| Abstract: |
Subject Psychological theories in cognitive science. Goal To identify
theoretical and metatheoretical approaches to describing the field of
cognitive psychology. Relevance During the 65 years of its existence,
cognitive psychology has passed the path of development from a newly emerging
interdisciplinary area of research to an independent discipline that
incorporates various theoretical and methodological traditions.
Experimentation as the main method of research, the diversity of research
groups working on similar problems, and the use of mathematical modeling and
behavioral dependent variables have resulted in the highest level of
reproducibility of results obtained in cognitive psychology. Given the
success, rapid development, and broad applied and public interest in the field
of cognitive psychology, attempts to make sense of the metatheoretical aspects
of cognitive research and especially changes in the way theories are
constructed and empirically tested are of particular interest for further
research both in cognitive psychology and in other psychological fields. Such
metatheoretical work is needed: to identify the types of existing cognitive
theories that are used in research; to clarify criteria for analyzing current
empirical research, as well as for their interpretation; to indicate the
changes that have occurred in theoretical work in the field over the past
30-40 years as a separate task. Scientific novelty The paper will review and
analyze the main theoretical and metatheoretical approaches to describing the
field of cognitive psychology. There are no works that comprehensively analyze
the state of psychological theories in cognitive science. Methods Literature
analysis. Results Over the past 40 years, research and theories have focused
on narrow areas of cognitive science. Theories describing the solution to one
problem are limited: they do not accumulate knowledge for the entire field,
they do not address higher level processes. Conclusions In cognitive
psychology, there is a high degree of fragmentation in theories. One possible
solution to the theoretical contradictions is the way of modeling cognitive
processes. Another solution is the development of a Unified Theory of
Cognition (UTC). Recommendations This study is intended to answer several
important theoretical and methodological questions related to the construction
and change of theories in cognitive psychology. One of the key problems in the
construction and development of cognitive theories is the lack of a clear
description of how such theories have changed, what properties they have
gained and what properties they have lost. Also, there is a lack of a
classification of cognitive psychology theories, the creation of which is one
of the results of our research series. |
| Keywords: |
Cognitive science, cognitive psychology, human cognition, task and problem-solving psychology, cognitive theory, cognitive model, theories of different levels, unified theory of cognition |