Cognitive Approach
| For this section you need to be able to:
(a) Define cognitive psychology showing understanding that the approach is about the role of cognition/cognitive processes in human behaviour. (b) Define and use psychological terminology accurately and appropriately including the terms: |
Cognitive psychology studies our mental processes or cognitions. These mental processes that cognitive psychologists focus on include attention, perception, memory, and thinking.
The main assumption of the cognitive approach is that information received from our senses is processed by the brain and that this processing directs how we behave or at least justifies how we behave the way that we do.
Cognitive processes are examples of hypothetical constructs. That is, we cannot directly see processes such as thinking but we can infer what a person is thinking based on how they act.
Cognitive psychology has been influenced by developments in computer science and analogies are often made between how a computer works and how we process information. Based on this computer analogy cognitive psychology is interested in how the brain inputs, stores and outputs information.
The term information processing therefore refers to the way that information is taken in by the senses, analysed and then responded to.
It is worth noting though that humans are much more sophisticated than computer systems and an important criticism directed at the cognitive approach is that it often ignores the way in which other factors, such as past experiences, culture influence and emotions effect how we process information.
Memory is a cognitive process.
Memory is the capacity to encode, store and retrieve information. Without memory learning could not take place.
It is often argued that memory is a three stages process (encoding, storage and retrieval) and that failure at any one of these stages can lead to forgetting.
The first stage is encoding and this refers to how information is initially processed so that it can be converted into a format that can be stored.
The second stage is storage and this refers to the maintenance of information without actively using it for a period after the initial encoding.
The third stage is retrieval which refers to the process of locating and extracting stored information so that it can be recalled.
Forgetting is defined as the experience of not being able to recall information, such as an event, fact or a person’s name.
Here are some quick multi-choice questions on the cognitive approach cognitive