5 - The Cognitive Approach - Internal Mental Processes Flashcards
Outline the cognitive approach
Considers behaviour to be influenced by thoughts, these thoughts can be conscious or non-conscious (internal mental processes).
Internal mental processes include perception, attention and memory.
What is inference and why is it required?
Direct observation of internal mental processes is not possible and so they must be inferred from the results of studies or the behaviour of participants.
Inference is going beyond the immediate evidence to make assumptions about mental processes that cannot be directly observed.
What is a drawback of inference?
As direct observation of memory is not possible,
and must be inferred from the behaviour of the participants, this inference could very easily be mistaken.
Define schema
Mental representations of experience, knowledge and
understanding.
Why are schemas useful?
Help organise and interpret information in the brain. For
example, schemas for specific events are based on expectations of how to behave in a different situation (e.g. a restaurant or a classroom) or in different
roles (e.g. as a prison guard or a student).
Allow us to take shortcuts when interpreting the vast amount of information we have to deal with on a daily basis.
Help us fill in the gaps in the absence of full information.
What is the limitation of schemas?
Cause us to exclude anything that does not conform
to our established ideas about the world, instead we focus on things that confirm our pre-existing beliefs and ideas.
What study did Bartlett carry out to research schemas?
English participants were asked to read a Native
American folk tale called, “The War of the Ghosts.”
It was unfamiliar, strange and had a different structure to an average English story.
After different lengths of time, they had to recall it.
What were the results of Bartlett’s study?
All participants changed the story to fit their own schemas. The details of the story became more, “English” and contained elements of English culture.
As more time passed it was found that participants seemed to remember less of the original information.
What are the two types of models used for internal mental processes?
Theoretical
Computer
Describe the theoretical model
Simplified representations based on current
research evidence.
Often pictorial in nature, represented by boxes and arrows that indicate cause and effect in mental processes.
Often incomplete and are frequently updated. For example, the Working Memory Model was first proposed in 1974, but a fourth component was added in 2000.
Describe computer models
Development of computers and computer programming led to a focus on the way in which sensory information is coded as it passes through
the memory system.
Using computers as an analogy, information is inputted
through the senses, coded into memory and then combined with previously stored information.
Computer models are often used to explain memory: long term memory is like a hard-disk and RAM is like working memory. Like working memory, RAM, is cleared and reset when a task has been carried out.
What are the positives of the cognitive approach?
Many applications in different areas of Psychology.
For example, social cognitions can help psychologists understand how people form impressions of others and how people might form cognitive errors and
biases.
Used to explain the development of faulty negative thinking which can aid our understanding of mental illnesses like depression. Vast influence on the
development of therapies in Psychology. For instance CBT aims to change negative thoughts into more positive thoughts to help treat depression.
Emphasises scientific methods such as laboratory
experiments when collecting data. High levels of control can be exercised in these settings and cause and effects relationships can be identified. However, laboratory experiments can be criticised for lacking
mundane realism.
What are the negatives of the cognitive approach?
Uses computer models. Phrases like ‘storage’ and
‘retrieval’ are taken directly from computing. However, there is an important difference between the sort of information processing that takes place within a
computer programme and the processing that takes place in the human mind. Computers do not make mistakes, or ignore available information, or forget what has been stored on their hard drives. Humans on the other hand do all of these things.
Tells us how different cognitive processes take place but does not tell us why they take place. Role of emotion and motivation has largely been ignored by this approach. Motivation is clearly irrelevant to a computer, but is very relevant to a human being.
