A03

• * real life applications

  • places emphasis on internal mental processes to explain depression - due to problems with negative & irrational thoughts
  • as a result has led to cognitive treatment of depression - rebt where it aims to change irrational thoughts to more rational ones
  • helped the developement of treatments for patients with a mental illness
  • so shows that it has practical applications for explaining certain behaviours in real world
• * scientific?

  • objective, uses lab experiments so has high internal validity
  • evs are controlled so can establish cause & effect relationship between mental processes
  • internal
  • falisifiable & objective so it can be concluded that thoughts influence behaviour
• * clinical evidence from clive wearing

  • damaged hippocampus & had difficulty transferring info from short term to long term memory
  • affected his cognitions & in turn his behaviour - supporting the use of cognitive neuroscience
  • shows there are specific parts of brain that have certain functions which determine human processes & behaviour showing thoughts influence behaviour
  • but case studies are hard to replicate & unique so reliability of this method to understand cog approach may be questioned
• X machine reductionist?

  • reduces something complex to something very simple that bieng our internal mental processes are same as computers
  • pro : allows us to research in detail so is likely to be scientific
  • con: ignores other factors that could affect human processes eg human emotion
  • if we dont consider other factors which influence human processes & control these vairables then we are not accurately measuring the effect of IV on DV
• X unrealistic?

  • uses lab experiments so behaviour will be unnatural
  • also compares processes to computers which is not realistic as humans make errors & dont necessarily work in same process every time we do something
  • ecological
  • findings cannot be generalised to real life situations
  • also difficult to compare humans to computers as it neglects confounding variables which may also influence behaviour - personality