Cognitive Approach

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  • Cognitive Approach
    • Focuses on the ways in which we perceive, process, store and respond to information
      • Interested in what is going on in our minds
    • Our mental processes affect out behaviour
      • Both conscious and non-conscious thoughts
    • Compares the mind to a computer
    • Cannot be seen so we have to make inferences
    • Central processing unit (CPU)
      • Brain encodes information into a suitable format for process or storage
    • Information flows through the cognitive system in a sequence of stages
      • Input, storage, retrival
    • Schema
      • The mental representation of experience and knowledge and understanding
    • Barlett's hypothesis was that memory is reconstructive and that people store and retrive information according to expectations formed by cultural schemas
      • Participants changed a story in a process called distortion
      • 3 patterns of distortion
        • Assimilation: cultural expectations - details were changed to fit the norms of British culture
        • Levelling: shorter - Participants omitted information that was seen as not important
        • Sharpening: - Participants changed the order and added detail and/or emotions
    • Cognitive Neuroscience
      • Scanning techniques to study human brains
        • Can accurately map the function of the brain
        • Can see what areas of the brain are involved in specific cognitive functions
      • Before this we relied on case studies of brain damaged individuals
        • Unsatisfactory because data from before the damage was rare, plus these individuals were atypical
      • Allows us to study healthy brains

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