The Cognitive Approach Flashcards
Are the behaviourism approach interested in what happens between the stimulus and the response?
No, they don’t think you need to know
Are the social learning theory interested in the what happens between the stimulus and the responses?
Yes, things take place within the brain that mediate between the stimulus and responses
Do you need to know the mental processes according to the social learning theory?
Yes
According to the cognitive approach do you need to know what occurs between the stimulus and the response?
Yes
Who believes that are behaviours are determined by the way we process information taken in from our environment?
Cognitive Approach
What are the assumptions of the cognitive approach?
- Developed against the behaviourist stimulus-response approach
- Events WITHIN a person that must be studied to fully understand different behaviours
- Possible to study internal mental processes objectively
- Concerned with how thinking shapes our behaviours
What do cognitive psychologists do?
Explain all behaviours in terms of thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and study how these direct our behaviour
What is the main concern of the cognitive psychology?
How information is received from our senses in processed by the brain and how we behave
What are humans seen as according to the cognitive approach?
Informational processes
What are humans compared to?
Computers
What is the theoretical and computer models?
- How we take information (INPUT)
- Store it or change it (PROCESS)
- Recall it when necessary (OUTPUT)
What would the brain be according to the computer analogy?
Hardware
What are the cognitive processes according to the computing analogy?
Software
What is a schema?
Mental structure that represents an aspect of the world (i.e object/event)
-Helps make sense of the world due to short cuts of identifying things
Do we build schema for everything?
Yes
What is an example of he computer analogy?
Multistore Memory Model (Atkinson and Shriffrin 1968)
Where can cognitive approach be applied to?
- Cognitive development
- Mood disorders
- Memory
- Education
- Therapy
Does the cognitive approach support psychology being a science?
Yes
Why does the cognitive approach support psychology being a science?
Very scientific and controlled experiments
Why may people argue that the cognitive approach may not support psychology being a science?
Investigating the inner workings of the mind which cannot be directly observed
What is cognitive neuroscience?
The scientific study of biological structures that underpin cognitive processes
What are the key facts of the emergence of cognitive neuroscience?
- Study may different aspects of human cognition (memory, attention, perception)
- Social cognition, brain regions involved when we interact with others
- Impairments of brain regions which may change psychological conditions
How do the cognitive neuroscience investigate the biological structures?
- Advances in brain imaging techniques
- fMRI or PET scans
What is cognitive neuroscience becoming in the mordern psychology due to technological advances?
A paradigm
What are the strengths of cognitive approach?
- Scientific and objective
- Application to everyday life
- Less deterministic than any other approach (soft deterministic)
What are the limitation of the cognitive approach?
- Machine reductionist (oversimplifies ignoring the influence of emotions)
- Lack of external validity (Artificial stimuli and suffers from being to abstract and theoretical)