cognitive approach

• when did the approach emerge

  1960’s
• what are the key assumptions of the cognitive approach 


  focuses on internal mental processes

  assume the mind is similar to a computer

  believe processes can be studies indirectly by observing behaviour and making inferences about what is happening in the mind
• what does cognitive psychology focus on 


  studying mental processes and how these effect out behaviour
• what is wrong with this

  they cannot be seen or studied directly so cognitive psychologists have to make inferences
• what are inferences 


  observing behaviour and using logic to draw a conclusion about what mental processes caused that behaviour
• what does the black box represent in between inputs and outputs 


  cognitive psychologists interest in what happens between inputs and outputs
• what is another word for input

  stimulus
• what is another word for output 


  response
• what mental processes do you think psychologists make inferences about 


  perception

  attention

  thinking

  memory

  language
• what is a schema

  a mental framework or a package of intro about a concept based upon personal experience / into you have acquired
• where does a schema often come from

  experiences in childhood
• what is a schema for

  provides shortcuts ( mental )

  use them to make predictions

  helps to fill in gaps in memory
• why are schemas useful to us 


  provide a mental shortcut

  we can use schemas to make predictions

  help us to interpret information quickly and effectively to prevent us being overwhelmed
• why are schemas not useful 


  reliance on schemas can sometimes lead to perceptual errors and distorted information

  therefore it can reconstruct our memories which can impact important things such as eyewitness testimony
• what is the name of the study 


  All port and Postman
• when did the study occur

  1947
• what is the aim of the study

  to study the way schemas can distort memory
• what is the procedure of the study


  pp’s are shown an image to participants to study briefly

  ( image was a white man holding a razor and a black-man doing nothing )
• what were the results of the study 


  most people incorrectly reported that it was the black-man holding the razor
• what was the conclusion of this study 


  people relied on their scams which - at the time - associated black people with criminality
• what is the negative thing about this experiment

  lack temporal validity - results reflect 1947 USA and not 2023 UK
• how has the cognitive approach been influenced by developments in computer science 


  comparisons are often made between how a computer works and how we process information
• based on the computer analogy, what is the cognitive approach interested in 


  how the brain interprets, stores and retrieves information
• what are computer models 


  software simulations or internal mental processes
• what have the computer models been created in collaboration with and why


  computer scientists to help us study and understand these processes
• what have computer models also been helpful in the development of 


  Artificial intelligence
• what have cognitive psychologists also developed to help explain the mental processes

  theoretical models
• what is a theoretical model 


  an abstract representation of how information processing works
• what are the stages of the computer model 


  encoding of information coming from the senses

  information manipulation

  output
• what is a theoretical model usually represented in


  picture / diagram form with boxes to represent structures and arrows to represent sequences / stages
• what is the first box in the theoretical model 


  environmental input
• what is the first arrow in the theoretical model 


  encoding the info
• what is the second box in the theoretical model 


  sensory memory
• what is the second arrow in the theoretical model 


  attention
• what is the third box for

  short term memory
• what do the arrows going off of the third box represent 


  output and maintenance rehersal
• what do the arrows between the third and fourth box represent 


  transfer

  retrieval
• what does the fourth and final box represent in the theoretical model 


  long term memory
• why are theoretical models based on inference 


  we cannot directly measure the processes in our brain
• when did cognitive neuroscience emerge 


  21st century ( most recent psychology branch )