cognitive approach

explanations of behaviour
1. problems with eye witness testimony: the cognitive approach asssumes that our internal mental processes such a memory infulence human behaviour. according to psychologists our memory is not a factual record and can become distorted by the information received after the event. in particular, the way in which people are asked to recall informations e.g leading questions. leading questions can cause the witness 6to recall false information. Loftus and Palmer studied the infulence of leading questions on ppt's memory recall of car accidients. they manipulated the verb used in the question about speed estimates. they found that the more severe the verb used, ther higher the speed estimate, result9ing in false eyewitnes testimony.
2. Diffiulties experienced by individuals with autism: the cognitive approach assumes that our internal mental processes such as thinking and resoning are infulence by our behaviour. people with autism are described as having a triad of impairments as they display deficits in the areas of social interactions, communications and repetative behaviours. furthermore, people with autism lack theory of mind since they are unable to make inferences about what other people might think, feel or believe in any given situation. Baron-Cohen studied adult6s with autism and asprger's syndrome and found that they were significatly less able yto identify people's emotions in the eye task than adults with tourettes or clinically normal adults.
3. Development of language: the cognitive approach assume4s that internal mental processes infulence all human behaviour. cognitive psychologists are interested in the development of language as a way of using symbols to represent our thoughs and emotions. they make a distinction between associative language - where words are produced in association with pleasant stimuli without the understanding of theirmeaning, and representative language - which is based on understanding the meaning and gramatical structures. in humans, language4 developes in stages from associative to representative. savage- rumbough studied language development in primates and demonstarted that bonobo chimps were capale of developing represtantive language where as common chimps only used associatrive language.
Loftus and palmer
1. Behaviour: Effect of leading questions on eyewitness testimony
2. Method: Lab experiment (controlled). IV- verb in the critical question. DV- speed estimate.
3. Sample: 195 students from washington university- 45 in experiment 1 and 150in experiment 2
4. Data: Quantitative- Experiment 1= speed estimate in MPH Experiment 2= Speed estimate in MPH and broken glass percentage
Baron-Cohen
1. Behaviour: difficulties with theory of mind in adults with autism/ asperger's syndrome
2. Method: Quasi experiment. Natural IV= clinical dianosis. DV= score in tasks
3. Sample: 76 ppts. 50 clinically normal (25f 25m). 10 tourettes (8m 2f). 16 Autistic (13m 3f)
4. Data: Quantitative. correct answers in the tasks. Qualitative data collected in the happee's strange stories task
Savage-rumbaugh
1. Behaviour: language aquisition by pygmy chimpanzees
2. Method: Longitudinal experiment (case study) 4 chimps studied over 10 years
3. Sample: 4 in total - 2 pygmy chimps (kanzi and mulika) and 2 common chimps (austtin and sherman)
4. Data: Quantitative- number of correct words produced Qualitative- observations of use and context of use
5. Ethics: Not ethical as the chimps were separated from their mothers at an early age, were not living in their natural environment and were being fed sweets and sugar drinks
comparisions
1. strength: L+P and Baron-Cohen both collected quantitative data in their research, which is objective and not open to researcher interpretation. for exapmle, L+P collected quantitative data by recroding the speed estimates in MPH for the differentr groups of ppts. similarly, Baron-cohen collected quantitative dta as they recorded the number of correct responses to the different tasks, inculding Eye task, Gender recognition task and the basic emotion recognition task for the different clinically diagnosed ppts.
2. Differences: one difference between L+P and Savage-Rumbaugh is the sample sized used in their research. For example, L+P used a relatvely large sample of 194 students from the university of washington (45 in experiment 1 and 150 in experiment 2) to test the effects of leading questions on their eyewiness testimonies. In contrast, Savage-rumbaugh used only 4 chimpanzees (2 bonobo and 2 common) in their study about symbol aquisition of primates.
strengths and limitations of the approach
1. Strength- POINT: helps us understand the factors which affect our cognitive processes. E.g. Baron-cohen. more useful for practical applications. POINT:uses scientific methods so is objective.E.g. L+P. more reliable data.
2. Limitations- POINT: can be concidered reductionist as it ignores biology. E.g. L+P. too simplistic so is less useful. POINT: controlled artioficial settings.E.g Savage- Rumbaugh. Low ecological validity.

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cognitive approach

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	Created by sarahwrobl almost 9 years ago