The Cognitive approachSummary:

Human behaviour is caused by your internal thinking process.

The cognitive approach is a relatively modern approach, starting the early 1960s. Unlike Behaviourism or Psychoanalysis, there isn’t one major theorist who has dominated this approach, and thus the cognitive approach has been used for a wide range of topics in Psychology including but not limited to; memory, intelligence, social behaviour, and emotion.Cognition literally means “knowing”. In other words, psychologists from this approach study cognition which is ‘the mental act or process by which knowledge is acquired.’

The first assumption of the cognitive approach is Behaviour is controlled by our own thought processes.

The cognitive approach is based on how we think, with the belief that our thought processes affect the way in which we behave. This approach came about in part due to the dissatisfaction with the behavioural approach which focused on our visible behaviour (Response), without understanding the internal processes that create it. Therefore a lot of the cognitive approach is based upon some aspects of the behaviourist approach, but with an added focus on the intermediary process between Stimulus and Response.

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The second assumption is that our behaviour can be explained as a series of responses to external stimuli, much like a computer.

The cognitive approach is based on the principle that our behaviour is generated by a series of stimuli and responses, which are governed by our thought processes. This approach is based on the idea that the human mind works in a similar fashion to computers. Computers:

Humans:

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INPUT(keyboard, mouse

etc.)Processing

OUTPUT(Printing etc.)

Stimulus Thinking Response

A cognitive psychologist might explain this ‘thinking’ in terms of schema driven processing. Schemas are ways of organizing knowledge and experience of the world into generic ‘templates’ that are used to make sense of objects, situations and people we encounter. When you see a dog, what enables you to know it’s a dog? You have to pay attention to, perceive its features (e.g. four legs, tail, fur), search through your existing memory store to see if it matches any existing schema, and act accordingly.

Task:What schema do you associate with the following;

1. Apple2. School3. Rabbit4. Psychology5. Scary6. Bank robbery7. Love8. Coffee9. Money

It might be that an arachnophobe’s schema for spiders contains the information ‘they are dangerous’ and ‘to be avoided’. As a result, whenever they encounter a stimulus that looks like a spider, they will react with alarm.

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Four legs

Tail

Fur

Stroke its head saying;

“Who’s a good boy?”

Stimlus: Schema processing:Response:

Task:Referring back to the list of stimulus you did for Behaviourism, what were your internal thought processes to these stimuli, which led to your response?

1. You get out the shower and see a spider.2. A violent scene comes on the television.3. It starts raining and you’re outside.4. A person you are attracted to sits next to you in class.5. Your Psychology teacher is obviously in a mood already

and you haven’t done your homework.6. You have just seen an advert for your favourite food.

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See a ‘spider’.“Spiders are terrifying”

RUN AWAY!

StimulusInternal thought

processResponse

This third assumption of the cognitive approach is that human behaviour can be explained as a set of scientific processes, in an objective and measurable way. The cognitive approach attempts to apply a scientific approach to human behaviour.

Although cognitive psychologists focus on our internal, mental processes (which can’t be seen), they would still advocate a scientific approach to the study of human behaviour, one that should be conducted under controlled experimental lab conditions. Although we can’t see cognitive processes occurring, we can measure the results of the processes in a scientific, objective way. In other words, what people ‘say’ and how they ‘respond’ can be taken as valid measures of their ‘thought processes’.

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Strengths and weaknesses of the cognitive approach

Strengths

On major advantage of the cognitive approach, especially when compared with behaviourism, is its focus on the important ‘processes’ that occur between Stimulus and Response. Whereas behaviourists do not attempt to investigate what goes on inside the ‘black box’, cognitive psychologists have gone some way to explaining the important mediational processes such as perception and memory can affect the way we respond to the world around us.

This has helped explain, better than behaviourism, the very practicalities of human behaviour. For example, how one person can react differently to the same Stimulus (because they perceive the Stimulus differently to someone else).

Also it has led cognitive psychologists to look at ways of

improving people’s memories using retrieval cues. Such research can show us why we need to make shopping lists before we go to the supermarket. The list can act as a Stimulus that activates certain schema in our memories, leading to greater recall.

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The cognitive approach has influenced many areas of psychology, due to it being the predominant approach after the 1960s. It has been easily combined with other approaches-Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a popular and

successful form of treatment for issues such as OCD, phobias and depression.

As well as being usefully applied in therapy, such as CBT, it has also been applied to developmental psychology.

For example, theories about how children’s thinking develops have guided how we teach in schools. Piaget (1970) developed one such theory, suggesting that children’s thinking is not like adults. For example, children around the ages of 8 or 9 cannot think in the abstract. If they want to solve a mathematical problem, they need to see it in concrete terms, such as using counting sticks. Piaget’s ideas had a major impact on teaching in primary schools because teachers realised it was important to demonstrate in concrete terms, as opposed to abstract ideas, when teaching younger children.

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Additionally, within social psychology, much of the thinking is ‘cognitive’ in nature, as it involves looking at the mental processes involved in understanding the social world and people around us. Cognitive psychology, for example, can explain why we form certain stereotypes, and why we obey authority.

One final strength is, like other approaches in psychology, the cognitive approach is very scientific. Researchers can test theories of ‘thinking processes’ by making clear predictions about what they think will happen when people are exposed to certain stimuli. These theories can then be tested to demonstrate if they are true or not. Psychologists can do this controlling as many variables are possible, so we can truly see if there is any kind of causal relationship.

Weaknesses of this approach

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A weakness of the cognitive approach can be that it can be too scientific. The approach depends largely on controlled experiments to observe human behaviour, which may lack ecological validity. This means that the experiment was so controlled; it did not reflect how the world really is.

While the cognitive approach does consider the influence of both internal & external factors on behaviour (e.g. processes within the mind are ‘internal’ and the role of experience in the formation of schemas is ‘external’), it fails to consider important elements of both nature and nurture. For example the role of genes in human

cognition is ignored, yet research into intelligence has consistently looking at the influence of genes, through the use of twin studies. Additionally, important social and cultural factors (nurture) are often ignored, which seems unrealistic. For example, within the field of cognitive development, key theorists such as Piaget failed to consider the role of culture and gender on the development of thinking children.

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Another criticism of the cognitive approach is that it is ‘mechanistic’ – it portrays human behaviour as that of a machine. Indeed the cognitive approach is based on the ‘behaviour’ of computers, so it is inevitable that the outcome would be a rather mechanistic view of human behaviour. The main objection to such mechanistic explanations is that they ignore social and emotional factors. In fact, in general, cognitive psychologists oversimplify behaviour and are therefore reductionist- the cognitive approach attempts to apply the scientific view to human behaviour, which may be argued to be unique to each individual. Humans may quite simply not be as simple or predictable as cognitive theories suggest.

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Methodology

Cognitive psychologists follow the example of the behaviourists in preferring objective, controlled, scientific methods for investigating behaviour. They use the results of their investigations as the basis for making inferences about mental processes. One strand of cognitive research involves conducting case studies of people with brain damage. Comparing their performance on mental tasks with that of uninjured people can help psychologists understand which parts of the brain are used to process which sorts of information. Other cognitive research may involve manipulating either the information available to people (inputs) or the ways they process it (processes) and seeing what effect this has on some aspect of behaviour (outputs). Laboratory experiments are often used for this as the laboratory situation gives better opportunities than field settings for careful manipulation and control of information processing and precise measurement of cognitive performance.

Much like in behaviourism, one way in which control was achieved was by using fairly sparse conditions so that the participants weren’t distracted by irrelevant stimuli. This meant it would be easier to see a causal link between the IV & DV, without any other possible variables being an issue.

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An example of this type of research is the experiment into levels of processing carried out by Craik and Tulving (1975).

They presented participants with a series of words on a screen and manipulated the way the words were processed by asking questions about their appearance, sound or meaning. They found that participants recognized more of the words they had processed the meaning of than those they had processed the appearance of, suggesting that deeper processing of information

leads to more durable memory traces than shallow processing does.

Remember this when you are revising! You remember things better when you have answered questions on it, as opposed to just literally read it. On that note…

End of approach Task

Explain the 3 assumptions of cognitive approach and give 2 strengths and 2 weaknesses

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