Week 5: Chapter 7 Introduction

Much of this chapter explores Cognitive Psychology.  It examines what Bruner describes as the human taste for knowledge and the human hunger for information.  More than that, claims Bruner, humans are forever going beyond the information given.  

Some of the key concepts from leading cognitive psychologists:

Bruner: Concept formation, Categories and systems, Going beyond information given, Personal narrative

Piaget: Adaptation, Assimilation, Accommodation, Play, Imitation, and Intelligence, Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete, and Formal developmental Stages

Vygotsky (Education based theory): The zone of proximal growth, Scaffolding

There are a number of important difference between cognitive psychology and behavioralism.  First, Cognitive Psychology is mainly interested in higher mental functions rather than observable behavior.  The most important of these higher mental functions have to do with perception, concept formation, memory, language, thinking, problem solving, and decision making.  Secondly, the shift to cognitivism also saw a shift from an emphasis on animal research to a renewed emphasis on human research.  Topics such as language learning, reading, strategies in concept attainment, and the growth of logic cannot easily be investigated with rats and pigeons.  Third, the principal aim of  behavioristic theories has typically been to determine the relationships that exist between behavior and its antecedents as well as its consequences.  Lastly, cognitive theorists tend to be less ambitious in scope than were behavioristic theories such as Skinner or Hulls.  That is, most cognitive theorists aren't trying to build systematic and inclusive theories to explain all human learning and behavior.  The emphasis in the last several decades has been on intensive research in specific areas rather than on the construction of general systems.