Cognitive Approach The cognitive approach Cognition means knowing

Cognitive Approach

The cognitive approach • Cognition means ‘knowing’ and cognitive processes refer to the way in which knowledge is gained, used and retained • Cognitive psychologists interested in how the human mind processes info • Developed in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s as an alternative to the behaviourist approach

Key assumptions of the cognitive approach 1. Behaviour is a result of information processing 2. Comparison of the mind to a computer 3. The role of schemas as a way of organising information

Schemas • Part of the mental processes identified by the cognitive approach are schemas • These are mental structures that represent an aspect of the world, such as an object or event • Small packets of information about the world that we construct through experience. • Schemas help us to make sense of the world, by providing short cuts to identifying things that we come across(our building blocks of knowledge)

Schemas For example, It has a four legs It has paws It has fur It barks Your past experiences have developed a schema to recognise the description

Example of Schema Development Raji (4 year old boy) Current schema – an animal with four legs is a dog Raji sees a cat crossing the street when he is walking to school with his mum Raji uses existing information (schemas) to interpret the object says to his mum look at that dog Raji’s mum says to Raji that’s not a dog that is a Cat Rajis previous schema has now been changed that Animals with four legs can dogs or cats

The computer analogy • Cognitive psychologists often compare the human mind to a computer. • Input = Information processed by the senses • Computer processor = Cognitive processes occurring in the brain • Output = Behaviour PROCESS INPUT Seeing domestic violence as a child Child remembers the event OUTPUT Bullies children at school

Cognitive Key Study • Fallon & Rozin (1985) • Showed male and female students a series of body silhouette pictures of increasing size and • asked them to rate: • Their current body shape (‘current’) • Their ideal body shape (‘ideal’) • The body shape that the other sex would find most • attractive (‘other-attractive’) • They found that men rated ‘current’ and ‘ideal’ very closely together • females rated themselves as heavier than their actual size and their ideal size

What you need to include. . . • Piaget and his suggested stages of development. • Kelly