Biological Structures and Neurochemistry

The Cognitive Approach

The cognitive approach emerged as a direct challenge to behaviourism's refusal to study internal mental processes. From the 1950s onwards — in what is often called the cognitive revolution — psychologists began to argue that understanding behaviour requires understanding the mental processes that intervene between stimulus and response: processes of perception, attention, memory, language, thinking, and problem-solving. The cognitive approach proposes that these internal processes can be studied scientifically using the methods of experimental psychology.

The Information Processing Approach

The cognitive approach uses the computer as its central metaphor and model for the mind. Just as a computer receives input, processes it according to stored programmes and rules, and produces output, the mind is conceptualised as a system that receives sensory input, processes it through a series of internal cognitive operations, and generates behavioural output. This information processing approach provided a principled framework for thinking about mental processes — with memory as storage, attention as a filter, and perception as an encoding process.

Cognitive psychologists distinguish between theoretical models of mental processes (abstract representations of how cognitive systems work, such as the multi-store model of memory) and computer models (computer simulations of cognitive processes that generate explicit, testable predictions — forming the basis of artificial intelligence research).

The Role of Schemas

Schemas are cognitive frameworks — packages of knowledge and expectations derived from experience — that influence how we perceive, interpret, and remember information. Bartlett (1932) demonstrated that memory is reconstructive rather than reproductive: people do not store exact copies of experiences but reconstruct them using existing schemas. His famous War of the Ghosts study showed that participants recalled a Native American folk tale in ways that reflected their own cultural schemas, distorting the unfamiliar story to fit familiar frameworks. Schemas thus shape perception, guide attention, and bias recall towards schema-consistent information.

Cognitive Neuroscience

A more recent development within the cognitive approach is cognitive neuroscience: the attempt to map cognitive processes onto specific brain structures and neural circuits using brain imaging technologies such as fMRI, PET, and EEG. This bridges the cognitive and biological approaches, providing a neurobiological foundation for cognitive models and generating a more complete understanding of processes such as memory, attention, and language processing.

Evaluation

The cognitive approach has been enormously productive, generating an extensive body of experimental research and forming the theoretical basis for highly effective therapies (CBT, REBT). Its use of rigorous experimental methods, standardised stimuli, and statistical analysis gives it strong scientific credentials. However, the computer analogy has been criticised: humans are not emotionally neutral information processors — emotions, motivation, and social context profoundly influence cognition in ways that simple computer models do not capture. The approach has also been criticised for being too individualistic, ignoring social and cultural influences on thought. Experimental cognitive psychology often uses artificial laboratory tasks that may not reflect real-world cognition.