Which area of psychology examines mental processes such as thinking and memory?

Cognitivism is the area of psychology that specifically focuses on understanding mental processes, including thinking, memory, problem-solving, and language. It emerged in response to behaviorism, with a strong emphasis on the internal mental states and cognitive functions that underlie observable behavior. Cognitive psychologists investigate how people process information, how they store and retrieve memories, and how these processes influence their behavior and emotions. This approach has led to significant insights into human thought processes and has generated various applications, particularly in education and therapy.

In contrast, the other areas mentioned serve different functions in psychology. Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes unconscious motivations and early childhood experiences as the foundation of behavior and personality, rather than focusing directly on cognitive processes. Reversibility is a cognitive developmental concept from Piaget’s theory, dealing with the ability to mentally return to an initial state in a sequence of events but does not encompass the broad study of cognitive processes. Classical conditioning is a theory of learning that describes how associations are formed between stimuli and responses, and while it addresses behavior, it does not examine cognitive processes like thinking and memory. Thus, the focus on mental processes and cognition makes cognitivism the correct answer.