AO3

• cognitive neuroscience 1

  Scanning techniques have proved useful in establishing the neurological basis of some mental disorders e.g. a link was found between the parahippocampal gyrus and OCD
• cognitive neuroscience 2

  Cognitive neuroscience has demonstrated the brain’s plasticity throughout life - healthy brain areas may take over the functions of those areas that are damaged, destroyed or even missing: neuroscientists suggest that this process can occur quickly after trauma and then slow down after several weeks or months.
• cognitive neuroscience 3

  Ethical issues - Cognitive neuroscience now also includes the use of computer-generated models that are designed to ‘read’ the brain. This could lead to analysing the brain wave patterns of an eyewitness in court to determine whether they are lying.
• The cognitive approach uses a very scientific method; mainly lab experiments. These are controlled and replicable so the results are reliable however they lack ecological validity because of the artificiality of the tasks and environment so it might not reflect the way people process information in their everyday life.
• Free will/Determinism - The position of the approach is soft determinism as thoughts are influenced by previous experiences (schemas) and brain structure, but conscious thought can override these as an expression of freewill, as seen in cognitive therapies such as systematic desensitisation.
• Nature/Nurture - The cognitive approach takes the interactionist view of the debate as it argues that our behaviour is influenced by learning and experience (nurture), but also by some of our brains’ innate capacities as information processors e.g. language acquisition (nature).
• Holism/Reductionism - Their use of models such as the computer analogy helps us to understand the complex processes in the mind and how information flows through it.  However, these models are over simplistic as information does not flow in this way and we are not like computers (we have emotions, computers don’t). This is an example of machine reductionism where the mind is compared to the processes of a machine.
• Uses inferences to assume underlying processes in thinking, and this is unscientific as internal mental processes cannot be directly tested and so inferences may be incorrect.
• Idiographic/Nomothetic - It is a nomothetic approach as it focuses on establishing theories on information processing that apply to all people. However it does tend to use case studies of individuals with brain injuries to make suggestions about the structure of mental processes before testing the theories in large-scale experiments.
• Are the research methods used scientific? -The cognitive approach uses lab experiments which are highly controlled therefore they are replicable. However, it measures non-observable behaviors; therefore it could be argued that it is not as scientific as the behaviorist approach.
• Case studies deal with very small samples so the results cannot be generalised to the wider population as they are influenced by individual characteristics. However, they allow us to study cases which could not be produced experimentally because of ethical and practical reasons.