Cognitive approach (not needed) Flashcards
What is the cognitive approach?
Focuses on how our mental processes affect behaviour.
What are internal mental processes?
Private operations of the mind such as perception and attention that mediate between stimulus and response.
What are schemas?
A mental framework of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive processing. They are developed from experience.
What is inference?
The process whereby cognitive psychologists draw conclusions about the way mental processes operate on the basis of observed behaviour.
What are the assumptions of the cognitive approach?
- Internal mental processes should be studied scientifically.
- Processes such as memory, perception and thinking are private and cannot be observed.
What are theoretical and computer models used in the cognitive approach?
Psychologists use these models to help them understand internal mental processes.
One theoretical model is the information processing approach which suggests that information flows through the cognitive system in a sequence of stages as in the multi-store model.
This information processing approach is based on the way that computers function but a computer model would involve actually programming a computer to see if such instructions produce similar output to humans.
What are the strengths of the cognitive approach?
It uses scientific and objective methods - lab experiments that produce reliable, objective data.
What are the limitations of the cognitive approach?
- Computer and theoretical models lack the complexity of the human mind.
- Cognitive psychologists are only able to infer mental processes from the behaviour they observe
- Studies of mental processes are often carried out using artificial stimuli that may not represent everyday memory experience. Therefore research on cognitive processes may lack external validity.
