5- cognitive approach (internal mental processes)

Question 1

what is the cognitive approach

Answer 1

• behaviours are influences by thoughts (conscious or unconscious)
• internal mental processes include perception, attention and memory
• direct observation isn’t possible so must be inferred from studies and behaviour of participants
• inference is going beyond immediate evidence and could easily be mistaken

Question 2

what are schemas

Answer 2

• mental representations of experience, knowledge and understanding
• help organise and interpret information in the brain
• allow us to take shortcuts when interpreting vast information on a daily basis
• help fill gaps in absence of info
• can cause us to exclude anything that doesn’t conform to our established ideas and we focus on things that confirm our pre-existing beliefs and ideas

Question 3

what are the 2 types of schemas

Answer 3

• role schema = about behaviour that is expected from someone in a particular role
• event schema = about what to expect from an event

Question 4

explain the research evidence by Bartlett for schemas

Answer 4

• English participants had to read Native American folktale called ‘the war of the ghosts’
• unfamiliar and strange with a different structure
• had to read and recall after different lengths of time
• all participants changed story to fit their own schemas
• details became more ‘English’ and had elements of English culture
• as more time passed, they remembered less of the original info

Question 5

the role of models

Answer 5

• theoretical models in cognitive psychology are simplified based on research
• often pictorial represented by boxes and arrows that show cause and effect
• often incomplete and frequently updated

Question 6

how are computers used to explain mental processes

Answer 6

• internal mental processes can be compared to info processing of a computer
• development of computers and programming led to focus on how sensory information is coded
• information is inputted through the senses, coded into memory and combined with previously stored info
• often used to explain memory (e.g. long term memory is like a hard disk and RAM is like working memory as it is cleared and reset when task has been carried out)

Question 7

what are the assumptions of the cognitive approach

Answer 7

1. info made available by the environment is processed by a serious of processing systems
2. processing systems transform/ alter info in systematic ways
3. aim of research is to specify processes/structures that underlie cognitive performance
4. info processing in humans resembles that in computers