Key concepts of the cognitive approach - Welsh Government



Cognitive approaches to psychology

What words are missing from the following account?

This approach concentrates on the process and content of thinking. It claims that behaviour can be explained in terms of how the mind operates. The cognitive model looks at the role of cognitive factors, such as thoughts, feelings, attitudes and beliefs on behaviour.

The cognitive model sees the individual as an active processor of information and it is the way we perceive, anticipate, interpret and evaluate events rather than the events themselves that has the greatest impact on our behaviour. It suggests that the mind works in a similar way to a computer: input, storage and retrieval of data. Cognitive psychologists see psychology as a pure science and suggest that mental problems arise when people learn faulty thinking patterns and attitudes, but these alone are not responsible for psychological disturbances.

The main interest of people studying cognitive psychology is internal mental explanations of behaviour. There is no single theory in this approach but the common factor is the focus on mental processes – how people take in information, how they mentally represent it and how they store it. So, while cognitive psychology seeks to examine separate areas, such as perception, thought, memory etc, these systems are interdependent.

Answer

This approach concentrates on the process and content of thinking. It claims that behaviour can be explained in terms of how the mind operates. The cognitive model looks at the role of cognitive factors, such as thoughts, feelings, attitudes and beliefs on behaviour.

The cognitive model sees the individual as an active processor of information and it is the way we perceive, anticipate, interpret and evaluate events rather than the events themselves that has the greatest impact on our behaviour. It suggests that the mind works in a similar way to a computer – input, storage and retrieval of data. Cognitive psychologists see psychology as a pure science and suggest that problems arise when people learn faulty thinking patterns and attitudes, but these alone are not responsible for psychological disturbances.

The main interest of people studying cognitive psychology is internal mental explanations of behaviour. There is no single theory in this approach but the common factor is the focus on mental processes – how people take in information, how they mentally represent it and how they store it. So, while cognitive psychology seeks to examine separate areas, such as perception, thought, memory etc, these systems are interdependent.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download