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.