The term ‘cognitive psychology’ is nowadays associated mainly with the approach to psychology which became predominant after the Second world war, focusing on mental processes instead of behavior. But from the very early days of psychology as a science, psychologists were interested in how our mind works.
Although behaviorism, and its successor, cognitive psychology, dominated American psychology during much of the 20th century, German psychologists explored how the mind works. Hermann Ebbinghaus and Wilhelm Wundt were among the pioneers of experimental psychology, and later, gestalt psychology provided a comprehensive explanation for mental processes that countered behaviorists’ emphasis on conditioning. Cognitive science, which emerged in the 1950s as an outgrowth of advances in computing and information sciences, formalized cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology continues to evolve today, and remains active in fields such as artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, and philosophy with its so-called ‘cognitive revolution’.
