Cognitive Approach Flashcards
What is the cognitive approach
It is the study of internal mental processes and how it affects behaviour
What approach was introduced in the 1950s?
The cognitive approach
When was the cognitive approach introduced?
1950s
What revolution gave the new generation of psychologists a metaphor for studying the mind?
the digital revolution
What is the digital revolution?
the shift from mechanical and analogue electronic technologies from the Industrial Revolution towards digital electronics
What was the metaphor used?
That the mind is like a computer
What did they test for their predictions?
Their predictions for memory and attention
What did the cognitive approach ensure?
That the study of the mind is in fact a legitimate and highly scientific aspect of the discipline
What are internal mental processes
Private operations of the human mind such as perception and attention that mediate between a stimulus and response
What are the 4 aspects associated with the Cognitive Approach
The role of schema, theoretical models, computer models and the emergences of cognitive neuroscience
What is schema
It’s a mental framework made up of beliefs and expectations that influence the cognitive processing and they are developed from experience
What does schema act as
A mental framework for the interpretation of incoming information coming to the cognitive system
What are babies born with
Motor schema
Why do a babies have motor schema
For innate behaviours such as sucking and grasping
What happens to our schema as we get older
It becomes more sophisticated and detailed and has a mental representation of most situations
What does schema enable us to do
Enables us to process information quickly and is useful as a sort of mental shortcut to prevent us from feeling overwhelmed by the stimuli
What may schema distort though?
It may also distort our interpretations of sensory information, leading to perceptual errors
What is used to help researchers understand internal mental processes
Theoretical and computer models
What are theoretical models
They are diagrams that help researchers visualise certain systems and allows them to have a better and clearer understanding, they are mainly in the form of flowcharts and an example of this is the multi story memory model
What concepts do theoretical models represent
Abstract concepts
What concepts do computer mode;s represent
Concrete concepts
What is the main theoretical model
Information Processing Approach
What does the IPM suggest
That’s information flows through a cognitive system in a sequence of stages (input, storage and retrival)
What is the IPM based on
On the way that computers function
What can we suggest if a programmed computer and the instructions given to the brain, produces a similar output?
We can suggest that similar processing are being processed in the human brain
Why are computational models of the brain useful?
They are deemed as useful as they have been able to prove positive development of “thinking machines” and AI
what is cognitive neuroscience
the scientific study of the influence of brain structures on mental processes
what is known to have a long history in psychology
mapping brain areas to cognitive functions
what did Broca identify
how damage to the frontal lobe can permanently impair speech production
how have scientists been able to systematically observe and describe the neurological basis of mental process?
with advances in brain imaging techniques such as fMRI and PET scans
what have brain imaging techniques enabled scientists to do
be able to systematically observe and describe the neurological basis of mental process
what else have scanning techniques been useful for?
it is proved useful for establishing the neurological basis of some mental disorders
what has the focus of CN expanded to
including the use of computer generated models that are designed to read the brain
what is a future application of brain fingerprinting
to analyse the brainwave patterns of eyewitnesses to determine whether they are lying or not in court
what are 2 strengths of the CA
.that it uses objective scientific methods with lab studies which allows the study of the mind to be a more credible science
.that is has practical real world application and can revolutionise how we live in the future and this supports the value of the CA
what are 2 limitations of the CA
.that it relies one the inference of mental processes rather than direct observations and can suffer from being too abstract meaning it lacks external validity
.that it is based on machine reductionism as the computer analogy has been critisied for ignoring the influence of human emotion and motivation and so this weakens the validity of the CA
