evaluation points

• evaluation 1

  a strength of the cognitive approach is that has been applied to a wide range of practical and theoretical contexts. it has also had major influences in areas such as the treatment of psychological disorders using cognitive based interventions and in the criminal justice system in terms of assessing the reliability of eyewitnesses. for example, cognitive psychology has made an important contribution in the field of AI and the development of 'thinking machines', exciting advances that may revolutionise how we live in the future.
• evaluation 2

  a strength of the cognitive approach is that it has always employed highly controlled rigorous methods of study in order to infer cognitive processes at work. this has involved the use of laboratory experiments to produce reliable and objective data. in addition, the emergence of cognitive neuroscience has enabled the two fields of biology and cognitive psychology to come together which means that the study of the mind ha sestablished a credible scientific basis.
• evaluation 3


  this approach is a more reasonable 'interactionist; position than the hard determinism suggested by other approaches.a strength of the cognitive approach is that it is founded on soft determinism. it recognises that our cognitive system can only operate within the limits of what we know, but that we are free to think before responding to a stimulus. this approach Is more flexible than approaches such as the behaviourist approach>
• evaluation 4


  such machine reductionism ignores the influence of human emotion and motivation on the cognitive system and how this may affect out ability to process information. a problem with the cognitive approach is the use of the computer analogy. although there are similarities between the human mind and the operations of a computer, the computer analogy has been criticised by many. research has found that human memory may be affected by emotional factors such as the influence of anxiety or eye witness
• evaluation 5

  a limitation of the cognitive approach is that many studies tend to use tasks that have little in common with participants' natural everyday experiences. for example, experiments in memory use artificial test materials that are meaningless in everyday life e.g random word lists or digits. it is unlikely that we would be able to generalise these findings to real life situations, therefore much of the research in cognitive psychology may be criticised as lacking external validity.