Chapter 1
Introduction to Cognitive Psychology
 

The word ‘cognition’ is derived from the Latin word cognoscere, meaning “to know” or “to come to know”. Thus, cognition includes the activities and processes concerned with the acquisition, storage, retrieval and processing of knowledge. In other words, it might include the processes that help us to perceive, attend, remember, think, categorize, reason, decide, and so on.

Cognitive psychology, as the name suggests, is that branch of psychology that deals with cognitive mental processes. Sternberg (1999) defined Cognitive psychology as that which deals with how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information.” In 2005, Solso gave another definition of Cognitive psychology as the study of processes underlying mental events. In general, Cognitive psychology can thus be defines as that branch of psychology that is concerned with how people acquire, store, transform, use and communicate language.