Strengths

• :) Mediational processes

  • Focuses on the important ‘processes’ that occur between stimulus and response
  • Cognitive psychologists have gone some way to explaining how important meditational processes, such as perception and memory, affect the way we respond to the world around us
  • This has helped explain practical elements of human behaviour
• :) Important Contributions

  • Has influenced many areas of psychology. As well as being usefully applied on therapy, such as in CBT, to successfully treat disorders like depression
  • Been applied to developmental psychology - Piaget (1970) suggested that children's thinking is not the same as that of adults.
  • Children aged around 8 or 9 can't think abstract. If they want to solve a maths problem, they need to see it in a concrete form, such as manipulating counting sticks. Piaget's ideas had a major effect on teaching in primary schools as teachers realised it was important
• :) Scientific Approach

  • Is objective and controlled scientific research
  • For example, memory research has in the main been conducted under strict laboratory conditions, and in more recent times this has involved using brain scanning techniques
  • e.g. PET scans, MRI scans areas of the brain that are involved in short- and long-term memory