Final answer:
The cognitive viewpoint in psychology indeed revolves around the idea of constructing knowledge, emphasizing active engagement with information to understand, memorize, and apply it. It is not only about processing existing information but also about creating new understandings through experiences and mental frameworks such as schemata.
Step-by-step explanation:
Cognitive psychology, a branch that focuses on understanding human thinking, is inherently involved with the construction of knowledge. The cognitive approach in psychology emphasizes how we take in information, process it, and remember it, allowing us to construct and reconstruct memories, which is termed as construction or reconstruction, respectively. Additionally, cognitive processes are involved in developing schemata, which are mental structures that help us organize and interpret information based on accumulated knowledge and experiences.
Psychologists who subscribe to the cognitive viewpoint would argue that knowledge is not a passive reflection of reality but is actively built by the learner. This includes how we perceive the world, remember, think, and solve problems. The propositional knowledge, which is tied to the cognitive use of language, allows us to make claims that can be seen as either true or false, evidencing the construction of knowledge within cognitive psychology. Concepts such as critical thinking, the scientific method, and critical evaluation of sources of information, which are part of an undergraduate education in psychology, further highlight the importance of actively constructing understanding and knowledge.