ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book attempts to define cognitive psychology as a distinctive branch of psychology, comparable with social psychology, physiological psychology and abnormal psychology. Potentially the cognitive approach can be applied to any area of human activity. It is a generally accepted view that cognitive psychology should be equated with an information processing model of human functioning. The book discusses the central role of knowledge representations in long-term memory, working outwards to demonstrate their influence on interpretations of inputs and on the planning and execution of actions. Despite the formal distinction between scientific theories and the experiments designed to test them, psychological theories of memory, thinking and language often stem from preconceived ideas about human capabilities. The book concentrates on a representative selection of experiments, describing them in sufficient detail to get over the flavour of cognitive research.
