Cognitive

• Schemas are used to organise past experiences and to interpret and respond to new situations.
• Inference is when you make estimations about cognitive process, due to these processes being unobservable to scientists.
• Schemas are useful to take cognitive shortcuts when interpreting info but can cause stereotyping and prejudice.
• Theoretical models can help explain unobservable processes. They are often represented as diagrams and explain how info is passed and manipulated.
• An example of a theoretical model is Atkinson and Sheriff's Multi-store memory model.
• Computer models can also explain how the mind processes info. They involve an Input, a coding stage and an out put (behaviour).
• In computer models the LTM is regarded as a hard drive and the STM as the RAM (Random access memory).
• Computer models have helped the development of AI by understanding how humans process, store and retrieve information.
• The cognitive approach has been aided by the emergence of neuroscience. This involves neuro-imaging (brain scans). The combination of studies involving scans and experimental methods is rapidly becoming a popular paradigm.
• Neuroscience has helped explain where cognitive processes take place. For example, the link between the hippocampus and episodic memory and OCD being linked to the parahippocampal gyrus.
• Maguire (2000) provides evidence of neuroscience impacting cognitive research. She found that London taxi drivers have bigger hippocampi due to their navigational and episodic memory.
• EVAL POINT: Neuro imaging has given cognitive psychologists objective confirmation instead of basing theories off of inference. However, scans data can lack a cause and effect relationship and is often correlational.
• EVAL POINT: The cognitive approach is holistic in nature. It explains complex processes biologically, but still incorporates the role of behaviour, memory and consciousness.
• EVAL POINT: The cognitive approach has real world applications. Cognitive memory research has aided court and police reforms, regarding eye witness testimonies and the cognitive interview. It also has developed cognitive behavioural therapy, aiding mental illness recovery.
• EVAL POINT: The cognitive approach doesn't take behavioural aspects into account, like motivation and emotion. It tends to view humans as biological machines.
• I & D : Cog respects both nature and nurture. It accounts for biology (scans) yet also respects experiences (memory).
• I & D: Cog has a nomothetic and idiographic approach. It relies on case studies, like Clive Wearing, as well as universal laws, like Maguire.