cognitive approach Flashcards
cognitive approach
in contrast with behaviourist approach
argues mental processes should be studied
studied those areas of brain neglected by behaviourists e.g. memory, perception
processes are private and cannot be observed meaning must make inferences
cognitive psychologists make interference’s about what’s going on inside mind based of their behaviour
mental processes can be studied in lab experiments
internal mental processes
operations that occur during thinking
Perception
Attention
Memory
Language
Problem solving
poppy and molly love pie
perception
how we change info from eyes into usable form
attention
how choose what to think about
memory
how we store info in future
language
how we construct meaningful sentences to communicate
problem solving
how we construct new solutions
what is a schema
packages of ideas and information developed through experience. They act as mental framework for the interpretation of incoming information received by the cognitive system. Schemas enable us to process lots of information quickly and this is a useful sort of mental short cut that fills in gaps in our knowledge
schemas
babies are born with simple motor schemas for innate behaviours such as sucking and grasping
as we get older, our schema becomes more detailed and sophisticated
how are schemas useful
useful in explaining symptoms of psychological illnesses
negative schemas of the self, future and world can eb demonstrated in individuals suffering from depression
could explain low mood experienced by sufferers of this condition
these can be challenged by methods used in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to help client develop more positive schemas to help treat negative or distorted thinking
use of computer models
development of computer led to computer models emerging within psychology to explain different mental processes
computer models suggest mind is like a computer
inputting, storing and retrieving data
computer models of memory have been particularly useful in development of artificial intelligence(AI)
Tulving et al
were able to show how different types of LTM are localised in diffrent areas of the brain. Tulving found that when individuals ecalled historical facts, blood increased in temporal lobe, wheras, when they thought about childhoid experiencs blood flow increased in the hippocampus.
emergence of cognitive neuroscience
cognitive neuronscience is relatively new field that tries to brige gap between the cognitive and biolgical approaches
research supporting the cognitive neuronscience approach demonstates how memory has a biological basis in the brain
double dissociation
occurs when two patients show a mirror image of impairment e.g. person 1 can do task a whereas person 2 can do task 8 but not task A. Demonstrated by patients KF and HM
scanning techniques
also proved useful in establishing a neurological basis of some symptoms of psychological disorders e.g. OCD. PET scans of patients with OCD have shown elevated levels of activity in the orbito-frontal cortex. The OFC is the part of the brain circuit, one of the function of this circuit appears to be turning sensory information into thoughts
