This condition had always been true since its inception as CP was born as a 'perspective', specifically Ulrich Neisser's (1967) point of view. He saw cognition as the manner in which human being ascertain what is before them by processing information essentially he saw human beings as creatures capable of relating, analyzing and measuring information thus computing elements that make up an observed reality in a manner that makes sense. This is best exemplified in the way he defined cognition (Nessier, 1967), The word cognition submits to each and every one process

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