Cognitive Approach

What is the first assumption of the cognitive approach?

Behaviour can be explained by internal mental processes.

How do cognitive psychologists see humans?

As information processors, whereby cognitive processes help us to interpret and respond to the environment.

What are the four main cognitive processes?

• Attention

• Memory

• Perception

• Language

What is meant by ‘attention’?

An individual’s focus on a particular thing.

What is meant by ‘memory’?

Storage and retrieval.

What is meant by ‘perception’?

An individual’s viewpoint of a stimulus, influenced by experiences.

What is meant by ‘language’?

The communication of thoughts and feelings.

What is the second assumption of the cognitive approach?

Behaviour can be explained by schemas.

What are schemas?

Organised packets of information that are built up through experiences.

• They organise our knowledge, assist recall, guide our behaviour, enable prediction of likely events and make sense of our current experiences.

They are mental structures which represent aspects of the world.

How do schemas impact our behaviour?

They set up expectations within probable social situations.

• We assimilate new information into existing schema.

Schemas do not necessarily represent reality.

KEY STUDY - ALLPORT AND POSTMAN (1947)

Allport and Postman investigated the effect of schema on recall.

• White participants were shown an argument between a well-dressed black male, and a poor white male holding a razor.

  • Participants passed the story on via serial reproduction (repeated with black participants).

• Eventually, the black man became the aggressor, showing that our schemas are influenced by cultural stereotypes.

What is the third assumption of the cognitive approach?

Behaviour can be explained by the computer analogy.

What is the computer analogy?

Cognitive psychologists compare how we input, process and recall information to that of a computer. During the process stage, we actively use the cognitive processes of perception, attention and memory.

What is the multi-store model of memory?

There are three memory stores: sensory, short-term and long-term.

• Sensory

  • Encodes all senses, has a very large capacity and lasts up to half a second.

• Short-Term

  • Encodes acoustically and lasts up to 30 seconds.

• Long-Term

  • Encodes semantically, has an unlimited capacity and has am unlimited duration.

What is the aim of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)?

To challenge maladaptive thoughts and replace them with healthy thinking.

What are maladaptive thoughts?

Thoughts that hinder ourselves in our every day lives.

What is the cognitive element of CBT?

The therapist works with the client to help them identify negative thoughts that are contributing to their problems.

What is the behavioural element of CBT?

The therapist encourages the client to engage in reality testing, either during the session (e.g. role play) or as homework.

What needs to take place before CBT can begin?

An initial assessment whereby goals are set for the outcome of the therapy.

What is the dysfunctional thought diary in CBT?

• Clients are asked to keep a record of the events leading up to any unpleasant emotional experience.

• Client writes down automatic negative thoughts associated with these events and how much they believe in these thoughts (scale of 1-100%).

• The client then has to write a rational response to the automatic negative thought and rate their belief in this rational response (scale of 1-100%)

• The client will then re-rate their belief in the automatic negative thought.

What is cognitive restructuring in CBT?

Once the client has revealed more about their thought patterns, they work together with the therapist to identify and change their dysfunctional thinking patterns.

• This is done collaboratively and is often known as 'therapy during therapy'. The therapist will question the client with a counterstatement that challenges their negative beliefs, highlighting the false belief. The therapist will try to avoid catastrophizing automatic negative thoughts.

What is pleasant activity scheduling in CBT?

The client is asked to plan for each day (e.g. over a week) one pleasant activity they will engage in, e.g. gardening or swimming.

• It could be something that will give them a sense of achievement of something that will involve a break from normal routine.

  • It is thought that this will induce more positive emotions and will detract from negative thinking patterns, referred to as behavioural activation - helping the clients to change their behaviour.

• The clients keep a record of the activity, noting how they felt.

  • If it did not go as planned then the client is encouraged to consider why that might be and what might be done to change it.

By taking action towards a positive solution, the client is moving further away from negative thinking. They will realise that they can have control over their negative thinking patterns.

How does the cognitive assumption of internal mental processes explain why CBT can treat mental illness?

This means that the best way to understand behaviour is to investigate how an individual thinks about a situation.  The cognitive approach argues that mental illness such as depression, OCD and anxiety are caused by maladaptive or negative thoughts and beliefs.

• CBT targets these internal processes via the use of a dysfunctional thought diary, which allows for the identification of irrational thought processes and the use of cognitive restructuring which results in negative perception being changed (evidence that the patient's thought processes are irrational).

How does the cognitive assumption of schema explain why CBT can treat mental illness?

This is because those who have faulty thinking patterns have developed negative self-schemas. Cognitive behavioural therapy enables the client to challenge these negative schemas, leading to changes in how they respond to events/situations. 

BECK'S COGNITIVE TRIAD - represents negatives schema that people with mental health disorders hold. CBT aims to challenge the negative schemas, present evidence against them and help the patient respond in a more positive way.

• The cognitive triad is three forms of negative thinking that are typical of individuals with depression. These thoughts tend to be automatic in depressed people as they occurred spontaneously.

  • As these three components interact, they interfere with normal cognitive processing, leading to impairments in perception, memory and problem solving with the person becoming obsessed with negative thoughts.
     

What are the strengths of CBT in terms of its effectiveness?

• In comparison to drug therapy, Jarrett et al. (1999) found that CBT was as effective as some anti-depressant drugs when treating108 patients with depression over a 10-week period. Hollon et al. (1992) found no difference in CBT when compared to a different anti-depressant drugs in a sample of 107 patients over a 10-week period. This shows that CBT and Drug Therapy are equally as effective in treating depression. Therefore a combination therapy is often recommended for patients.

• Cahill et al. (2003) found that by the end of their therapy (12-20 sessions), 71% of patients experienced a significant reduction in their symptoms. However, only 13% of the patients who did not complete the therapy showed improvement. This is a strength because it shows that challenging dysfunctional thought patterns can help a person reduce their mental health symptoms. This is much more effective when a patient completes the therapy.

What are the weaknesses of CBT in terms of its effectiveness?

• The success of CBT is dependent on therapist competence. This includes the ability of the therapist to appropriately structure sessions, to plan and review assignments and to have the ability to foster good relations between themselves and their client. Kuyken and Tsivrikos (2009) found that up to 15% of the effectiveness of CBT may be due to the therapist competency.

• CBT may be more suitable for some people compared to others. Simons et al (1995) suggest that CBT appears less useful for those who have high levels of irrational beliefs, are resistant to change and those whose stress reflects realistic stressors in their life that cannot be resolved by CBT.

What are the strengths of CBT in terms of its ethics?

• CBT may be more beneficial than drug therapy as it does not have any physical side effects and is more client-led.

What are the weaknesses of CBT in terms of its ethics?

• Patient Blame - the cognitive approach assumes that the client is responsible for their disorder. Whilst this is a positive thing as it empowers the client to change the way they think, there are also disadvantages. For example, important situational factors may be overlooked which are contributing to their disorder, such as life events that the client cannot change. Therefore, 'blaming' the individual for the way they think and behave is not necessarily helpful because it may take other aspects of their life to change in order for them to feel better.

• 11% of patients in the NHS had to pay for their treatment as it was not available for free. CBT costs between £40 and £100 per session. This is an ethical issue as not everyone will be able to afford the treatment which means their mental health will worsen.

What was the aim of experiment one in Loftus and Palmer’s research?

To investigate the effect of leading questions on the estimate of speed, e.g. would those asked about how fast the cars were travelling when they hit each other give different speed estimates and have different expectations from those asked the same question with the word 'smashed'.

What was the methodology of experiment one in Loftus and Palmer’s research?

Lab experiment with an independent groups design, with a sample of 45 participants.

What were the procedures of experiment one in Loftus and Palmer’s research?

45 American University students were split into 5 groups of various sizes.

• All participants were shown the same 7 video clips (5-10 seconds long) of car crashes provided by the Evergreen Safety Council and the Seattle Police Department.

  • The order of the clips were changed for each participant.

• All participants filled in a short questionnaire, that included a few filler questions and the critical question: 'about how fast were the cars going when they ____ each other?'

  • The 5 verbs were hit, smashed, collided, bumped and contacted — each verb was given to 9 participants, and speed estimates were recorded in mph.

What was the speed estimate for the verb ‘smashed’ in Loftus and Palmer’s study?

40.8mph

What was the speed estimate for the verb ‘collided’ in Loftus and Palmer’s study?

39.3mph

What was the speed estimate for the verb ‘bumped’ in Loftus and Palmer’s study?

38.1mph

What was the speed estimate for the verb ‘hit’ in Loftus and Palmer’s study?

34.0mph

What was the speed estimate for the verb ‘contacted’ in Loftus and Palmer’s study?

31.8mph

What conclusion was drawn from experiment one of Loftus and Palmer’s study?

Leading questions can affect a witness' answer — a single word can impact the entire response to a question; the choice of verb distorts the memory of an event.

What is meant by response bias in Loftus and Palmer’s study?

The different speed estimates occurred because the critical word influenced/biased the participant's response.

What is meant by altered memory in Loftus and Palmer’s study?

The results are due to the critical word (the verb) changing/distorting the participant's memory so they actually perceive the accident differently, i.e. more or less severe.

What was the aim of experiment two in Loftus and Palmer’s study?

To see if the leading question just biased the responses given to the questions, or whether the participant's memory had actually altered as a result of the leading questions.

What was the methodology of experiment two in Loftus and Palmer’s research?

Lab experiment with an independent groups design, with a sample of 150 participants.

What were the procedures of experiment two in Loftus and Palmer’s research?

150 American University Students were split into 3 groups of 50.

• They were shown a short film that showed a multi-vehicle car accident and then were given a questionnaire where they were asked a series of questions, including the critical question:

  • Group 1 - 'About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?'

  • Group 2 - 'About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?'

  • Group 3 - was not asked about the vehicular speed. It was a control group.

• One week later, all participants returned and were asked further questions about the accident. The critical question was 'did you see any broken glass?' and was randomly embedded within a list totalling 10 questions. There was no broken glass in the videos.

What were the findings of experiment two in Loftus and Palmer’s research?

What conclusions were drawn from experiment two of Loftus and Palmer’s study?

• The effect of leading questions is not due to response bias but is due to memory being altered - participants thought they saw broken glass when they actually did not.

• Leading questions can actually alter a person's memory of an event - by using the word 'smashed' vs 'hit', the severity of the verb actually altered the perception of the severity of the crash - leading them to recall seeing glass when there wasn't any.

• Leading questions cause memory to become reconstructed - the participants create an original perception of the event, the post event information (e.g. leading question) is then integrated into this perception over time, leading to a reconstructed memory of the event.
   

What are the methodological strengths of Loftus and Palmer’s research?

Internal Validity

• Easy to control extraneous variables as there is a standardised procedure and a controlled environment (the questions and videos were the same).

• Independent Groups - less chance of demand characteristics as there are different participants in each condition, increasing internal validity.

What are the methodological weaknesses of Loftus and Palmer’s research?

External Validity

• All students were from the same university. As the research took place in the 1970s, the majority of students would be white, middle-class males. Therefore, the study lacks population validity as it would be difficult to generalise the results to other populations of people.

  • The study lacks ecological validity as the task and environment is contrived, i.e. the videos of the crash may produce different results to if the participants were actually there in person viewing the crash.

What are the ethical strengths of Loftus and Palmer’s research?

Psychological Harm

• A real car crash may have been distressing to the participant and therefore caused long-term trauma so a huge strength of the study was that distress to the participants was avoided by using film clips of car crashes rather than a real car crash.

What are the ethical weaknesses of Loftus and Palmer’s research?

Informed Consent

• The students were naïve of the aims of the study, they were not aware that it was a study on memory and the effect of leading questions or post event information, so couldn't fully give informed consent.

Right to Withdraw

• The participants were all students at the university where Loftus was a professor. They may have felt obligated to take part and therefore felt unable to refuse to participate BUT they were not forced to remain in the experiment and were free to leave at any time.

What are the social implications of Loftus and Palmer’s research?

• There should be reduced emphasis on the use of EWT as memory is unreliable and can be altered.

• Development of cognitive interview; a method of questioning which avoids leading questions.

• Consideration of exploitation in therapy — could false memories be induced for monetary gain?

What is the cognitive contemporary debate?

The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony.

Why is EWT reliable in terms of reconstructive memory?

Yuille and Cutshall (1986) contradicts the importance of stress in influencing eyewitness memory. They showed that witnesses of a real-life incident (a gun shooting outside a gun shop in Canada) had remarkably accurate memories of a stressful event involving weapons.

• A thief stole guns and money, but was shot six times and died.

• The police interviewed witnesses, and thirteen of them were re-interviewed five months later. 

Recall was found to be accurate, even after a long time, and two misleading questions inserted by the research team had no effect on recall accuracy. Therefore, it is clear that EWT is reliable as misleading questions had no effect on recall accuracy.

Social Implication - crime is a stressful experience but it does not impact the recall of eyewitnesses which means that their testimony will be reliable and therefore criminals can be easily convicted.

Why is EWT NOT reliable in terms of reconstructive memory?

Loftus and Palmer (1974) showed participants film clips of actual car accidents and then gave them a series of questions to answer. There was one critical question in the questionnaire about how fast the cars were going when they hit each other. They changed the intensity of the verb in this question, describing the speed of the cars, with a series of verbs such as ‘hit’, ‘smashed’, collided’.

• Participants who were asked the question with the verb ‘smashed’ recalled a higher speed of the cars (average 40.8 mph) than those who were asked with the word ‘hit’ (average 34 mph).

• Another group of participants watched a clip about a car accident and then answered a questionnaire about the speed of the cars (the verbs were either ‘hit’ or ‘smashed’).

  • A week later, participants had to complete another questionnaire with the crucial question, ‘Did you see any broken glass?’ (There wasn’t any in the clip).

Loftus and Palmer concluded that eyewitness testimony is unreliable because leading questions can influence it. Memory is reconstructed; it changes as we incorporate new information we learn after an incident. When we hear the word ‘smashed’, our schemas tell us there should be broken glass, and therefore we alter our memories to think that there was. After this change, it is difficult to distinguish which memories are true and false.

Social - Criminal Justice System has a reduced emphasis of EWT as we know that memory is unreliable and reconstructed.

Why is EWT reliable in terms of child witnesses?

Goodman and Reed (1986) researched the difference in EWT between adults and 6-year-olds.

• All participants interacted with an unfamiliar man for 5 minutes — 5 days later, the witnesses had to answer objective and suggestive questions, recall what happened and had to identify the man in a line-up.

• Results showed that the adults and 6-year-olds did not differ in their ability to answer objective questions but were somewhat more suggestible than the adults.

Therefore, it can be argued that EWT from children can be reliable if straight-forward, non-leading questions are asked to them. Child EWT should only be considered when there are no other alternatives.

Social - If children are able to be used in EWT then it will be easier to convict criminals in cases where children are the primary victims and/or the only witnesses to a crime are children.

Why is EWT NOT reliable in terms of child witnesses?

Mazzoni (1998) researched the misinformation effect whereby children can be easily made to believe they experienced something that they didn’t.

• Experiment 1 investigated the influence of source monitoring (the ability to connect memories to specific sources accurately) and self-efficacy (a person’s particular set of beliefs that determine how well one can execute a plan of action in prospective situations) on child suggestibility.

  • Results showed that self-efficacy plays a role in suggestibility in older children, whereas source monitoring plays a role in younger children.

• Experiment 2 tested this hypothesis whereby results confirmed that the misinformation effect in younger children was mainly due to genuine memory errors, whereas in older children it was mainly due to the acceptance of misleading information. 

This suggests that EWT is not reliable when older children are involved because it is easy for them to accept misinformation and testify to it at trial.

Social - Possible false convictions because of the misinformation effect when older children are involved in eyewitness testimony.

Why is EWT reliable in terms of weapon focus?

McGaugh (2013) researched the effect of neurobiological systems on creating and enhancing our memories.

• He found that the epinephrine and corticosterone (released by emotional arousal) regulate the consolidation of LTM.

  • Furthermore, he stated that the amygdala plays a role in mediating these stress hormone influences — the release of norepinephrine and the activation of noradrenergic receptors are essential for stress hormone-induced memory enhancement.

Therefore EWT is reliable because if memory is improved during times of stress (e.g. during periods of violent acts) — surely victims will be better able to remember and testify to what happened to them?

Social - As a lot of eyewitnesses experience crime in stressful situations, their testimony will become more accurate and more valuable, meaning that criminals can be convicted when they need to be.

Why is EWT NOT reliable in terms of weapon focus?

Kramer et al. (1990) researched the impact of weapon focus (the decreased ability to give an accurate description of the perpetrator due to focus on a weapon) on EWT.

• In experiment one, subjects viewed a mock crime scene in which a weapon was either highly visible or mostly hidden.

  • Participants in the high visibility group recalled significantly less information of the crime than those in the mostly hidden group.

• The second experiment tested the weapon focus effect in a non-emotional situation.

  • It was found to still occur within a non-arousing setting and was dependent on the percentage of time the weapon was visible.

Therefore EWT is unreliable because if weapon focus can impact the recall of an event in both a stressful and non-emotional setting, how can we rely on the EWT of victims of violent crimes for criminal conviction?

Ethical - There may be concerns for emotional harm whereby participants may remember past trauma - especially because to maintain the weapon focus effect the participants would have had to be deceived.

How can the cognitive approach be evaluated in terms of its successful applications?

Eyewitness Memory can be explained using the computer analogy.

• The witness encodes into the long-term memory the details of the event and the people involved. Encoding may be only partial and distorted, particularly as most crimes happen very quickly, frequently at night, and sometimes accompanied by rapid, complex and often violent action.

• The witness retains the information for a period of time.

• Memories may be lost or modified during retention and other activities between encoding and retrieval may interfere with the memory itself. The witness then retrieves the memory from storage.

However, what happens during the reconstruction of a memory (e.g. the presence of absence of appropriate retrieval cues or the nature of the questioning) may significantly affect its accuracy.

• This leads us to question the significance of EWT and its usefulness within the criminal justice system.

Therefore, despite the potential for the cognitive approach to have successful applications, the potential for external forces to alter our internal memories means that it cannot be used effectively.

How can the cognitive approach be evaluated in terms of its reductionism?

The cognitive approach oversimplifies human behaviour down into a computer-like mechanism whereby all information is processed via ‘input-process-output’.

• This means that it is significantly harder to gain a wider image of what actually causes human behaviour; machine reductionism means that important information may be missed.

However, the fact that the cognitive approach is reductionist allows for specific behavioural components to be studied in detail.

• As it has been simplified it may be easier to develop therapies, such as CBT, that are paramount to reducing the impact of mental illness.

  • Beck’s Cognitive Triad simplifies depression into the three forms of negative thinking that are typical of individuals with depression — it is used in CBT as a way of targeting automatic negative behaviours.

Therefore, the reductionist viewpoint of the cognitive approach has both benefits and weaknesses — whilst it may be harder to holistically study human behaviour, the potential for the development of successful therapies is highly beneficial.

How can the cognitive approach be evaluated in terms of its determinism?

The cognitive approach claims that behaviour is influenced by schema; over time new information is assimilated into existing schemas that act as the basis for our decisions and behaviours.

• They are often based on societal stereotypes that then influenced the things that we do.

  • For example, Allport and Postman’s study on schema and recall whereby white participants were shown an argument between a well-dressed black man and a poor white man holding a weapon, with the story being passed on by serial reproduction. Eventually, the black man became the aggressor, showing that schemas are influenced by our societal cultural stereotypes.

However, the cognitive approach does promote free will to some extent; whilst we have no control over our automatic thought processes, we do have control over whether we act on those thoughts.

Therefore, it is clear that the deterministic view that cognitive psychology has on human behaviour is both good and bad - if our behaviours are controlled by forces beyond our control (i.e. assimilation of information into our schemas based on environmental stimuli) then surely we can't be held accountable for our stereotypical viewpoints? That being said, it is clear that we should be held accountable for our actions as a result of those views.

How can the cognitive approach be evaluated in terms of its interactionism?

Cognitive psychology takes into account both nature and nurture - i.e. the assumption that schemas are responsible for our behaviour.

• We are born with the basic instincts that we need to survive, but we develop them (i.e. new events are assimilated into our existing schemas) over time via interactions with our environment.

Therefore, it is evident that the interactionist perspective of cognitive psychology is useful because it takes into account the biological basis of human behaviour and the environmental causes, meaning that we can develop a wider understanding of what is responsible for behaviour.