Cognitive Approach

• key assumptions of cognitive approach

  - behaviour is the result of conscious and uncoscious information processing (thoughts)

  - the mind works like a computer

  - internal mental processes should be studied scientifically
• define schema

  - a cognitive framework; a collection of ideas about a person or situation, formed through experience
• outline Brewer and Treyens


  - lab experiment, ppts shown a room they believed to be an office and were asked to write down everything they could remember about the room
• findings Brewer and Treyens

  - most ppts remembered schematic objects concerning an office schema

  - recalled unexpected objects that were not inline with their schema, distinctive (skull)

  - recalled items that were not in the room but associated with an office (books, telephone)
• define inferences, cognitive approach

  - going beyond observed behaviour to make assumptions about the underlying structure of mental processes that resulted in behaviour, as they cannot be directly observed
• define emergence of cognitive neuroscience

  - the development of new brain scanning techniques have allowed thought processes to be linked to patterns of activity in the brain
• outline 2 methods of cognitive neuroscience

  - PET

  - fMRI
• define theoretical model

  - aim to explain and make inferences about mental processes; simplified representation of a particular mental process

  - components can be tested individually and examined in detail through scientific enquiry
• define computer analogy

  - likens the human mind to a computer

  - the human mind processes info in a similar way to a computer (encode and store information, they have outputs)
• A03, cognitive approach

  - machine reductionism: oversimplifies human behaviour by likening the human mind to a computer,computers do not experience emotion, consciousness etc

  - real world applications: cognitive psychologist's ideas on info processing have been used to develop the field of AI
• soft determinism

  cognitive psychologists suggest that our actions are dictated by our previous experiences/schemas

  however, our conscious experience can make the final decision enacting free will