Cognitive psychology is the study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information. Cognitive psychology was shaped by several milestones but four of its most significant transitions that I will focus on are: Functionalism, Behaviorism, Psychobiology, and Computer Engineering (including Artificial Intelligence (AI)).

Functionalism: Functionalism was a popular approach to the first school of psychology, Structuralism, that sought to understand that structure of the mind and its perceptions by breaking those down into elemental pieces. The perception of a flower, for instance, was studied by analyzing the constituent colors, geometric forms, size relationship, and so forth.

Functionalism, on the other hand, insisted that it was the process of the mind - the way the mind operated these thoughts and perceptions - that was more important than studying the structure of these thoughts. Functionalism, in other words, sought to understand why the mind acted the way it did rather...

The writings of William James (a pioneer of pragmatism) on cognitive concepts such as attention, consciousness, and perception are still used by cognitive psychologists today. John Dewy was another major influence on the discipline, primarily remembered for his pragmatic approach to thinking and education.
3. Behaviorism: Behaviorism developed as an extension of Associationism (i.e., a school of psychology that examined how events or ideas can become mentally associated with one another to result in learning).

Behaviorism propounded that learning ensues from the environment. Skeptical of introspection, and other mental acts, behaviorism insisted that all human conduit is a form of stimulus-response, in other words that it is the environment (or environmental stimulus) that shapes human…