Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology that focuses on the study of mental processes such as perception, attention, memory, and language. Cognitive psychologists are interested in how people acquire, process, and store information, and how they use that information to make decisions, solve problems, and interact with the world around them.
The central assumption of cognitive psychology is that mental processes can be studied scientifically and understood in terms of computational and representational models. This means that cognitive psychologists use a variety of methods, including experiments, brain imaging, and computer simulations, to study mental processes and try to understand how they work.
One of the key insights of cognitive psychology is that people are not passive receivers of information, but rather they actively process and interpret the information they receive. For example, when we see an object, we don’t simply record the raw sensory data, but rather we interpret that data based on our prior knowledge, expectations, and goals. This active processing allows us to make sense of the world and interact with it effectively, but it can also lead to biases and errors in our judgments and decisions.
Cognitive psychology has had a major impact on our understanding of mental processes and has contributed to the development of many important theories and concepts, such as the information processing model of cognition, the concept of working memory, and the idea of cognitive heuristics. It has also influenced the development of many practical applications, such as artificial intelligence, educational psychology, and clinical psychology. Overall, cognitive psychology is a vital and rapidly-growing field that continues to advance our understanding of the human mind.
There are many different case studies that have been published in the literature of cognitive psychology. Here are a few examples:
The case of H.M.: H.M. was a patient who suffered from severe epilepsy, and in order to control his seizures, doctors performed a bilateral hippocampus removal, which left him unable to form new explicit memories. This case provided important insights into the role of the hippocampus in memory and helped to confirm the idea of multiple memory systems.
The case of K.C.: K.C. was a patient who suffered from a condition known as prosopagnosia, or face blindness, which made it impossible for him to recognize faces. This case provided important insights into the way that the brain processes and recognizes faces and helped to confirm the idea of modularity in cognition.
The case of S.B.: S.B. was a patient who suffered from a condition known as color agnosia, which made it impossible for him to recognize colors. This case provided important insights into the way that the brain processes and recognizes colors and helped to confirm the idea of specialized cognitive modules.
The case of K.F.: K.F. was a patient who suffered from a condition known as aphantasia, which made it impossible for him to form mental images. This case provided important insights into the role of mental imagery in cognition and helped to confirm the idea of mental imagery as a distinct cognitive process.
These case studies illustrate the ways in which cognitive psychology can provide important insights into the workings of the human mind and help us understand the underlying mechanisms of mental processes. By studying these cases, researchers can learn more about the way the brain functions and develop new theories and treatments for cognitive disorders.



