Final answer:
A cognitive psychologist would be most interested in how Little Jasmine learns to read, focusing on the mental processes involved in understanding and processing written language.
Step-by-step explanation:
The type of psychologist who would be most interested in how Little Jasmine learns to read is a cognitive psychologist. Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology that focuses on the study of human thinking, particularly in areas such as problem solving, memory, learning, and language acquisition. Since reading involves processing and understanding written symbols to gain meaning, cognitive psychologists are best suited to explore and understand how the learning process for reading develops and operates.
A different branch that might also be interested, albeit less than cognitive psychologists, is behavioral psychology. However, they focus more on the associations and reinforcements that might aid in learning how to read, rather than the cognitive processes involved.
As for the historical development of cognitive psychology, it has undergone significant changes over the years. Originally overshadowed by perspectives such as psychoanalysis and behaviorism, the cognitive revolution of the 1950s reinvigorated interest in studying the mind scientifically. Cognitive psychology recognizes and investigates the complexity of mental processes behind behaviors like reading.