cognitive

• Cognitive psychologists

  Study scientifically, they study them indirectly by making inferences about what is going on inside people's mind on the basis of their behavior
• Theoretical models


  • Are flow charts representations of steps of mental processes e.g. the multi- store memory model
• Cognitive approach

  Uses computer models where the mind is compared to a computer by suggesting there are similarities in the way information is processed
• Concepts used in cognitive models

  • Central processing unit (the brain)
  • Coding (to turn information into a usable format)
  • Use of stores to hold info
• Schema


  A mental framework of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive processing, developed from experience, act as a mental framework for the interpretation of incoming information
• Through experience you have developed a scheme for a chair


  Allows you to respond to the object appropriately when you encounter one
• As we age our schemes become more sophisticated, we develop mental representations for everything
• Function of schema

  Enable us to process info quickly, facilitate a short cut to processing that prevents us from being overwhelmed by environmental stimuli, but may distort our interpretations of sensory information leading to perceptual errors
• Scientific and objective methods

  • Highly controlled lab experiments, many studies supporting models of memory were conducted in a lab setting with large samples
• Practical applications

  Cognitive psychology has made important contribution in the filed of therapy, CBT is a widely used and successful therapy used to treat patients
• Soft determinism

  Recognizes that our cognitive system can only operate within the limits of what we know (schema) but we are free to think before responding to a stimulus