The Cognitive Approach Part 1

Question 1

What is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy?

Answer 1

A style of therapy that treats mental illnesses by challenging irrational thought processes

Question 2

What is a Strength of the Cognitive Approach?

Answer 2

It uses the computer model to make inferences about internal mental processes (IMPs) in a scientifically credible way. According to the computer model, IMPs process information from the environment and then guide behaviour. This model has allowed cognitive psychologists to use the key features of science to make credible inferences about IMPs. The empirical method allows researchers to make initial inferences about internal mental processes and thereby construct a theoretical model of how these work by examining on humans. To ensure the theory is falsifiable, researchers would present a hypothesis and test it by conducting empirical research (an experiment) in which the researcher would manipulate the information participants are presented with (e.g. a list of words in a memory experiment). They would then measure data on the participants behavioural responses of the participants (e.g. how many words they remembered). By ensuring this data was free from interpretation, cognitive psychologists can ensure the results are objective. Allowing g cognitive psychologists to determine if their hypothesis was supported or not, and whether the theory underpinning it has been supported.

Question 3

What are Internal Mental Processes?

Answer 3

Innate functions of the mind. They process information that a person receives from the environment and through this, guide our behaviour.

Question 4

What is The Computer Model?

Answer 4

An analogy of the mind to a computer because they are both information processors. The mind is analogous to a computer in that it receives an input of information from the environment via senses (like a computer receives an input from a device, like a keyboard). This information is then processed by the IMPs (like the software applications on a computer process information) and the result of this processing produces an output of human behaviour (like a computer produces an output, e.g presenting new info on a screen).

Question 5

A strength of the cognitive approach is that it uses interference to study internal mental processes.

Answer 5

A behaviourist might object that IMPs are not possible to directly observe, and therefore cannot be studied scientifically. However, other scientist like physicists and palaeontologists have studied phenomena that cannot be directly observed through interference. For example, because it happened millions of years ago, palaeontologists are unable to directly observe the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. Nonetheless, they can directly observe evidence, like the fossil record and meteors impact crater, and from this evidence make interferences about the meteors impact and its effect on the dinosaurs. Similar can be said with the way cognitive psychologists directly observe human behaviour using the empirical method, allowing them to construct falsifiable theoretical models (theories) of specific IMPs (e.g memory) which lead to a testable hypothesis. Leading to objective measurable data using the empirical method. ). Inferences from this research can allow cognitive researchers to either accept or reject
their hypotheses, either supporting their theories or causing them to be revised or abandoned.