Cognitive approach Flashcards
What are the assumptions of the cognitive approach?
It argues that internal mental processes can and should be studied scientifically.
It investigates areas neglected by behaviourists e.g. memory, perception and thinking.
What are theoretical models?
A way of studying internal processes. One important theoretical model is the information processing approach, which suggests that information flows through the cognitive system in a sequence of stages that include input, storage and retrieval. Like the MSM.
What are computer models?
The mind is compared to a computer. These models use the concepts of a central processing unit (brain), the concept of coding and the use of stores to hold information.
What is the role of schema?
Cognitive processing can often be affected by schema. Schema enable us to process lots of information quickly and this is useful as it prevents us from being overwhelmed by environmental stimuli.
However, schema may also distort our interpretations of sensory information, leading to perceptual errors.
What is cognitive neuroscience?
The scientific study of biological structures that underpin cognitive processes.
How has cognitive neuroscience progressed the cognitive approach?
In the last 20 years, with FMRI and PET scans, scientists have been able to systematically observe and describe the neurological basis of mental processes.
What is the evaluation for the cognitive approach?
Scientific and objective methods
Machine reductionism
Real life application
Less determinist than other approaches
Evaluation point for the cognitive approach: Scientific and objective methods
The cognitive approach has always employed highly controlled and rigorous methods of study to enable researchers to infer cognitive processes at work.
This has involved the use of lab experiments to produce reliable, objective data.
Additionally, the emergence of cognitive neuroscience has enabled the two fields of biology and cognitive psychology to combine.
This makes a credible scientific basis.
Evaluation point for the cognitive approach: Machine reductionism
Machine reductionism of the computer analogy ignores the influence of human emotion and motivation on the cognitive system.
E.g. research has found memory may be affected by emotional factors, such as anxiety on eyewitnesses.
Evaluation point for the cognitive approach: Real life application
Cognitive psychologists are only able to infer mental processes from the behaviour they observe in their research. As a consequence, CP is too abstract and theoretical in nature.
Also in experimental studies the use of artificial stimuli (such as tests of memory involving word lists) may not represent everyday memory experience.
Evaluation point for the cognitive approach: Less determinist than other approaches
It is founded on soft-determinism , it recognises that our cognitive system can only operate within the limits of what we know, but we are free to think before we respond to a stimulus. This is more interactionist than other hard-determinist approaches.
