Approaches: Lesson 5 - The Cognitive Approach

Question 1

What is the cognitive approach?

Answer 1

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

Question 2

What are schemas?

Answer 2

Mental representations of experience, knowledge and understanding

• they help organise and interpret information in the brain
• they are useful because they allow us to take shortcuts when interpreting vast amounts of information we have to deal with in a daily basis
• they help us fill in the gaps in the absence of full information
• can also cause us to exclude anything that does not conform to our established ideas about the world

Question 3

How ones the study by Bartlett support (1932) support the idea of schemas? (War of the ghosts)

Answer 3

• Bartlett (1932) asked English participants were asked to read a Native American folk tale called, “The War of the Ghosts.”
• It was an unfamiliar and strange story that had a different structure to an average English story
• Participants had to read the story, and then after different lengths of time, they had to recall it
• The results of the study showed that 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 informations