Cognitive approach

    Cards (18)

    • cognitive approach on views on development: children form complex schemas as they age (intellectual development)
    • cognitive approach on nature vs nurture: schemas are innate but are refined through experience, MIXTURE
    • cognitive approach on reductionism: MACHINE REDUCTIONISM - shows people are info processing machines and ignores emotions
    • cognitive approach on determinism: we are choosers of our own thoughts and behaviours, SOFT
    • cognitive approach on explanations and treatment of abnormal/typical behaviour: good especially combined to behavioural (CBT), it treats depression
    • Cognitive approach assumptions:
      • all human behaviour can be explained using internal mental processes such as memory, attention, perception, and thinking
      • internal processes are private and cannot be observed, therefore, inferences must be made to study them
    • Inference: the process whereby cognitive psychologists draw conclusions about the way mental processes operate on the basis of observed behaviour
    • Theoretical models:
      • often represented in boxes and arrows that indicate cause and effect
      • models are simplified, usually pictorial, representations of a particular mental process based on a current research
    • Information processing approach: information is mentally processed through a sequence of input, storage, and retrieval (e.g Atkinson and Shiffrin multi-store memory model)
    • Multi-store memory model
    • Computer models:
      • refers to the use of computer analogies as a representation of the human mind
      • the mind can be compared to a computer because there are similarities between them
    • Computer model comparisons:
      area responsible for storing informations:
      • COMPUTER: central processing unit
      • MIND: the brain
      the process of turning storage into usable format:
      • COMPUTER: coding
      • MIND: encoding a memory (visual, auditory)
    • Schema: a mental representation that enables us to organise our knowledge into categories. The older we get, the more detailed and sophisticated they become
    • Strength of schemas:
      • they allow us to process information quickly and act as mental shortcuts that prevent us from being overwhelmed by environmental stimuli
    • Weakness of schemas:
      • make us develop stereotypes or distort our interpretation of sensory information
    • Cognitive neuroscience:
      • mapping brain areas to cognitive functions has been done for a long time
      • 1860s Paul Broca linked damage to the Broca‘s area to difficulties with speech production
      • brain techniques such as FMRIs have allowed us to observe the neurological cause of mental disorders
      • cognitive neuroscience is now it’d own field
    • Cognitive neuroscience: the scientific study of the influence of the brain structured on mental processes
    • Strength of cognitive approach:
      • POINT: one strength of the cognitive approach is it has always employed highly controlled and rigorous methods of study in order to enable researchers to infer cognitive processes at work
      • EVIDENCE: this has involved the use of lab experiments, which are highly controlled, to produce reliable, objective data
      • EXPLAIN: this method is scientific as it has objective data, it’d systematic, replicable, and falsifiable as it doesn’t involve any human bias as it’s a machine that calculates the results. This is why the cognitive approach supports psychology as a science
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