Abstract
Enterprises such as cognitive psychology, neomentalism, problem-solving research, information-system modeling, and artificial intelligence have gained much prominence since 1950; collectively, they amount to a new psychological school, cognitivism. Each of these enterprises uses the word cognitive in a special (nondictionary) sense, which indicates its positive contributions to the study of so-called cognitive phenomena (perception, attention, memory, and thinking) as well as opposition to (a) the peripheralism and associationism of Hullian behavior theory and (b) the antitheoretical stance of Skin-nerian neobehaviorism. A close and critical examination indicates that, apart from considerable contribution of the cognitivist movement to developing empirical principles and technological applications, there is no substantial or compelling evidence that cognitivistic constructs have advanced our theoretical understanding of psychological phenomena. Further, by remaining parochial, cognitivists have failed to promote the formulation of a comprehensive framework that would integrate their work with the main body of established knowledge in the fields of learning, motivation, response production, and neuropsychological processes. There is, thus, little reason to believe that cognitive psychology or cognitive science will incorporate or become the psychology of the future, or will continue its ascendancy. Behind the recent bandwagon excitement of cognitivism, work toward a general psychological theory, incorporating gains made by all psychological enterprises, has continued, and this will probably remain the most promising approach to understanding mind.
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Bindra, D. (1984). Cognition. In: Royce, J.R., Mos, L.P. (eds) Annals of Theoretical Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-6450-8_1
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