Cognitive

• Evaluate scientific and objective method as a strength?

  • highly controlled methods
  • Lab experiments
  • Reliable, objective data
  • Emergence of cognitive neuroscience bring biology and cognitive psychology together
• Evaluate machine reductionism as a limitation?

  • computer analogy criticised as it ignores the influence of human emotion and motivation on the cognitive system
  • Research found that human memory may be affected by emotional factors
• Evaluate application to everyday life as a strength?

  • only able to infer mental processes form the behaviour they observe
  • too abstract and theoretical
  • Studies of mental processes often use artificial stimuli that may not represent everyday experience
  • Can lack external validity
• evaluate less determinist than other approaches as a strength?

  • soft determinism
  • cognitive system can only operate within the limits of what we know, but we are free to think before responding to a stimulus
• What did the cognitive approach argue?

  internal mental processes should be studied scientifically
• how are internal mental processes studied?

  through inference
• what is a limitation to schema?

  can distort our interpretations of sensory information and leadto perpetual errors
• what is cognitive neuroscience?

  scientific study of the influence of the brain structures on mental processes
• what can happen when the brocas area is damaged?

  permanently impair speech production
• what does the parahippocampal gyrus do?

  processes unpleasant emotions
• describe what happened in the rat man study?

  • two groups of participants shown a sequence of pictures, either faces or animals
  • then shown the rat man
  • participants who saw faces more likely to perceive figure as man
  • the ones who saw animal as more likely to see a rat
• What are internal mental processes?

  • attention
  • percepotion
• what is schema?

  a mental framework, containing collections of knowledge that is built from experience
• what does schema allow us to do?

  • shortcuts
  • allow us to engage with the world without being overwhelmed
  • allows us to make assumptions
  • beck stated people with depression have faulty schemas
• what is the computer model?

  compares the brain with the computer, stating there are similarities between them
• what are the similarities in brain and computer?

  • both systems receive inputs and generate outputs
  • process info through programmed steps
• what is the theoretical model?

  Representation of steps to a particular mental processes