Cognitive A03

• Scientific and objective methods

  Cognitive approach always employed highly controlled and rigorous methods of study to enable cognitive processes to work. Involves lab experiments- reliable and objective data.
• Biology and cognitive psychology coming together

  Cognitive neuroscience enabled biology and cognitive psychology to come together .Study of mind has established a credible scientific basis
• Machine reductionism

  Reducing the human mind and thought patterns down to the functioning of a computer like machine. This ignores the emotional and motivational components of thinking.
• Example of emotions affecting memory

  Human memory can be affected by emotional factors , influence of anxiety on an eyewitness
• Elizabeth Loftus


  Demonstrated the unreliability of eyewitness accounts and how they are easily distorted by number of factors like the way police question the. 'Smash' rather than 'Collide
• Application to everyday life

  Cognitive psychologists are only able to infer mental processes from behaviour observed in research so they can suffer from being abstract and theoretical in nature.
• External validity


  Experimental studies of mental processes are often carried out using artificial stimuli eg word lists - may not represent everyday memory

  Lacks ext validity
• Real life application

  Cognitive approach is a dominant approach in psychology applied to a wide range of practical and theoretical contexts
• Examples of Real life application

  Cognitive Psychology made an important contribution in field of AI and development of robots which might revolutionise how we live
• Less determinist than others

  Cognitive approach found on soft determinism and that our CS can only operate within the limits of what we know, but are free to think before responding to stimulus.