The cognitive approach - Approaches [A-Level Psychology]

are you a computer that might seem like a really silly question but there are big similarities if we imagine a phone which is basically a portable computer it has inputs like camera and microphone you have similar inputs your eyes and ears it has outputs a screen and speakers you have similar outputs your body and your voice your phone has a physical component that can hold on to and work with information it's the CPU the central process unit you have a physical component that can do the same your brain now if I asked you if you

have YouTube on your phone you would likely say yes maybe you're watching me on it right now I then pass you a hammer and I told you to smash up your phone and then I ask you to show me the little bit of the phone that is the YouTube part you'd likely think I was insane YouTube and other apps like YouTube are not physical things on the phone they are programs they are a set of processes designed by computer programmers and this is similar to how cognitive psychologists think and explain the brain's functions its internal

mental processes so memory attention and perception and understanding how these cognitive processes are connected to the physical activity of the brain is the basis of one of the most exciting and modern fields of psychology cognitive Neuroscience the psych boost app now has three features flashcards multiple choice quizzes and see if you can work out the key term from it definition with the key term tester try paper one for free right now and Patron supporters can watch psych boost videos at free learn from over 17 hours of exclusive exam tutorial videos and access hundreds of digital

and printable resources including my Maps quiz sheets worksheets teaching slides and more the cognitive approach defining characteristics cognitive psychologists argue that behavior is a result of internal mental processes and psychological research should be focused on studying those internal mental processes as I mentioned in the introduction internal mental processes are how information is used or processed in the mind in other words they are all the conscious and unconscious thoughts we have common areas of research for cognitive psychologists are attention perception and memory most of the examples I'll given the rest of this video are going to

be focused on memory this is because memory is an entire unit of study on the a level and talking about con psychology in the context of memory here should help you understand that unit a little better it's also important we know how cognitive psychologists study internal m al processes cognitive psychologists try to be as scientific as possible by conducting highly controlled experiments with large samples of participant often to ensure control cognitive research will be conducted in a lab setting and the materials used will be highly standardized this is good as the experiments have high internal

validity but studying internal mental processes is problematic this is because internal mental processes cannot be directly observed this means cognitive psychologists have to rely on making inferences this is going beyond the research evidence Ence the behavior directly observed in the experiment and making an assumption about the internal mental processes that produce the participant's behavior here's an example of what I mean let's say I ask 50 people to listen to and then immediately recall a string of digits I start one digit and then add one digit each time I record the point that each participant fails

to correctly recall the number sequence in my data set I get some outliers people who perform exceptionally while or poorly but generally I find the vast majority of participants recall between five and nine numbers now I can't directly see the participants short-term memory stores actually filling up in their minds but on the basis of these observations I can make a fairly confident guess and inference that the storage capacity of short-term memory is seven items plus orus two and if you've already studied memory you likely remember this is Miller's classic research study on the capacity of

short-term memory the big problem with inferences are they are guesses and guesses can be mistaken this is the reason cognitive psychologists despite their highly controlled lab cities are not as scientific as behaviorists or biological psychologists who support their theories of directly observable behaviors and physical processes despite this limitation inferences are the only way to study internal mental processes and many of the inferences made about internal mental processes like memory are supported by later studies increasing our confidence in the validity of the original inference this means cognitive psychology is able to study behavior that cannot be

studied by other approaches the role of schema a particular type of internal mental process we need to Define and understand the role of is a schema simply defined a schema is a mental framework a collection of basic knowledge about concept or object built from our previous experience of the world so if I say the word chair to you chances are that you have a schema for a chair it has legs a back and if you sit on it it would support your weight if I say classroom then your schema of a classroom would include a

whiteboard desks and chairs if you're a student in that classroom you'll instantly have a set of schemas that help you understand your role and the behaviors expected of you in that role in this way schemers work as mental shortcuts we use them to quickly understand and navigate through the world and interact with people and objects in the world this means it doesn't take too much mental energy to decide how to respond in a range of situations there are a range of advantages to using schema to navigate through the world but depending on schemas as shortcuts

also causes some serious problems the main advantage of schemas is they allow us to process lots of information very quickly imagine walking into that classroom without any schemes at all if you had to process everything in that room from scratch you'll be overwhelmed by sensory information and have to consciously work out exactly what each object was and how to act by using schemers we can simplify the world to get a sense of what it would be like to live without any schemers take a look at this image and see the names of any of the

objects in it chances are this image freaks you out a little everything seems so familiar but you can't quite Place anything into a schema so the whole whole thing is a little overwhelming imagine if every time you opened your eyes you felt like this unable to immediately categorize everything that you see so schemas help us process lots of information quickly in the moment but schemas also allow us to predict the future this is because schemas are based in our previous experiences in similar situations let's go back to our classroom example imagine you're a student in

this classroom and you've arrived early from Break You can predict that the teacher and other students will enter the room soon the other students will sit in the other seat the teacher will take the register the projector will come on and you'll need to get your pen and paper out of your bag to start to take notes this is all predictable as all the other people in the room are working to similar schemas the teacher acting to the teacher schema the students to the student schemas or at least their versions of it this means that

predictions based on schemas are usually accurate a problem with schemas is the influence memory leading to inaccurate recall this is a particular problem for eyewitness testimony people may feel they're remembering accurately however their recall has been altered by Leading questions a researcher called Loftus found on average participants who watched a video of a car crash and were asked how fast were the cars going when they contacted each other gave a speed 9 mph faster when the word contacted was replaced with smashed this is because our schema for smashed is more intense than our schema for

contacted using smashed altered their memory so they record the crash as more dramatic faulty schemers can also lead to and mental health issues this is an issue we'll cover in more detail when discussing the cognitive approach to depression according to Beck people with depression have a negative Triad of schemas that bias their thinking these three include negative basts about themselves called self schemas such as always seeing themselves as inadequate or unworthy negative schemas about the world seeing it as hostile and threatening and negative schemas about the future assuming that things will always turn out badly

theoretical and computer models to explain internal mental processes con psychologists rely on models we need to explain what a computer and a theoretical model is the computer model is how I introduce this video asking you to think about the similarity between a computer CPU running software programs and the biological brain running internal mental processes both of these systems have inputs and produce outputs the computer in the mind are both assumed to process information in a series of program steps which leads me to theoretical models but there is an evaluation for the computer model I want

to give you first the computer model of the mind is criticized as being overly simplistic in fact this particular criticism has a term machine reductionism this is the argument that the human brain is far more complex than a computer the human mind has Consciousness and emotions and these often lead to irrational behavior and many of the features that computers and humans share are very different for example human memory is flawed and reconstructive while computer memory is stored and recalled with perfect effect accuracy the other type of model used by con psychologists are theoretical models these

are flowchart representations of how a particular mental process works describing a series of pre-programmed steps this particular theoretical model is the multi-store model of memory it shows how information is received by the sensors and if it isn't forgotten at any stage passes through short-term memory and into long-term memory until it's recall these models are used to create testable theories and each Assumption of the model can be tested scientifically if Behavior matches the model it can be inferred that the model is correct if Behavior goes against the predictions of the model the model can be adapted

or rejected the emergence of cognitive Neuroscience cognitive Neuroscience is the current Cutting Edge of psychological research and it is fascinating it's an attempt to scientifically study and identify the neurological structures and chemical processes in the brain that are responsible for the internal mental processes we've spoken about in this video so to be clear cognitive Neuroscience is a study of the relationship between cognitive and biological processes this is now possible due to the development of brain scanning techniques pet and APM scanners allow researchers to give participants cognitive tasks and observe activity in different areas of the

brain in real time it is true the relationship between mental processes and brain structure have been studied for some time through the use of unusual individuals of brain damage one of the most famous examples is tan tan had difficulty with speech production only being able to say tan after tan died a postmortem revealed brain damage in an area that was called Brock's area after Tan's doctor many years later we can now see brain activation in Brock's area where neurotypical brains produced language confirming Brock's area as a location of speech production another example is pet research

by toling this revealed activity in separate brain regions when participants record episodic semantic or procedural memory supporting cognitive theories that there's more than one type of long-term memory evaluating the cognitive approach so I've already explained the first three evaluations cognitive psychology's relationship with science and machine reductionism as well as cutting 's research in cognitive Neuroscience that's providing objective biological evidence for cognitive theories previously only supported by inference we did say that cognitive psychology is highly scientific however one more point we can make is that many of the research studies conducted by conative psychologists are are

highly artificial for example in memory research participants are often asked to recall stimuli like long digits nonsense free letter trigrams or random lists of words this is not how people use memory in everyday life so while cognitive psychologists may know how memory works in the lab this knowledge might not be generalizable to normal cognitive tasks like how memory Works in real life we can also evaluate by considering the real life applications of con psychology our understanding of schemas has led to the development of CBT in CBT therapists will help clients change their negative schemas through

con of restructuring knowledge of how schemas can influence the accuracy of iess testimony has been used to inform juries about its limitations and potentially avoid miscarriages of Justice I'm Research into cognitive neurosciences helping to develop treatments for neurological language as well as memory disorders as well as helping computer coders who are developing the neural networks that power artificial intelligence the final evaluation is based on the Free Will determinism debate conni psychologists argue for soft determinism they agree that to an extent Behavior has biological and environmental causes experiences form schema that run on the biological Hardware

of the brain however they argue that thought processes allow for an individual to make the final decision and have some control over their behavior this is the basis of CBT and it's often argued to be empowering giving clients the tools they need to change their patterns of thinking this gives a client an active role in their recovery compared to the passive role of biologically deterministic drug treatment I want to thank everyone over on patreon for supporting the channel because of you I've been able to teach part time meaning I can make psych boost on YouTube

for everyone I do have extra resources are exclusive to my patrons so if you decide to sign up you can grab those over my website and these include over 100 exam questions tutorial videos of course including questions on the approaches unit I hope this was helpful and I'll see you in the next psych Boost video