Cogntive Approach Flashcards
What does the cognitive approach argue?
The cognitive approach argues that internal mental processes can be studied scientifically.
The cognitive approach studies areas of human behaviour neglected by behaviourists, like memory.
Since the processes are private,cognitive psychologists study them indirectly by making inferences about what is occurring in the mind, basing it on behaviour
What does the cognitive approach assume?
The mind actively processes information from our sense.
Between the stimulus and response, there are complex mental processes that can be studied scientifically.
Human minds can be seen as data processing systems, with the workings of a compute and the human mind being alike
What can cognitive processing be affected by?
Cognitive processing can often be affected by a person’s beliefs or expectation, referred to as schemas
What are schemas?
Schemas are packets of information or cognitive framework that help organize and interpret information, based on previous experience
What is the role of a schema?
Schemas help us to interpret incoming information quickly and effectively, it prevents us from being overwhelmed by vasts amounts of information we perceive in our environment
What types of schemas are babies born with?
Babies are born with simple motor schemas for innate behaviours such as suckign and grasping
What happens to our schemas as we grow older?
As we grow older, our schemas become more detailed and sophisticated
What is a disadvantage of schemas?
Schemas can also distort our interpretations of sensory information, leading to perceptual errors
What is the cognitive neuroscience?
The cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of the influence of brain structures on mental processes, which is done through the use of brain scanning techniques
What are the aims of cognitive neuroscience?
Cognitive neuroscience aims to find how brain structures influence the way we process information and map mental cognitive functions to specific areas of the brain, which are done using brain imaging techniques (MRI + PET scans)
What methods does the cognitive approach use?
The cognitive approach uses lab experiments, case studies and brain imaging
What are two applications of cognitive neuroscience in real life?
1) Cognitive neuroscience has helped study memory which has led to the development of cognitive interviews, which has decreased the inaccuracies of eyewitness memory, leading to a decrease in wrongful convictions
2) Cognitive neuroscience helps us understand the causes of depression and proposes cognitive behaviour therapy, which has shown to be effective for a range of mental disorders and unlike drugs has no side effects
What is a strength of the cognitive approach? (scientific and objective methods)
The cognitive approach has always employed highly controlled methods of study in order to enable researchers to infer cognitive processes at work.
This has involved the work of lab experiments to produce reliable, objective data.
In addition. the emergence of cognitive neuroscience has enable the two fields of biology and cognitive psychology to come together. this means the study pf the mind has established credible scientific basis
What is a limitation of the cognitive approach? (limited application to every day life)
Cognitive psychologists are only able to infer mental processes from the behaviour they observe. As a result, cognitive psychology occasionally suffers from being too abstract and theoretical in nature. Similarly, experimental studies of mental processes are often carried out using artificial stimuli that may not represent everyday memory experience. Therefore, research on cognitive processes may lack external validity
What is a limitation of the cognitive approach? (machine reductionism)
Although similarities between the human mind and operations of a computer are appeatn, the computer analogy has been criticized by many. Such machine reductionism ignores the influence of human emotion and motivation on the cognitive system and how this may affect our ability to process information. For instance, research has found that human memory can be affected by emotional factors, such as the influence of anxiety on eyewitness
What is a strength of the cognitive approah?
The cognitive approach recognises our cognitive system can only operate within the limits of what we know, but that we are free to think before responding to a stimulus. This is more reasonable position than the hard determinism suggested by some other approaches
