The cognitive approach Flashcards
What is the cognitive approach?
Cognitive psychologists extend the idea of stimulus and response from SLT and say that our behaviour is determined by the way we process information taken in from our environment.
Cognitive psychologists investigate thinking by manipulating what people take into their minds (information) and observing what comes out (behaviour).
They then develop theories about how people’s minds work by comparing the input and the output
What is the information process model?
Input process –> information manipulation processes (coding) -> information storage –> output process
What are cognitive models?
Cognitive psychologists use the results of their research to develop models of how people process information.
They infer mental processes from comparisons between the information (input) a person receives and the behaviour (output) they produce.
What is schema?
Schema is a mental framework of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive processing, they are developed through experience that helps us process information more quickly.
Schema can also distort our interpretations of sensory information leading to perceptual errors.
What are the assumptions of the cognitive approach?
Thought processes can be and should be studied scientifically.
The mind works like a computer in that it has an input from our senses which then processes and produces an output.
Stimulus and response is appropriate but only if the thought processes that occur between the stimulus and response are acknowledged.
What is cognitive neuroscience?
the scientific study of the influence of the brain structures on mental processing. With advances in brain imaging techniques such as fMRI and PET scans, scientists have been able to systematically observe and describe the neurological basis of mental processes.
What are the strengths of the cognitive approach?
Scientific and objective methods - the cognitive approach has always employed highly controlled and rigorous methods of study in order to enable researchers to infer cognitive processes at work. This has involved the use of lab experiments which produce reliable, objective data.
Real-life application - the cognitive approach is probably the dominant approach in psychology today and has been applied to a wide range of practical and theoretical contexts.
What are the weaknesses of the cognitive approach?
Machine reductionism - although there are similarities between the human mind and a computer with inputs and outputs of information, the computer analogy has been curtsied 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 example, research has found that emotions such as anxiety has proven to affect the memory on eyewitnesses.
Application to everyday life - cognitive psychologists are only able to infer mental processes from the behaviour they have observed in their research. As a consequence, cognitive psychology occasionally suffers from being too abstract and theoretical in nature. Also experimental studies of mental processes are often carried out using artificial stimuli, like tests of memory involving word lists, that may not represent everyday memory experience. Therefore research on cognitive processes may lack external validity.
