| What is the key assumption 1 called? | Internal mental process explain behaviour |
| What does key assumption 1 believe ? | -Operations of the mind that mediate between stimulus and response
-Believe that processes should be studied scientifically
-Process are private and can't be directly observed, study them identify by making inferences about what is goin on inside their head eg: memory, thinking |
| What is key assumption 2? | Schemas influence our behaviour |
| What does key asssumption 2 believe? | -Cognitive processing can be affected by a person's shemas: expectation and belief
-Help to process information qucikly and stop them form being overwhelmed by environemntal stimulus, but it can also distort our interpretations of sensory information, leading to perceptal errors. |
| What are schemas? | Cognitive representation of our ideas about a person, a situation developed through experience - mental framework of the interpretation of incoming information received by the cognitive system |
| What is key assumption 3? | Human behaviour can be explained in models |
| What does key assumption 3 believe? | -The idea that the mind functions like a computer
-Understad how computers work because they are manmade and can be pulled aprt
-Make infrences, which are assumptions about mental processes that be directly observed and beyond the immediate research evidence, so can make assumptions about human thought process and behaviour |
| What is cognitive neuroscience? | Study of the influence of brain structure on mental processes |
| What is the main focus of cognitive neuroscience? | To look for a biological baises to thought processes |
| Who was the first to label 'cognitive neuroscience'? | Miller and Gazzaniga, 20 years following the recognition of neuroscience in 1971 |
| Application of cognitive neuroscience? | Scanning techniques have proved useful in establishing hte neurological basis of some mental disorders, eg: found tha thtere is a connection between parahippocampal gyrus and OCD as it processes negative emotions |
| A strength of the cognitive approach? | -There is supporting evidence for the 2nd key assumption
-Seen in Simons and Chabris' experiment of 'Gorillas on our midst', only 54% of 192 observers noticed the gorilla walking across the screen
-Supports the 2nd assumption seeing as schemas make shortcutes within the brain as they try and process the infromation of counting the passes made on the team, this allows the brain to omit other sensory infromation, leading to perceptual errors.
-Increases the internal validity of the key assumption |
| A strength of the cognitive approach? | -Fairly scientific on thier approach in understanding the brain
-Seen through Tulving's tudy into different areas of the brain performing tasks their participants performed various memory task while their brains were being scanned using a PET scanner
-Found that semantic memories (knowledge of the world) were recalled in the left prefrontal cortex while episodic memories (personal events) were recalled from the right prefrontal cortex.
-Lab experiments which means variables are highly controlled, resulting in scientitic rigour and allowing for cause and effect to be established. |
| What is a weakness of the cogntive approach ? | -Too reductionist as it ignroes the role of biology on human behaviour, the idea of machine reductionism.
-Approach does not consider the role of genetics and hormones on human behaviour.
-Eg: an individual ability to recall or process information may be due to abnormal levels of a specific hormones.
-Therefore, the approach doesn't take into account environmental factors and reduce human behaviours to something like a computer, lack ecological validity |
| A weakness of the cognitive approach? | -Approach is too deterministic
-It ccan be seen to be founded on soft determinsim, eg: it 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 more 'interactionist' position than the hard determinism suggested by some other approaches
Therefore, this approach can be said to not fully take into the account the influence of genes and environemntal factors that can influence human behaviours which can be said to lower the internal validity of the approach. |
