The cognitive approach

• What is the cognitive approach?


  The scientific study of internal mental processes
• What does cognition mean?


  Thinking / how we perceive, store, manipulate and interpret information from the world around us
• What are the strengths of lab experiments?

  • Ability to establish cause and effect
  • Ability to replicate experiment
  • Reduced risk of extraneous variables impacting results
• What are the weaknesses of lab experiments?

  • Lacks ecological validity
  • Potentiality for demand characteristics (participants guess aim of study & change their behaviour to try and please experimenter, which reduces validity of results)
  • Test may require deception
• What is an independent variable?


  What is changed/manipulated by the researcher
• What is a dependent variable?


  What is measured to see if changing the IV had any effect
• What is an extraneous variable?


  Identified before the experiment as factors that could potentially affect the DV. Once found, researcher aims to control/keep them the same in each condition
• What is a confounding variable?


  Identified after the study has taken place. Researchers realise that this variable also effects the DV in a similar was to IV
• What is the most common method used in psychology?

  The experimental method
• The experimental method is most commonly used as it is highly objective due to it being the most scientific method in psychology
• What is randomisation?


  The process by which participants are randomly put in groups. This avoids potential bias thus making the experiment more reliable.
• What is a case study?


  An in-depth study of an event, individual or group. Often used by cognitive psychologists.
• What are the 2 key assumptions of the cognitive approach?

  • Differences in information processing result in behavioural differences in humans
  • Mental processes can't be observed directly. Can be studied indirectly by making inferences about what is going on inside people's minds on the basis of their observable behaviour
• What is a schema?

  A cognitive framework that helps to organise and interpret information in the brain.

  • Bases on experience & become more complex with age
  • Influence what we pay attention to and our expectations of events
• What are the pros of schema?

  • Allow us to process a lot of information quickly
  • Prevent us from becoming overwhelmed with external stimuli
  • Make it easier to navigate social situations
• What are the cons of schema?

  • Have been linked to prejudice
  • Once established they are difficult to challenge
  • Can influence things such as eye witness testimony e.g. using more aggressive language to influence someone's response when questioned
  • Negative self schemas have been linked to depression
  • May distort our interpretations of sensory information leading to perceptual errors
• What did Bugelski and Alampay investigate and how?

  How expectations could influence responses. Two groups of participants were shown a sequence of pictures, either different animals or different faces. They were then shown an image that could be viewed as an animal or a face. Participants who saw faces were more likely to report a man, whereas participants who saw a sequence of animals were more likely to report a rat.

  
• What is the information processing model?

  It suggests that information flows through the cognitive system in a sequence of stages that include input, processing, and output (like a computer). This is based on serial processing (one piece of information processed at a time) and is linear (cannot skip a stage).
• Describe the 3 stages of the information processing model:

  • Input: comes from the environment by the senses and is encoded by the individual.
  • Processing: the information, once encoded, can be processed. An example is schemas.
  • Output: the behavioural response. This is emitted following the processing.
• What are theoretical models?


  Simplified representations of current research evidence. Often represented as pictures with boxes and arrows that indicate the transfer of information or the stages of a particular mental process.
• What is the computer model?


  The process of using computer analogies as a representation of human cognition