Cognitive Approach

Question 1

What does the cognitive approach believe ?

Answer 1

Cognitive psychologists are interested in what happens between stimulus and response. They say that our behaviour is determined by the way we process information taken in from our environment.

Question 2

What are the assumptions of the cognitive approach?

Answer 2

Thoughts influence behaviour The cognitive approach investigates areas of human behaviour that the behaviourist approach neglected such as memory, perception and
thinking.
Internal mental processes can and should be studied scientifically.
These processes are private and cannot be observed. They believe we can study them indirectly by making inferences about what is going on in their mind based on their
behaviour
Information is processed in the brain like a computer

Question 3

What does inference mean

Answer 3

As we cannot directly see what people
are thinking, cognitive psychologists make a scientific guess or assumption about thought processes from people’s behaviour

Question 4

The computer analogy

Answer 4

• Theoretical model links to the idea that the brain processes info like a computer
• Receive information, interpret and respond
• A computer has input, processing and output

Question 5

Processing of information - schema theory

Answer 5

• Schemas are parcels of stored knowledge or a mental representation of information about a specific event or object (dogs/going to the dentist/groups of people).
• These mental mind map of events/situations (cognitive plans/scripts) are built up using experiences about everyday life over time- start with very basic schema
(sucking/grasping)
• They allow us to interpret a new situation/information based on our previous stored knowledge or expectations e.g. enter a room with four legs- you know it’s a chair- so you can sit on it.
• Used to fill in gaps in memory – if we can’t fully remember we refer back to schema (expectations of what we think should have happened in that instance.)

Question 6

Cognitive neuroscience

Answer 6

Scientists are now able to study the living brain, using brain imaging technology – like PET scans and fMRIs. This helps psychologists see which part of the brain are active during different tasks.

Question 7

Examples of cognitive neuroscience

Answer 7

As early as the 1860’s Paul Broca had identified how damage to an area of the frontal lobe (Broca’s area) could permanently impair speech production.

Carl Wernicke had identified how damage to an area of the brain (Wernicke’s area)
could permanently impair language
comprehension

Question 8

What are weaknesses of the cognitive approach?

Answer 8

• cognitive psychologists are only able to infer mental processes from the behaviour they object in their research. - this means that any physical activity of the experiment cannot be used as to why they are acting how they are acting. - by inferring it is guessing and therefore old get it wrong, opinion based not factual. - makes the approach less scientific so have to make guesses, it reduces the validity in explaining human behaviour.

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Question 9

What are strengths of the cognitive approach?

Answer 9

• the principles of the approach can be applied to change people’s thinking to help overcome mental disorders such as depression or OCD. - it can change people’s perspective and can change there life for the better. - can help people help with their disorders in a non invasive way. - suggests its valid as the treatment based in the explanations works. Power to individual to help themselves.
• it has made a major contribution to out understanding of artificial intelligence and the development of memory models. - the cognitive approach has real life applications. - if we understand memory through the use of memory models, the approach can be used to create ways to improve memory. - in school/ revision techniques/ brain damage causing memory loss. - helps society to function better.