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What do you suppose you'd see if you could replay your thoughts on a screen? That would be a dream come true for cognitive psychologists! Imagine if mental processes were as easy to observe as behaviour.First, we will define the cognitive approach.Next, we'll go over the different cognitive approach assumptions.Then, delve into the cognitive approach strengths and weaknesses.We will glance…
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Jetzt kostenlos anmeldenWhat do you suppose you'd see if you could replay your thoughts on a screen? That would be a dream come true for cognitive psychologists! Imagine if mental processes were as easy to observe as behaviour.
In looking at the psychology of aggressive behaviour, for example, do psychologists only look at the behaviour in response to an event? What about the thoughts that accompanied the aggression? One psychological approach that emphasises internal mental processes is the cognitive approach.
Fig. 1 The cognitive approach highlights how internal processes influence behaviour.
The cognitive approach in psychology focuses on how people understand, take in, organise and use information.
When behaviourism dominated psychology in the early twentieth century, the emphasis on observable behaviour made it difficult to research cognition, resulting in dissatisfaction with the approach. This discontent, combined with the 1960s development of computers, led to the cognitive approach in psychology.
Cognitive psychologists hold that internal mental processes underpin behaviour and stress the value of conducting empirical research on these difficult-to-observe processes.
Internal mental processes, such as memory, perception, reasoning, and language, are mental activities for processing information that influences behaviour.
The cognitive approach explains human behaviour as affected mainly by internal mental processes. From a cognitive approach, psychologists study these mental processes to understand better how we decide, solve problems, create ideas, remember information, and use language, which all relate to our behaviour.
To illustrate the study of internal mental processes in cognitive psychology, here's an example of a famous study on perception by Simons and Chabris (1999).
The experiment aimed to test the differences in perception and attention. Researchers asked two hundred twenty-eight participants to watch four videos where two teams of basketball players pass an orange basketball between one another.
One group wore white T-shirts, and the other wore black T-shirts.
The participants were asked to count the number of passes in two conditions:
The researchers either presented a transparent or opaque video to the participants. The videos also showed a woman with an umbrella or a man in a gorilla costume.
In the transparent video, the players appeared to be see-through. The researchers separated the subjects into two groups: the first group watched the transparent video, and the other group the opaque one.
After the presentation, the participants recorded their tally and indicated whether they observed anything unusual.
The results showed that only 54% noticed the unexpected event. The unexpected event was more noticeable in the opaque videos, and the more challenging task made it difficult for the participants to catch the unexpected event.
The researchers concluded that inattention makes us unaware of certain visual stimuli.
We've seen an example of how cognitive psychology uses behavioural data (e.g., performance in mental tasks) to examine cognitive processes such as perception. However, these approaches are pretty indirect.
Over the past years, there have been significant developments in gathering more direct evidence about internal mental processes. With the development of brain-scanning machines, the ability to search for the biological basis of internal mental processes also has advanced.
This encouraged the formation of cognitive science in 1956, followed by recognising neuroscience as a discipline in 1971. Efforts to close the gap between cognitive science and neuroscience resulted in cognitive neuroscience.
Cognitive neuroscience combines brain activity and behaviour analysis to understand human cognition using brain imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a technique that provides insight into the brain activity of activated areas during a mental task.
Although the advancement of brain imaging techniques is incredible, it doesn't come without limitations. One limitation of brain imaging techniques is that they do not show whether certain brain areas help perform a task.
Activation of some brain areas may be due to stimulation not relevant to the activity. It can only indicate links between behaviour and brain activity.
Memory is one of the main areas of cognitive psychology. Investigations through the cognitive approach lead to essential discoveries on memory and the role of schema.
There are several ways in which the cognitive approach explains memory:
Schemas are our internal framework of knowledge about the world that directs us about what to expect and respond to in the environment.
The role of schemas is:
For example, you're uncertain if a photo shows a cloud or a feather, but when you see it against a sky background, you realise it's a feather-looking cloud. Activating a schema (sky) enabled you to perceive it as a cloud.
We've seen how the cognitive approach within psychology highlighted the scientific investigations of internal mental processes. In this section, we'll look at the main assumptions of the cognitive approach.
We've seen how cognitive psychologists measure accuracy and performance to draw inferences about internal mental processes. Aside from that, the cognitive approach in psychology also uses theoretical and computer models to explain internal mental processes.
An inference is to draw a logical conclusion from different sources (e.g., theoretical models) and pieces of evidence (e.g., study findings).
Cognitive psychology uses models to make assumptions about how the mind works and then, in turn, experiments to test these assumptions. Cognitive psychologists use the models to explain their findings if the results support the model's predictions.
There are two kinds of models theoretical and computer models.
Theoretical models are verbal theories that attempt to explain mental processes, which may be vague. And computer models are programmed theories (via computer programs) of mental processes, which may be more precise than theoretical models.
How does the cognitive approach draw inferences about human cognition using theoretical models? Here's an example using the working memory model.
According to Baddeley and Hitch (1974), the central executive component functions to control attention, but the exact nature of this component remains unclear. To better understand the capacity of the central executive, we can make predictions using the model's assumptions. One assumption is that the central executive has a small storage.
Hitch and Baddeley (1976) predicted that the simultaneous performance of a verbal thinking test and remembering six random digits would involve the central executive, which can impact the performance of the verbal thinking test. The results were consistent with the model.
As you can see, they did not directly observe the central executive but only drew inferences based on the theoretical model. The working memory model was able to explain their findings.
How do computer models draw inferences about mental processes? Let's look at Newell's and Simon's (1972) General Problem Solver, one of the earliest computer models in cognitive psychology. They designed the program by gathering verbal reports and encoding a specific problem-solving approach in the program. Testing the program showed that the General Problem Solver and humans worked similarly in problem-solving.
The findings also suggested that humans use simple strategies to solve problems, which was one of the assumptions of the computer program. Another interesting result is that the model can better remember previous outcomes of a problem but perform poorly in planning future actions.
This section will discuss the cognitive approach's strengths and weaknesses.
The following are the strengths of the cognitive approach:
Schemas can help us understand, for example, how eyewitness memories can be distorted and become invalid.
The following are the weaknesses of the cognitive approach:
With a deeper appreciation and understanding of internal mental processes, the cognitive approach provides practical applications:
Fig. 2 The cognitive approach has been applied to educational settings.
Concepts from the information processing model and schema helped improve learning and teaching strategies in education settings. Teachers can use the cognitive approach to increase understanding and retention of information and to make learning more meaningful by connecting new information with previously learned material.
The cognitive approach can also provide insights into the reliability of eyewitness testimony aiding police work, such as cognitive interviews.
A cognitive interview is an interview technique that helps retrieve eyewitness memory to reduce interviewer influence.
This involves mentally recreating the setting in which the crime took place or going back to the original location to improve memory retrieval.
Another significant development from cognition observation is the cognitive behavioural approach or cognitive behavioural therapy. Aaron Beck developed this type of approach in the 1960s. Cognitive behavioural therapy helps people change their behaviour by examining their thoughts and feelings and then challenging those thoughts and feelings.
The cognitive behavioural approach recognises three elements of cognition that play a role in psychological disorders:
Catastrophising is when you think about the worst thing that could happen, no matter how unlikely it is, or when you see a situation as worse than it is.
The cognitive approach in psychology focuses on how people understand, take in, organise and use information. It advocates the scientific study of internal mental processes.
The cognitive approach explains human behaviour as affected mainly by internal mental processes. From a cognitive approach, psychologists study these mental processes to understand better how we decide, solve problems, create ideas, remember information, and use language, which all relate to our behaviour.
The social cognitive approach in psychology holds that behaviour is not just a response to a stimulus but an interplay of influences from the environment, experiences, mental processes, and other individual traits such as cultural background.
The cognitive approach defines memory as a succession of stores (e.g., multi-store model of memory), a product of information processing (e.g., levels-of-processing approach), and reconstructive (e.g., influences of schema).
The strengths of the cognitive approach are it uses scientific and controlled experiments that produce reliable results and can be replicated, and has many practical applications.
A weakness is that it can be considered reductionist.
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