Describe the cognitive approach in psychology. Evaluate the research methods used by cognitive psychologists.
- Created by: Paulina Gorska
- Created on: 10-04-16 00:40
Describe the cognitive approach in psychology.
Evaluate the research methods used by cognitive psychologists.
The cognitive approach is concerned with mental processes to help us understand why people behave in certain ways. The approach uses scientific and experimental methods to measure mental processes which results in rejection of the psychodynamic use of introspection. The cognitive approach has three types of enquiry: neuropsychology that looks into brain damage, amnesia etc and how these impact our behaviour, cognitive science that is concerned with theories and theoretical developments of the approach and experimental cognitive psychology that investigates all types of mental processes in healthy people in controlled experimental environment in lab conditions such as the Ebinghaus study in 1885. The aim of the study was to investigate forgetting and the long term memory decay which resulted in looking at nonsense words like PEZ, URB. It showed that is the words weren’t practised a day, week and twp weeks after the first time they will be forgotten much faster. The experiment was conducted under controlled time conditions where the variables were highly controlled. Another strength of the research methods is the fact that standardised procedures are easy to replicate because the variables can be easily adjusted and the data is objective. However, the experiments are highly artificial and unnatural; when people are briefed beforehand demand characteristics may occur and data can be…
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