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Summary Cognitive approach
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The Cognitive ApproachKey terms
- Cognitive approach: the term ‘cognitive’ has come to mean ‘mental processes’, so this
approach is focused on how our mental processes (e.g. thoughts, perceptions, attention)
affect behaviour
- Internal mental processes: ‘private’ operations of the mind such as perception and
attention that mediate between stimulus and response
- Schema: a mental framework of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive
processing. They are developed from experience
- Inference: the process whereby cognitive psychologists draw conclusions about the way
mental processes operate on the basis of observed behaviour
- Cognitive neuroscience: the scientific study of biological structures that underpin
cognitive processes
The cognitive approach
Assumptions
In direct contrast to the behaviourist approach, the cognitive approach argues that internal
mental processes can, and should, be studied scientifically
- The cognitive approach has investigated those areas of human behaviour that were
neglected by behaviourists, such as memory, perception and thinking
- These processes are ‘private’ and cannot be observed, so psychologists study
them indirectly by making inferences about what is going on inside the mind on
the basis of behaviour
Theoretical and computer models
One way to study internal processes is through the use of theoretical models
- One important theoretical model is the information processing approach, which suggests
that information flows through the cognitive system in a sequence of stages that include
input, storage and retrieval, as in the multistore model of memory
The cognitive approach also uses computer models, where the mind is compared to a computer
(the computer analogy) by suggesting that there are similarities in the way information is
processed
- These models use the concepts of a central processing unit (the brain), the concept of
coding (to turn information into a useable format) and the use of ‘stores’ to hold
information
- Such computational models of the mind have proved useful in the development
of ‘thinking machines’ (robots) and AI
The role of schema
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