Free Term Paper on Cognitive Psychology
Toward a Cognitive Psychology of Science: Recent Research and Its Implications
In the article written by Ryan Tweney, he is contemplating the
idea of whether there is a cognitive significance to scientific thinking. Many
different studies are mentioned to try and answer this contemplation. One study
on discovering the complexity of the universe found that subjects did the best
if they confirmed evidence supporting their hypothesis early, and disconfirmed
evidence later; this explains the persistence of many scientists. Another study
found that the subjects could be divided into “experimenters” or “theorists.”
Yet another study showed that cognitive science and history influence each
other. This finding should not at all be surprising. To answer his initial
contemplation of whether scientific thinking is cognitively significant, Tweney
says yes and no. On one hand, cognitive science is a special domain in which
many fields intersect, but everyday thinking is also core to scientific
thinking. We can now hopefully expect more opportunities for improving science
education, with psychology holding its role of supporting science.
In my
child development class this semester, we learned a lot about the psychologist
Jean Piaget and his work with children. Interestingly enough, Tweney mentions
Piaget for his ideas of the “child as scientist.” The theories of Piaget
actually fit right in with Tweney’s ideas of cognitive thought and science.
Piaget was a student of biology, psychology and philosophy and he used those
fields to construct his idea of “symbolic thought,” which is the coordination of
thought and action by children as they construct knowledge from the world and
people. This actually falls under the ideas of genetic epistemology, which is
the experimental science of the acquisition of knowledge.
A result from one
of the studies mentioned struck my attention. It was found that it was better
for scientists to ignore disconfirming evidence early in their tasks, and
disconfirm their hypothesis later only if they had a lot of confirmatory
evidence. HOW is this strategy better??!!
If a scientist is on the wrong
track with an experiment, they should DEFINITELY pay attention to disconfirming
evidence early on in an experiment. Perseverance in the face of evidence to the
contrary is usually not a good idea.