Cognitive Approach

Question 1

What does the cognitive approach assume?

Answer 1

The human brain is an information processing device that operates in an organised and systematic way

Question 2

What are the main areas of study in cognitive psychology?

Answer 2

Memory 
Language 
Problem solving 
Perception
Attention

Question 3

What is the scheme theory?

Answer 3

The scheme theory states that all knowledge is organised into units. Within these units of knowledge is stored information.

Question 4

What was Bartlett’s research?

Answer 4

He told participants an unfamiliar story that was part of native american folklore and he was trying to see if memory is reconstructive and if people store and retrieve information according to expectations formed by cultural schemes.

Question 5

What did Bartlett find from his research?

Answer 5

He found that participants changed the story as they tried to remember it (distortion) and found they were three patterns of distortion that took place :
Assimilation
Levelling
Sharpening

Question 6

What is assimilation in Bartlett’s study?

Answer 6

The story became more consistent with the participants own cultural expectations (details were unconsciously changed to fit the norms of British culture)

Question 7

What is levelling in Bartlett’s research?

Answer 7

The story also became shorter with each retelling as participants omitted information that was seen as not important

Question 8

What is sharpening in Bartlett’s research?

Answer 8

Participants tended to change the order of the story in order to make sense of it using terms more familiar to the culture of the participants. They also added detail and / or emotions

Question 9

What are the techniques of cognitive neuroscience?

Answer 9

fMRI
PET
Brainbows

Question 10

Strengths of cognitive neuroscience

Answer 10

Highly controlled and rigorous methods = internal validity
Allows biology and cognitive psychology to come together - e.g we measure cognitive pr fesses through scientific machinery (brain scanning)

Question 11

What are the limitations of the cognitive theory?

Answer 11

Machine reductionism- ignores influence of human emotion and motivation on the cognitive system and how this may affect ability to process information e.g human memory and what a person remembers about a specific event may be affected by emotional factors and how they were affected by the event

Lacks ecological validity, uses tasks that have little in common with the participants everyday life e.g studies into memory use artificial materials such as random word / digit lists rather than trying to understand the way in which memory is used in everyday life