Cognitive approach

• What is the cognitive approach?

  Argues that internal mental processes can and should be studied scientifically. This approach is focused on how our mental processes affect behaviour.
• Explain what is meant by internal mental processes.


  Thought process in your head

  e.g. perception, attention, memory, language etc
• What is inference?


  Act of drawing a conclusion from evidence and reasoning.
• Multi-store model- information processing

  
• What are schemas?

  Bartlett.

  A mental framework of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive processing and help us interpret the world. They are developed from our experiences, upbringing, and culture.
• Why are schemas useful?


  Make sense of the world by providing shortcuts to identifying things that we come across.
• How can schemas be harmful?

  They can lead to bias and generalisation.
• Explains Bartlett's war of the ghosts study.

  20 British participants.

  Bartletts gave the participants a Native american story called the 'War of the Ghosts,' which was unfamiliar to them. Participants were asked to recall the story. Participants changed the story in their recall. Memory recall is not an exact replica of what is learnt but is a reconstruction based on schemas.
• What is cognitive neuroscience?

  Scientific study of the influence of brain structures on mental processes.

  Advances in brain scanning technology have allowed scientists to describe the neurological basis of mental processing.
• What are the strengths of the cognitive approach?

  • Uses scientific and objective methods- Carefully controlled lab research (standardised procedures). Lab studies are used to infer cognitive processes.
  • Real life application- e.g. used to improve eyewitness testimony. Use of computer models help us understand unobservable mental processes
• What are the limitations of the cognitive approach?

  • Machine reductionism- Ignores emotional, motivational, and social factors in human behaviour. Explains how but not why. Lacks ecological validity.
  • Lacks external validity—only able to infer mental processes from behaviour they observe. Research is often carried out using artificial stimuli, such as recall of word lists, which may not represent everyday experience.