cognitive approach

• cognitive approach

  behaviour is determined by the way we process information taken in from our environment using our internal mental processes
• mental processes

  perception, attention, memory, language, thinking and problem solving
• key assumptions

  focuses on how people perceive, store, manipulate and interpret information

  cognitive psychologists look at internal mental processes to understand behaviour

  thought processes can and should be studied scientifically, well controlled laboratory studies can investigate what we are thinking

  mental processes are 'private' and cant be observed, cognitive psychologists study them indirectly by making inferences about what is going on inside people's head
• schemas

  'package' of beliefs & expectations on a topic that come from prior experience

  useful by helping us to take shortcuts in thinking, and organise and interpret information

  born with simple motor schema for innate behaviours e.g. grasping and sucking then develop and evolve from experience

  can lead to faulty conclusions and unhelpful behaviour
• piaget's theory of cognitive development

  we build schemas through experience using two methods:

  assimilation - we add more information to our schema that we didnt previously have before

  accommodation - having to adapt or change schema as a result of new information
• bugelski + alampay (1962)


  'rat man' study

  two groups shown a sequence of pictures, either faces or animals before the ambiguous 'rat man'

  people who saw pictures of animals were more likely to see a rat, whereas people who saw pictures of people were more likely to see a man
• strengths of bugelski + alampay

  high internal validity

  replicable due to high levels of control so same results obtained each time
• limitations of bugelski + alampay

  demand characteristics

  lacks external validity
• inference

  reaching a logical conclusion on the basis of evidence and reasoning
• role of theoretical models

  simplified representations of the mind based on current research
• computer models

  uses computer analogy: information passes through senses, is processed within our mind (memory) and then after this processing we produce an output (behaviour)
• paul broca (1861)


  51 year old male was transferred to broca's hospital with an infection

  had difficulty with speech and could only say "tan"

  post mortem dissection found there was a lesion in left frontal lobe

  broca's area - responsible for speech reproduction
• how are biological structures investigated

  advances with brain imaging techniques (pet scans and MRI)