1.
4 The cognitive approach
ORIGINS AND HISTORY
• The cognitive approach began to revolutionise psychology in th e late
1950s and early 1960s, to become the dominant paradigm in the
subject by the 1970s. Interest in mental processes had been graduall_y
resurrected through the work of peopl e like Tolman and Pi aget, but it
was the arrival of the computer that gave cognitive psychology the
terminology and metaphor it needed to investigate human minds.
• Cognitive psychology compares the human mind to a computer,
suggesting that we too are information processors and that it is
possible and desirable to study the internal mental processes that lie
between the stimuli we receive and the responses we make. Cognition
means 'knowing' and cognitive processes refer to the ways in which
knowledge is gained, used and retained. Therefore, cognitive
psychologists have studied perception, attention, memory, thinking,
language, and problem solving.
• Cognitive psychologists believe these internal mental processes (our
programming) can be investigated scientifically by proposing models of E. Loftus
psychological functions and then conducting research to see, when ' ... cognition refers to all those processes by which
people are given an input of information, whether their output of sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated
behaviour/verbal report matches what the models would predict. stored, recovered and used ... cognition is involved in
everything a human being might possibly do.'
Neisser (1966)
ASSUMPTIONS METHODS OF INVESTIGATION
Cognitive psychologists assume that: Cognitive psychologists mostly use:
1 The study of internal mental processes is important in • Experimentation - usually conducted in the laboratory, e.g.
understanding behaviour - cognitive processes actively memory experim ents conducted under strictly controlled
organise and manipulate the information we receive - conditions, where independent variables such as the time
humans do not just passively respond to their environment. delay before recall are manipulated to find the effect on the
2 Humans, like computers, are information processors - amount of information retained .
regardless of our hardware (brains or circuits) both receive, • Case studies - for example the study of brain damaged
interpret and respond to information - and these processes patients such as those with anterograde amnesia in memory
can be modelled and tested scientifically. research.
CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIETY
Cognitive psychologists have sought to explain: Cognitive psychology has had a broad range of applications, for
• Memory, e.g. Atkinson and Shiffrin's multi-store model of the example to:
input, storage and loss of information, etc. • Memory - to help improve memory through mnemonic
• Perception, e.g. Gregory's theory on the role of mental devices or to aid the police in eyewitness testimony
processes in influencing/organising visual stimuli • Education - Information processing theory has been applied
• Attention, e.g. Broadbent' s filter model to improve educational techniques
• Artificial intelligence, e.g. Rumelhart and McClelland's • Therapy - such as the use of Eilis's rational emotive therapy
parallel distributed network models to restructure faulty thinking and perceptions in depression,
• Social cognition, e.g. the effects of stereotypes on for example. When combined to form cognitive-behavioural
interpersonal perception techniques, effectiveness is improved
• Abnormality, e.g. Beck's ideas on the errors of logic and • Health promotion - e.g. the health belief model and the
negative thinking of depressed patients. following (or not) of health advice.
STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES f
Cognitive psychology is probably the most dominant approach today: 0
Cognitive models have been accused
• It investigates many areas of interest in psychology that had been neglected by being:
behaviourism; yet, unlike psychoanalysis and humanism, it investigates them using • over simplistic - ignoring the huge
more rigorous scientific methods. complexity of human functionin_g
• In contrast to the biological approach, it bases its explanations firmly at a functional, compared to computer functi?ning
psychological level, rather than resorting to reductionism to explain human • unrealistic and over hypothetical -
behaviour. ignoring the biological influences
• The approach has provided explanations of many aspects of human behaviour and and grounding of mental pro:ess~s
has had .useful practical applications. ' • Too cold - ignoring the emouona
• Cognitive psychology has influenced and integrated with many other approaches and life of humans, their _conscious(
areas of st1,1dy to produce, for example, social learning theory, cognitive experience and possible use 0
neuropsychology, social cogn ition, and artincial intelligence. freewill.
