Approaches: cognitive approach

Question 1

Summarise the cognitive approach

Answer 1

• how our mental processes (e.g. thoughts, perceptions, attention) affect behaviour.
• cognitive psychologists study processes indirectly by making inferences about what is going on inside people’s minds, based on their behaviour (reductionist approach).

Question 2

what are the principles of the cognitive approach

Answer 2

• mental systems have a limited capacity -> amount of info that can be processed will be influenced by how demanding the task is and how much other info is processed.
• control mechanisms oversee all mental processes -> requires more processing power new tasks, leaving less available for everything else.
• 2 way flow of info -> we take info from the world, process it and react to it -> we also use our knowledge and exp to understand the World.

Question 3

what are role schemas

Answer 3

• these are ideas about the behaviour which is expected from someone in a certain role, setting or situation.

Question 4

what are event schemas

Answer 4

• these are also known as scripts -> contain info about what happens in a situation.

Question 5

what are self schemas

Answer 5

• these contain info about ourselves based on physical characteristics and personality, as well as beliefs and values.
  -> self schemas can affect how you act.

Question 6

what are the role of schemas

Answer 6

• a ‘package’ of ideas and info developed through exp -> helps you to organise and interpret info and exps.
• when info is consistent with a schema, it is assimilated into the schema -> exp is assimilated and schema is strengthened.
• when the info is inconsistent: accommodation occurs and the schema has to change in order to resolve the problem.

Question 7

what are the problems with schemas?

Answer 7

• schemas can stop people from learning new info:
  -> prejudice and stereotypes can be an outcome of schemas.
  -> schema which hold expectations or beliefs about a certain subgroup of people may bias the way we process incoming info.
• can lead to faulty conclusions and unhelpful behaviour.
• can lead to perception errors.

Question 8

What are the methods involved in brain scanning

Answer 8

• lesion studies -> see if brain damage changes behaviour.
• Electrophysiology -> using electric and magnetic fields to measure brain activity and brain waves.
• Neuroimaging -> pinpointing areas of the brain which are active when a task is performed.

Question 9

Explain Tulving’s research on brain scanning

Answer 9

• Using PET and fMRI scans, Tulving systematically observed neurological basis in mental processing.
• Tasks involving episodic (personal memory store) and semantic (knowledge of the world store) memory may be located at different sides of the pre-frontal cortex.
• left-side: involved in recalling semantic memories.
• right-side: involved in recalling episodic memories.

Question 10

(+) explain how the cognitive approach adopts scientific and objective methods

Answer 10

• employs highly controlled and rigorous methods of study in order to enable researchers to infer cognitive processes at work.
• lab experiments: reliable, objective -> data produced.
• biology and cognitive psych now work together.
  -> credible scientific basis.

Question 11

(-) explain how the cognitive approach adopts machine reductionism

Answer 11

• ignores influence of human emotion and motivation on the cognitive system and how this may affect our ability to process info.
• humans have an unreliable and unlimited memory.
• debate of free will.

Question 12

(-) explain how the cognitive approach has limited application to everyday life

Answer 12

• only able to infer mental processes from behaviours observed.
• too abstract and theoretical in nature.
• using artificial stimuli may not represent everyday experience.
  -> may lack external validity.

Question 13

(+) explain how the cognitive approach can be applied to the treatment of mental health (CBT)

Answer 13

• Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).
• Patients learn how to notice negative/faulty thought cognitions and test how accurate they are.
• goals are set to think positively/adapt thoughts.

Question 14

(+) explain how the cognitive approach is less determinist than other approaches

Answer 14

• Instead, this approach uses soft-determinism: recognises that our cognitive system can only operate within the limits of what we know, but that we are free to think before responding to a stimulus.
• This is a reasonable ‘interactionist’ position.