Cognitive Notes

Cognitive Psychology revolves around the notion that if we want to know what makes people tick then we need to understand the internal processes of their mind.
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.’
Cognitive psychology focuses on the way humans process information, looking at how we treat information that comes in to the person (what behaviorists would call stimuli), and how this treatment leads to responses. In other words, they are interested in the variables that mediate between stimulus/input and response/output. Cognitive psychologists study internal processes including perception, attention, language, memory and thinking.

The cognitive perspective applies a nomothetic approach to discover human cognitive processes, but have also adopted idiographic techniques through using case studies (e.g. KF, HM).
Typically cognitive psychologists use the laboratory experiment to study behavior. This is because the cognitive approach is a scientific one. For example, participants will take part in memory tests in strictly controlled conditions. However, the widely used lab experiment can be criticized for lacking ecological validity (a major criticism of cognitive psychology).
Cognitive psychology became of great importance in the mid 1950s. Several factors were important in this:
Dissatisfaction with the behaviorist approach in its simple emphasis on external behavior rather than internal processes.
The development of better experimental methods.
Comparison between human and computer processing of information.
The cognitive approach began to revolutionize psychology in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, to become the dominant approach (i.e. perspective) in psychology by the late 1970s. Interest in mental processes had been gradually restored through the work of Piaget and Tolman. Other factors were important in the early development of the cognitive approach. For example, dissatisfaction with the behaviorist approach in its simple emphasis on behavior rather than internal processes and the development of better experimental methods.
But it was the arrival of the computer that gave cognitive psychology the terminology and metaphor it needed to investigate the human mind. The start of the use of computers allowed psychologists to try to understand the complexities of human cognition by comparing it with something simpler and better understood i.e. an artificial system such as a computer.

Evaluation of the Cognitive Approach

A viable approach which has been used to create the multi-store model of memory processes, supported by many other experiments.

Easily combined with other approaches. Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy is a popular and successful form of treatment for issues such as obsessive compulsive disorder.

Takes into account the internal, invisible thought processes that affect our behaviour, unlike thebehavioural approach.

Depends largely on controlled experiments to observe human behaviour, which may lack ecological validity (being compared to real-life behaviour).

Does not take into account genetic factors; for example hereditary correlations of mental disorders.

Reductionist to an extent, although case studies are taken into account, the behavioural approach attempts to apply the scientific view to human behaviour, which may be argued to be unique to each individual.

Strengths
It adopts scientific procedure to develop and test theories using experimental techniques. This approach is also the dominant approach in modern psychology.
The use of models, such as the computer, helps us understand mental processes (although these also have limitations).
The approach shows that experiments can be used to understand mental processes that are not directly observable.
Limitations
The cognitive approach tends to ignore biology and the influence of genes. It has also tended to ignore individual and personality differences between people.
The approach is often seen as providing a mechanistic view of human thought, and has not taken sufficient account of emotions and how they interact with mental processes.
Some psychologists, for example humanistic psychologists, question the value of a purely scientific approach to understanding how people think, feel and behave.

At the very heart of cognitive psychology is the idea of information processing.
Cognitive psychology sees the individual as a processor of information, in much the same way that a computer takes in information and follows a program to produce an output.
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 / mediational processes that lie between the stimuli (in our environment) and the response we make.
Basic Assumptions
The information processing approach is based on a number of assumptions, including:
(1) information made available by the environment is processed by a series of processing systems (e.g. attention, perception, short-term memory);
(2) these processing systems transform or alter the information in systematic ways;
(3) the aim of research is to specify the processes and structures that underlie cognitive performance;
(4) information processing in humans resembles that in computers.
Computer - Mind Analogy

The development of the computer in the 1950s and 1960s had an important influence on psychology and was, in part, responsible for the cognitive approach becoming the dominant approach in modern psychology (taking over from behaviorism). The computer gave cognitive psychologists a metaphor, or analogy, to which they could compare human mental processing. The use of the computer as a tool for thinking how the human mind handles information is known as the computer analogy.
Essentially, a computer codes (i.e. changes) information, stores information, uses information, and produces an output (retrieves info). The idea of information processing was adopted by cognitive psychologists as a model of how human thought works.
For example, the eye receives visual information and codes information into electric neural activity which is fed back to the brain where it is “stored” and “coded”. This information is can be used by other parts of the brain relating to mental activities such as memory, perception and attention. The output (i.e. behavior) might be, for example, to read what you can see on a printed page.
Hence the information processing approach characterizes thinking as the environment providing input of data, which is then transformed by our senses. The information can be stored, retrieved and transformed using “mental programs”, with the results being behavioral responses.
Cognitive psychology has influenced and integrated with many other approaches and areas of study to produce, for example, social learning theory, cognitive neuropsychology and artificial intelligence (AI).
Information Processing & Attention
When we are selectively attending to one activity, we tend to ignore other stimulation, although our attention can be distracted by something else, like the telephone ringing or someone using our name.
Psychologists are interested in what makes us attend to one thing rather than another (selective attention); why we sometimes switch our attention to something that was previously unattended (e.g. Cocktail Party Syndrome), and how many things we can attend to at the same time (attentional capacity).
One way of conceptualizing attention is to think of humans as information processors who can only process a limited amount of information at a time without becoming overloaded. Broadbent and others in the 1950's adopted a model of the brain as a limited capacity information processing system, through which external input is transmitted.
The Information Processing System

Information processing models consist of a series of stages, or boxes, which represent stages of processing. Arrows indicate the flow of information from one stage to the next.
* Input processes are concerned with the analysis of the stimuli.
* Storage processes cover everything that happens to stimuli internally in the brain and can include coding and manipulation of the stimuli.
* Output processes are responsible for preparing an appropriate response to a stimulus.

Multi Store Model of Memory - Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968 by Saul McLeod published 2007
The multi store model (Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968) is a classic model of memory. It is sometimes called the modal model or the dual process model.
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) suggest that memory is made up of a series of stores (see below)

The multi store model (Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968) describes memory in terms of information flowing through a system.
Information is detected by the sense organs and enters the sensory memory.
If attended to this information enters the short term memory.
Information from the STM is transferred to the long-term memory only if that information is rehearsed.
If rehearsal does not occur, then information is forgotten, lost from short term memory through the processes of displacement or decay.
Sensory Memory
• Duration: ¼ to ½ second
• Capacity: all sensory experience (v. larger capacity)
• Encoding: sense specific (e.g. different stores for each sense)
Short Term Memory
• Duration: 0-18 seconds
• Capacity: 7 +/- 2 items
• Encoding: mainly auditory
Long Term Memory
• Duration: Unlimited
• Capacity: Unlimited
• Encoding: Mainly Semantic (but can be visual and auditory)
Critical Evaluation
Strengths
Many memory studies provide evidence to support the distinction between STM and LTM (in terms of encoding, duration and capacity). The model can account for primacy & regency effects.
The model is influential as it has generated a lot of research into memory.
The model is supported by studies of amnesiacs: For example the HM case study. HM is still alive but has marked problems in long-term memory after brain surgery. He has remembered little of personal (death of mother and father) or public events ( Watergate , Vietnam War) that have occurred over the last 45 years. However his short-term memory remains intact.
Weaknesses
The model is oversimplified, in particular when it suggests that both short-term and long-term memory each operate in a single, uniform fashion. We now know is this not the case.
It has now become apparent that both short-term and long-term memory are more complicated that previously thought. For example, the Working Model of Memory proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) showed that short term memory is more than just one simple unitary store and comprises different components (e.g. central executive, visuo-spatial etc.).
In the case of long-term memory, it is unlikely that different kinds of knowledge, such as remembering how to play a computer game, the rules of subtraction and remembering what we did yesterday are all stored within a single, long-term memory store. Indeed different types of long-term memory have been identified, namely episodic (memories of events), procedural (knowledge of how to do things) and semantic (general knowledge).
The model suggests rehearsal helps to transfer information into LTM but this is not essential. Why are we able to recall information which we did not rehearse (e.g. swimming) yet unable to recall information which we have rehearsed (e.g. reading your notes while revising). Therefore, the role of rehearsal as a means of transferring from STM to LTM is much less important than Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) claimed in their model.
However, the models main emphasis was on structure and tends to neglect the process elements of memory (e.g. it only focuses on attention and rehearsal).
The multi store model has been criticized for being a passive/one way/linear model.