Editing Thought (section)

===Psychology===
{{Main|Cognitive psychology}}
[[File:Thinking২.jpg|thumb|Man thinking on a train journey]]

Psychologists have concentrated on thinking as an intellectual exertion aimed at finding an answer to a question or the solution of a practical problem. Cognitive psychology is a branch of [[psychology]] that investigates internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language; all of which are used in thinking. The school of thought arising from this approach is known as [[cognitivism (psychology)|cognitivism]], which is interested in how people mentally represent information processing. It had its foundations in the [[Gestalt psychology]] of [[Max Wertheimer]], [[Wolfgang Köhler]], and [[Kurt Koffka]],<ref>''Gestalt Theory'', By Max Wertheimer. Hayes Barton Press, 1944, {{ISBN|978-1-59377-695-4}}</ref> and in the work of [[Jean Piaget]], who provided a theory of stages/phases that describes children's cognitive development.

Cognitive psychologists use [[psychophysics|psychophysical]] and experimental approaches to understand, diagnose, and solve problems, concerning themselves with the mental processes which mediate between stimulus and response. They study various aspects of thinking, including the [[psychology of reasoning]], and how people make decisions and choices, solve problems, as well as engage in creative discovery and imaginative thought. Cognitive theory contends that solutions to problems either take the form of [[algorithm]]s: rules that are not necessarily understood but promise a solution, or of [[heuristics]]: rules that are understood but that do not always guarantee solutions. [[Cognitive science]] differs from cognitive psychology in that algorithms that are intended to simulate human behavior are implemented or implementable on a computer. In other instances, solutions may be found through insight, a sudden awareness of relationships.

In [[developmental psychology]], [[Jean Piaget]] was a pioneer in the study of the development of thought from birth to maturity. In his [[theory of cognitive development]], thought is based on actions on the environment. That is, Piaget suggests that the environment is understood through assimilations of objects in the available schemes of action and these accommodate to the objects to the extent that the available schemes fall short of the demands. As a result of this interplay between assimilation and accommodation, thought develops through a sequence of stages that differ qualitatively from each other in mode of representation and complexity of inference and understanding. That is, thought evolves from being based on perceptions and actions at the sensorimotor stage in the first two years of life to internal representations in early childhood. Subsequently, representations are gradually organized into logical structures which first operate on the concrete properties of the reality, in the stage of concrete operations, and then operate on abstract principles that organize concrete properties, in the stage of formal operations.<ref>Piaget, J. (1951). ''Psychology of Intelligence''. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul</ref> In recent years, the Piagetian conception of thought was integrated with information processing conceptions. Thus, thought is considered as the result of mechanisms that are responsible for the representation and processing of information. In this conception, [[cognitive processing speed|speed of processing]], [[cognitive control]], and [[working memory]] are the main functions underlying thought. In the [[neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development]], the development of thought is considered to come from increasing speed of processing, enhanced [[cognitive control]], and increasing working memory.<ref>{{cite book |last=Demetriou |first=A. |year=1998 |title=Cognitive development. In A. Demetriou, W. Doise, K. F. M. van Lieshout (Eds.), ''Life-span developmental psychology''. pp. 179–269. London: Wiley }}</ref>

[[Positive psychology]] emphasizes the positive aspects of human psychology as equally important as the focus on mood disorders and other negative symptoms. In ''[[Character Strengths and Virtues]]'', [[Christopher Peterson (psychologist)|Peterson]] and [[Martin Seligman|Seligman]] list a series of positive characteristics. One person is not expected to have every strength, nor are they meant to fully capsulate that characteristic entirely. The list encourages positive thought that builds on a person's strengths, rather than how to "fix" their "symptoms".<ref>{{cite book |last=Schacter |first=Daniel L. |year=2011 |title =Psychology |edition=Second |chapter=Positive Psychology |location=New York |publisher=Worth}} 584 pp.</ref>