Mental Processes
Mental processes refer to our thoughts, feelings, and motivations. It is one of the subject matter in Psychology, along with behavior. Mental processes are private experiences that are not directly observable. For instance, we don't know what someone is thinking about just by looking at him/her. But, they are nonetheless measurable. In the example scenario, we can ask the person what he/she is thinking about. Some examples of mental processes are perception, memory, reasoning, decision-making, and problem-solving. Some interesting topics that pertain to mental processes are: Prosopagnosia, Childhood Amnesia, Overjustification Effect, Cathartic Effect, and Fundamental Attribution Error.
History of the Study of Mental Processes
Mental processes were first scientifically studied by Wilhelm Wundt when he established the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany in 1879. It was further researched on via Introspection, Structuralism and Functionalism. Interest on mental processes as private conscious experiences from those early scientific approaches changed early 20th century when schools of psychology, such as Gestalt Psychology and Psychoanalysis focused on automatic and unconscious thoughts. Meanwhile, Behaviorism rejected the study of mental processes, and focused instead on behavior.
The study of mental processes was further enriched upon the publication of Noam Chomsky's "Syntactic Structures," where he introduced Psycholinguistics, or the study of mental processes involved in language comprehension and speech.