Cognitive approach

• The Cognitive approach was developed in the 1960s as a reaction to the behavioural approach
• Cognitive approach


  • Behaviour can be explained in terms of internal mental processes
  • Cognitive psychologists cannot study these processes directly so study them indirectly by making inferences about what is going on inside people's minds on the basis of their behaviour
• Mind


  • Works like a computer in that it has an input (from our senses) which then processes and produces an output (behaviour)
  • Cognitive processes are internal functions and cannot be seen
• Information processing approach


  1. Input

  2. Storage

  3. Retrieval
• Sensory register


  Information coming into it from the senses
• Short-term memory (STM)


  Information is stored here for 15-30 seconds before it is then transferred to long-term memory (LTM) where it is stored indefinitely
• Retrieval


  We retrieve information from LTM and LTM
• Computer models


  • Used to study internal mental processes
  • Based on the idea that there are similarities between the way the mind and a computer process information
  • Both have a central processing unit
  • Both involve coding of information and transfer it into a different format
  • Both use 'stores' to hold information
• Computational models of the mind have been useful in the development of artificial intelligence (thinking machines)
• Aland Alampy (1962)


  the rat-man
• Two groups of participants were shown a sequence of pictures, eher a number of different.
• Cognitive neuroscience

  The scientific study of the influence of brain structures on mental processes
• Mapping brain areas to specific cognitive functions has a long history in psychology: as early as the 1960s Paul Broca had identified how damage to an area of the frontal lobe (which came to be known as Broca's Area) could permanently impair speech
• Cognitive neuroscience is the current content approach in Psychology, where they aim to map Cognitive function to specific creas of the brain, For example, the production of language to Broca's area in the frontal lobe
• production. It is only is the last twenty years, however, with advances in brain imag techniques such as MRI and PET scans, that scientists have been able to systematically observe and describe the neurological bans of mental process
• The focus of cognitive neuroscience has expanded recently to include the use of computer-generated models that are designed to read the brain. This has led to the development of mind mapping techniques known as brain fingerprinting. One possible future application of this could be to analyse the brain wave patterns of eyewitnesses to determine whether they are lying in court
• el the cognither approach was scientific and objective methods, Cognitive psychologhts have always employed controlled and rigorous methods of study, eg lab studies, in order to infer cognitive processes at work. This has enabled the two fields of biology and cognitive psychology to come together (cognitive neuroscience). This means that the study of the mind has established a credible, scientific basis.
• A strength is that the cognitive approach is less determinist than other approaches. The cognitive approach is based on soft determinism, recognising that our cognitive system can only operate within certain limits, but that we are free to think before responding to a stimulus. This is in contrast to the behaviourist approach which suggests that we are passive 'slaves' to the environment and lack free choice in out behaviour. The cognitive approach takes a more reasonable and flexible middle-ground position in the free-will determinism debate and is more in line with our subjective sense of free-will.
• • Alimitation of the cognitive approach is that it is based on machine reductionism
• Although there are similarities between the operations of the human mind and a computer (inputs and outputs, central processor, storage systems), the computer analogy has been criticised. For instance, human emotion and motivation have been shown to influence the accuracy of recall, e.g. in eyewitness accounts. These factors are not considered within the computer analogy. Therefore, the cognitive approach oversimplifies human cognitive processing and ignores important aspects that influence performance.
• A limitation of the cognitive approach is that it lacks external validity, Cognitive psychologists are only able to infer mental processes from the behaviour they observe, so the approach sometimes suffers from being too abstract and theoretical. Also, research is often carried out using artificial stimull, such as recall of word lists in studies of memory which may not represent everyday experience. Therefore, research into cognitive processes may lack external validity.
• Cognitive processes


  Private operations of the mind such as perception and attention that mediate between a sus and a particular response. These subjective internal mental processes can be studied using scientific methods such as lab experiments to infer their existence from observable behaviour (known as inference)
• Schema


  A mental framework of belets and expectations that influence cognitive processing (thinking): mental representations of knowledge Schemas (schemata) are developed from past experiences and allow us to make sense of the past and help us to predict the future
• Inference


  The process whereby cognitive psychologists draw conclusions about the way mental processes operate on the basis of observed behaviour.
• Cognitive neuroscience


  The scientific study of biological structures that underpin cognitive processes. includes the use of brain imaging techniques like PET and MRI scans to identify and describe the neurological basis of internal mental processes. For example, the link between the hippocampus and emotional memory.