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Cognitive psychology is a part of psychology that studies cognitive processes of human consciousness. Researches in this area are usually connected to the issues of memory, attention, feelings, providing information, logical thinking, imagination and ability to make decisions. The cognitive process obeys the epistemological principle and has a waveform in a nonlinear medium.
Many ideas of cognitive psychology form the basis of modern psycholinguistics. This trend arose under the influence of information approach. Cognitive psychology is largely based on the analogy between the transformation of information into the computing device and the implementation of cognitive processes in humans. Many structural components (blocks) of cognitive and executive processes, especially memory were distinguished (R. Atkinson).
The computer version, where the psyche is represented as a device with a fixed capacity to transform the signals, became the most widespread. Here the main role is devoted to an internal cognitive patterns and activity of the organism in the process of cognition.
Let’s remember the action executed by a computer: receiving, manipulating symbols, preserving the memory elements of information, extracting them from memory, etc. that can give us an assume that cognitive processes are real, that they can be explored and even understood (U. Neisser). In this case, human cognitive system is seen as the system, which has a device to input, store and display information according to its capacity (Kellogg).
In order to better understand under what psychological theories cognitive psychology was based and what influenced its development, we need to look through the previous theories that have appeared in the early 20th century. Charles Darwin’s theory argued the impossibility of separation mental phenomena from the environment, from the person’s adaptive program as a biological organism. These conditions were at the beginnings of appearing new theories such as behaviorism and Gestalt psychology, which aimed to explain the phenomena of the psyche (Medin).
Cognitive psychology (cognitio (latin) – knowledge, cognition) appeared in the U.S. in the 50s of the 20th century. Before the advent of cognitive psychology in its present form, psychologists have attempted to deal with the problems of cognition.

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Many years (and even centuries) ago, there have been the first attempts to study thinking, not only with a help of philosophical methods but also scientific ones. Modern cognitive psychology works in the following research areas: perception, pattern recognition, attention, memory, imagination, speech, psychology of development, thinking and problem solving, human intelligence and artificial intelligence.
It is believed that such philosophers as Descartes, Hume and Kant have played a certain role in the development of modern cognitive psychology. Cartesian idea of psychical structure resulted in a research method for studying psyche itself. Empiricist Hume tried to establish the laws of association of ideas and developed a classification of mental processes. According to Kant, mind is the structure of experience – facts that fill the structure. He distinguished three types of mental structures in the study of cognition: measurement, categories and schemes. Of course, it would be wrong to assume that the pillars of cognitive psychology are only these philosophers.
Everyone knows that the tree does not grow without soil, the same is with science, some prior knowledge leads to the emergence of new, more in-depth knowledge. Works in the field of Gestalt psychology were such a soil for the development of cognitive psychology. The works emphasized the role of perception in learning. And work by Lewin and E. Tolman showed the dependence of the person’s behavior on his subjective representations of reality – the so-called cognitive maps (Goldstein).
New scientific trend was directed against the behavioral one, which excepted mental component out of the analysis of behavior, ignoring the cognitive processes and cognitive development. Based on the idea that human body is a system, which looks for and processes information, a new approach has developed. It is based on the notion that effect the information in different ways, like re-encode it into another form, select certain information for further processing or exclude information from the system as unnecessary.
Other important events for the development of cognitive psychology are:
September 11, 1956 a special group of the Institute of electrical and electronic engineers engaged in information theory gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is believed that this meeting marked the beginning of the cognitive revolution in psychology. Among those present were George Miller, Herbert Simon, Allen Newell, Noam Chomsky, David Greene and John Suites.
On the 22nd of August, 1966 a book «Studies in Cognitive Growth» by Jerome Bruner was published. 11 co-authors joined to write this book at the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard University (Eysenck).
We can also name a few scientists, who contributed a lot into the development of cognitive psychology. They are R. Atkinson, D. Brunner, D. Norman, F. Hader, U. Nayser, G. Simon, and others. Now cognitive psychology firmly stands on its methodological platform, due to the rapid development of computer technologies and the emergence of new theoretical research in the field of psychology.

Works citied

Eysenck M.W., Keane M.T. Cognitive Psychology: A Student’s Handbook 5th Edition. 2005. Print.
Goldstein E.B. Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience. 2007. Print.
Kellogg R.T. Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology. 2007. Print.
Medin D., Ross B.H., Markman A.B. Cognitive Psychology. 2004. Print.