5: Cognitive approach

• Cognitive approach is...

  The term 'cognitive' has to come to mean 'metal processes' it focuses on how our mental processes affect behaviour
• Schema means...

  A mental set of beliefs and expectations influence cognitive processing, they develop from experience
• Inference means...


  A process where cognitive psychologists draw conclusions about the way mental processes operate on the basis of observed behaviour
• Internal mental processes means...

  Private operations of the mind such as perception and attention that mediate between stimulus and response
• Cognitive neuroscience means...


  The scientific study of biological structures (in the brain) that underpin cognitive processes
• Assumptions of cognitive approach...

  Developed in 1960's

  Behaviourists failed to consider mental processes

  Computers gave psychologists a way of describing the brain processes
• Multi store model of memory is...

  By Atkinson and shiffrin (1968)

  Info flows through our cognitive system in a sequence of stages

  Model has been inferred from testing memory in the lab
• Memory has...

  A very limited capacity (7+/-2) between 5-9 items.

  
  

  Limited duration holds info for about 17 seconds.
• What does lacking external validity mean?

  Artificial stimuli that many not represent everyday experiences
• Paul broca found...


  An area in the frontal lobe that if damaged affected normal speech
• Episodic memory


  Personal details and events about yourself which is long term
• Semantic memory


  Involved information that has no involvement with you eg.meaning of things
• Scanning methods that have discovered areas of brain lined to mental disorders...

  Parahippocampal gyrus is linked with OCD
• What is brain fingerprinting?

  Functional neuroimaging context it aims to predict patterns of brain connectivity and mental disorders

  Uses an EEG

  MEMORY

  can infer if lying in court or not
• Brain linked to a computer by...

  Processing

  Encoding

  Storage
• Strengths of cognitive approach

  Uses scientific methods

  Soft determinism

  Wide range of useful applications
• Weaknesses of cognitive approach

  machine reductionism (comparing the human mind to computers has been criticised. machine reductionism ignores how human emotion can affect how we process information. e.g. research says that human memory can be affected by emotions like anxiety on eyewitnesses)

  
  

  lacks external validity (cognitive psychologists can only infer mental processes from the behaviour they observe. cognitive psychology can be too abstract and theoretical. also experiments of mental processes often use artificial stimuli = may not represent real life situations