The cognitive approach (week 10)

Question 1

The cognitive approach

Answer 1

• Developed as a reaction against the behaviourist stimulus-response approach.
• Cognitive psychologists believe it is the events within a person that must be studied if behaviour is to be fully understood.
• Cognitive psychologists believe that it’s possible to study internal mental processes in an objective way.
• Insight into mental processes may be inferred from behaviour.
• They are concerned with how thinking shapes our behaviour.
• Cognitive psychologists believe that our behaviour is determined by the way we process information taken in from our environment.

Question 2

Definition of Cognitive

Answer 2

• Means ‘knowing’
• Cognitive processes refer to the way in which knowledge is gained, used and retained.

Question 3

Assumptions of the cognitive approach

Answer 3

• Similarities between the way people and computers process information
• There are individual differences in cognitive processes such as attention, language, thinking and memory, which can help to explain our differing behaviours and emotions.

Question 4

Internal mental processes

Answer 4

• Main concern of cognitive psychology is how information received from our senses is processed by the brain and how this processing directs how we behave.
• the C approach looks at how various cognitive functions work together to help us make sene of the world. eg. language and thought.

Question 5

Mental processes studied

Answer 5

• Investigates areas of human behaviour that is neglected by behaviourists:
• Perception
• Attention
• Memory
• Language
• Thinking
• Problem solving

Question 6

Schemas

Answer 6

• Are a ‘framework or information’
• Based on previous experiences
• Helps us to organise and interpret information
• Babies are born with simple motor schemas for innate behaviours
• Schemas develop and evolve with experience.
• They become more detailed.
• Useful for taking shortcuts in thinking.
• They create expectations
• Could lead to faulty or unhelpful behaviours.

Question 7

Computer Models

Answer 7

The mind is compared to a computer by suggesting that there are similarities in the way information is processed.
E.g. the use of a central processor (the brain), changing of information into a usable code and the use of memory it to ‘store’ information. Retrieving a memory (recall) is like opening a file on a computer and the subsequent behaviour is the output.

Question 8

Cognitive models

Answer 8

• C psychologist use the results of their research to develop models of how people process information.
• They infer mental processes for comparisons between the information (input) a person receives and the behaviour (output) they produce.
• These models of the mind have been useful in the development of artificial intelligence

Question 9

Theoretical models

Answer 9

• The information processing approach suggests that information flows through a sequence of stages that include input, storage and retrieval.
• For example, The Multi-Store model of memory
• These types of models help psychologists to understand, research and explain cognitive processes.

Question 10

Cognitive neuroscience

Answer 10

• The scientific study of the influence of brain structure (neuro) on mental processes (cognition).
• Advances in brain scanning technology means scientists have been able to describe the neurological basis of mental processing.
• Also been useful in establishing the neurological basis of some disorders e.g. the basal ganglia and OCD.

Question 11

Real World Application

Answer 11

The Cognitive Approach has a huge number of real-life applications:
* cognitive behaviour therapy
* applications in sports, education, criminal justice
* Memory has also been shown to be unreliable. eg, research into eyewitness memory has resulted in an awareness of the unreliability of memory.
* This has resulted in the development of techniques called ‘the cognitive interview’ used by all police in the UK.

Question 12

How cognitive psychologists approach their research

Answer 12

They approach psychology in a scientific way. In their research they use:
* Experimental methods
* Objective measures
* High level of control
* Aim to establish cause-effect relationships between variables.

Question 13

Evaluation of experimental methods used by C psychologists

Answer 13

Strengths:
* High reliability due to standardisation and control
* Tend to be ethical due to ppts giving informed consent and able to leave.
Weaknesses:
* May lack ecological validity due to the artificial nature of some experiments
* Tend to have small, unrepresentative samples.