Ulric Neisser (1928-2012) is often called the "father of cognitive psychology" for his 1967 book Cognitive Psychology, which named the field and provided its first comprehensive synthesis. The book integrated research on pattern recognition, attention, memory, and language processing within an information-processing framework, establishing the theoretical vocabulary and research agenda that defined the field for decades. Paradoxically, Neisser later became one of cognitive psychology's most influential internal critics.
Defining the Field
Cognitive Psychology (1967) argued that all mental processes — perception, attention, memory, language, thinking — could be understood as information processing: the sequential transformation of stimulus input through a series of processing stages. Neisser introduced key concepts including preattentive processing (automatic, parallel analysis of the visual field) and focal attention (serial, controlled processing of selected information). The book's influence was enormous, providing cognitive psychology with a unified theoretical framework and establishing it as a distinct discipline.
In his 1976 book Cognition and Reality, Neisser criticized the field he had helped create for relying too heavily on artificial laboratory tasks that lacked ecological validity. He argued that cognitive psychology needed to study cognition as it operates in natural, real-world contexts. This "ecological turn" influenced research on everyday memory, naturalistic attention, expertise, and ecological perception. Neisser went on to champion research on practical topics: flashbulb memories, memory for naturally occurring events (like the Challenger explosion), the reliability of childhood memories, and intelligence as it manifests in real-world settings.