Major subdisciplines in psychology

Some of the major subdisciplines that have become well established within psychology are explored in this section.

Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive psychology is the science of how we think, remember, and learn. It is concerned with internal mental processes, such as receiving, collecting, and retrieving information. This subdiscipline developed in the 1950's as a criticism of behaviourism which was the dominant perspective in psychology. This shift towards understanding the internal processes involved in behaviour became known as the 'cognitive revolution'.

Some of the key concepts, issues and debates within cognitive psychology include:

Attention: This is the ability to process important information in the environment, whilst avoiding distractions from extraneous, competing stimuli. Attention can be sustained (concentration), alternating (multitasking), and selective (focussed), and is limited in capacity and duration.
Memory: The encoding, storage, and recall of information. Cognitive psychologists study short-term, long-term and working memory, which is an active process allowing information to be held during the performance of a task.
Language: This is the communication system which transmits information between individuals. Cognitive psychology is interested in the acquisition, production, comprehension and components of language.
Problem solving: The process of mental exploration of possible actions to achieve a goal. This involves different strategies such as restructuring the representation of a problem, which leads to insight. Problem solving can be limited by cognitive bias, such as functional fixedness.

Methodologies and Applications

Much of what is known about internal mental processes in cognitive psychology is a result of observing brain activity using technologies, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and experiments conducted under controlled conditions. You can browse and try out resources for cognitive psychology experiments on the PsyToolkit website.

Cognitive psychology is very versatile due to the large number of professions that benefit from knowing how the brain processes information. Practical applications of cognitive psychology involve understanding and treating issues related to human, mental processes, including Alzheimer's disease, speech issues, memory loss and sensory or perception difficulties (APA, 2022). Perhaps the most rapidly growing application of cognitive psychology is in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Cognitive psychology views the mind as a computer, which processes input and produces output. But to what extent can a computer function like a human brain? There is a long-standing debate about this because if AI can perform tasks more efficiently than humans, ultimately, they could replace many, or indeed most human workforces. However, the brain–computer metaphor could be limited by the extent to which AI can make human-like judgements, such as unpredictable decisions and moral reasoning (Dillion et al., 2023).

Activity: Cognitive psychology experiments

In this activity, you can take part in two short, fun experiments used by cognitive psychologists to understand attention and problem solving.

This activity should take no longer than 10 minutes; you do not need any feedback.

Experiment 1: This video demonstrates a fun experiment in selective attention that you can take part in by counting the number of times people in white t-shirts pass the ball.

You can read more about this experiment on "The invisible gorilla" website.

Cognitive Psychology

Methodologies and Applications

Activity: Cognitive psychology experiments

Suggested wider reading

Suggested wider reading