Course Overview

Reflective Essay
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Course Overview: Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology is an interesting topic to discuss because of its complexity. During this course, three take-away elements enhanced my understanding of cognitive psychology. First, learning the historical contexts of the different processes associated with cognitive psychology helps in understanding the subject. For example, a historical perspective of how Ivan Pavlov conducted experiments using dogs explains the processes by which humans learn to associate stimuli and consequently anticipate events. Second, learning using scenarios helped in my critical thinking. For example, the scenario of a four-year-boy sitting at the kitchen table with his father helps in breaking down how intelligence and creativity works. Lastly, learning through dialogues also gave me different perspectives on the topic. All these elements help in my personal and professional life by enhancing my creative thinking through interpretation using scenarios and building my teamwork spirit to understand phenomena through different perspectives.
Further, the first meaningful experience was engaging in dialogues about what approach to give a certain topic. For example, Pavlov was physiologists who mainly studied life processes in organisms (Pavlov, 2010). We argued whether his experiment of classical conditioning is psychological or physiological. As stated by Freedheim & Weiner (2003), he ter…