Introduction Behaviorism and cognitive science are essentially used in teaching and learning. However, much of what happens in the traditional classroom in the past was based on the behavioral theories, which dominated American psychology from about 1920 to 1970. Among the key figures of the behaviorist movement was Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1938, 1953, as cited by Hofstetter, 1997), who perceived that “human behavior is powerfully shaped by its consequences”. Skinner bolstered the thought that “psychology was essentially about behavior and that behavior was largely determined by its outcomes”. Despite Skinner’s presumptions that have been proven effective in learning to train animals and helping humans how to modify their behavior, behaviorism was not enough in the actualization of education itself because in order to educate, an educator must do more than modify behavior. The students must be assisted in learning how to develop strategies for their own learning. This is basically the main reason why cognitive science appears to complement the shortcomings of behaviorism. Main body According to Drever’s (1964) Dictionary of Psychology , “cognition” is “a general term covering all the various modes of knowing – perceiving, imagining, conceiving, judging, reasoning”. It picks out those forms of abstract thinking and problem solving that are based upon the manipulation of either linguistic symbols (propositions) or iconic symbols (images). Cognitive psychology refers to the attempt to understand these various human faculties by means of systematic empirical observation and theory construction. Its origins lie in research conducted during the 1950s by Donald Broadbent, Jerome Bruner and George Miller (Gardner, 1985), although it was probably first generally acknowledged as a distinctive intellectual development with the publication of Ulric Neisser’s (1967) book, Cognitive Psychology . The first reason why cognitive science superseded behaviorism is that of its view that fell short in fully explaining mental processes, feelings and learning without conditioning. It is vital when teaching and learning that the focus should center on learning how to learn, in which the orientation is predominantly considered as cognitivist point-of-view (Neisser, 1967). Another shortcoming of behaviorism was its rejection of theory, embodied in the rejection of mentalism. Mentalism involves the “assignment of theoretical, hypothetical functions to the human — functions that determine and guide observable behavior” (Johnson-Laird 2004, p. 185). The rejection of theoretical mental functions can be related to a characteristic of the American psychological tradition, as expressed in both functionalism and pragmatism–the objection to the abstract, the fancy, and the fictional. Behaviorism was a peculiarly American invention, although with parallels, but not identities, found in Russian psychology. Thirdly, behaviorism was criticized because of the narrow view of the “outward criteria” needed for “inner processes” in learning (Wittgenstein, 1953 as cited by Koethe, 1996). Behaviorist’s view does not say that familiarity with “what counts as the criterion for anyone’s being in such a state” lacks in the privileged