Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology that focuses on the study of mental processes, including how people perceive, think, remember, and problem-solve. It explores the internal mental processes that underlie human behavior, with an emphasis on understanding how individuals acquire, process, and use information to navigate the world around them.

Key aspects of cognitive psychology include:

1. Perception: Cognitive psychology examines how people perceive and interpret sensory information from the environment, including visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory stimuli. It investigates perceptual processes such as pattern recognition, attention, depth perception, and object recognition.
2. Memory: Cognitive psychology studies the processes involved in encoding, storing, and retrieving information in memory. It explores different types of memory systems, including sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory, as well as factors that influence memory formation and retrieval, such as attention, rehearsal, encoding strategies, and retrieval cues.
3. Attention: Cognitive psychology investigates the mechanisms of attention, including selective attention, divided attention, and sustained attention. It examines how attentional processes influence perception, memory, decision-making, and performance in various tasks and contexts.
4. Language and Communication: Cognitive psychology explores the cognitive processes underlying language comprehension, production, and acquisition. It examines how people understand and produce language, process linguistic information, and represent meaning. It also investigates cognitive aspects of communication, such as pragmatics, discourse analysis, and language development.
5. Thinking and Problem-Solving: Cognitive psychology studies the processes involved in reasoning, decision-making, problem-solving, and creativity. It explores how people generate and evaluate alternatives, make judgments and decisions under uncertainty, and solve problems using heuristics, algorithms, and insight.
6. Learning and Cognition: Cognitive psychology investigates the cognitive mechanisms involved in learning and knowledge acquisition. It examines how people acquire new information, form mental representations, and integrate new knowledge with existing schemas. It also explores factors that influence learning, such as motivation, attention, feedback, and transfer.
7. Cognitive Development: Cognitive psychology examines how cognitive abilities develop and change over the lifespan, from infancy through adulthood and aging. It investigates cognitive milestones, developmental trajectories, and factors that influence cognitive development, such as genetics, environment, and experience.
8. Computational Modeling: Cognitive psychology employs computational models and simulations to formalize and test theories of cognitive processes. It uses computer algorithms and mathematical models to simulate cognitive tasks, predict behavior, and understand the underlying mechanisms of cognition.

Cognitive psychology employs a variety of research methods, including experiments, observational studies, computational modeling, and neuropsychological investigations, to advance our understanding of the mind and behavior. It has applications in various fields, including education, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, clinical psychology, and organizational psychology.