Assignment: Cognitive Psych

Assignment: Cognitive Psych
Assignment: Cognitive Psych
PS400Cognitive Psychology
Directions: Be sure to save an electronic copy of your answer before submitting it to Ashworth College for grading. Unless otherwise stated, answer in complete sentences, and be sure to use correct English, spelling, and grammar. Sources must be cited in APA format. Your response should be four (4) double?spaced pages; refer to the “Format Requirements? page for specific format requirements.
1. Compare and contrast cognitive and behavioral approaches, providing two (2) similarities and two (2) differences between the chosen approaches.
2. Discuss two (2) original examples of a perception of agency.
3. Describe two (2) differences between pre-attentive and post-attentive processing. How are they related to the processes of subitizing and counting? Provide one (1) supporting fact.
4. Describe the notion of executive attention, and relate it to (a) operation span (b) inhibition, and (c) the Stroop effect.
The study of individual-level mental processes such as information processing, attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, decision-making, and thinking is referred to as cognitive psychology (Gerrig and Zimbardo 2002).
Individuals make deliberate decisions to engage in corrupt behavior, according to a key assumption of cognitive psychology analysis of corrupt behavior.
Several psychological mechanisms are most likely involved in these decisions.
An improved knowledge of how these processes play a role in anti-corruption decision-making should help to improve the design of anti-corruption initiatives aimed at societies where corruption is the norm or at individual power holders.
We explore decision-making ideas from the field of cognitive psychology that are most useful for explaining corrupt behavior and feature in our literature review in the sections below.
The processing of data
A decision is a choice between two or more possibilities involving questions such as whether, whom, when, and which.
Each possibility is linked to a set of ideas about the possible outcomes.
Every conclusion is related with a value or preference, yet each decision-views maker’s and values are likely to be unique.
Making a decision entails committing to the preferred option and may entail looking for explanations or rationalizations to support the decision.
Three steps make up a basic decision-making model:
Information in the form of visual or audio input
The brain stores and codes such information, which is then utilised by the areas of the brain responsible for mental tasks including memory, perception, and attention.
Output in the form of information-processing-based behavior (McLeod 2008).
Choosing between options and acting in a certain way necessitates varying degrees of information processing.
This, in turn, necessitates a variety of data-driven and concept (or hypothesis)-driven knowledge acquisition activities that span the spectrum from direct knowledge (perception-based) to indirect knowledge (cognition-based), which entails more difficult inference tasks (Baron and Harvey 1980; Harris 1981; Lindsay and Norman 1977; Taylor and Crocker 1981).
The correct processing of information is influenced by three elements.
One, time: stress and a large amount of information to process deteriorate attention and accuracy (Hastie, 1981).
Two, persons must have the mental capacity to process contradictory information (Fiske, Kinder and Larter 1983).
Three, motivation: diverse behavioral consequences will result from individual desires for accuracy versus sustaining the status quo (Crocker et al. 1984).
Schemata
The concept of “schemata” is well-known in cognitive psychology, and it can help us understand the internal mental processes (such as coding and information storage) that occur between the stimuli (input) and the responses people make in reaction to any particular scenario.
“A cognitive framework of organised past knowledge, abstracted from experience with specific examples that govern the processing of new information and the retrieval of stored information,” according to the definition of a schema (Fiske and Linville 1980, 543).
Scripts, examples, and analogies are all part of the schema.
They are a structured framework that assists people in storing, simplifying, and relating information, and they vary in complexity and engagement.
They’re also linked to sophisticated cognitive processes like memory, and they’re at the center of both data-driven and theory-driven information processing.
Cognitive psychology studies on schemata can tell us a lot about how established knowledge effects the way new knowledge is comprehended, categorised, selected, coded, inferred, stored, and retrieved in terms of decision-making processes (Larson 1994).
In five points, schemata function can be characterized.
Schemata, for starters, organize experiences.
Second, they have an impact on how information is stored and retrieved in long-term memory (Taylor and Crocker 1981).
Third, the schemata’s structure can be used to fill in missing information (Minsky 1975) and so provide information that is understandable in the particular scenario (Taylor and Crocker, 1981).
Fourth, schemata help to make problem solving easier by providing shortcuts and heuristics (Tversky and Kahneman 1973).
Finally, schemata aid self-evaluation by giving a foundation based on earlier experiences.
Motivations and emotions
Traditional cognitive research has largely ignored emotions and motivations (Smith and Semin, 2004).
Motivational structures, on the other hand, are valuable for understanding the initiation and determination of information processing from a situated cognition perspective.
Emotions are seen as an important component of functional cognition.
Studies show that brain injury to the emotional systems (where verbal abilities and “intelligence” are unaffected) has a significant impact on patients’ ability to make reasonable decisions (Damasio 1994).
Behaviour and cognition
The study of cognition is inextricably linked to observations of an individual’s behavior or behaviors.
The mind is said to be made up of interior structures that organize information from the environment, connect it to previously stored knowledge, and convert the information and knowledge into a decision (Clark 1997, 47).
However, the link between cognition and behavior is not a simple one in which cognition influences behavior.
A large body of research on some of psychology’s foundational beliefs (such as dissonance theory – see Festinger 1957) demonstrates that the link is bidirectional, and that cognition and behavior are so intimately linked that changing one without changing the other is difficult (e.g. Cooper and Fazio 1984).
Contextual cognition
In most circumstances, social and physical knowledge particular to the setting drives or influences information processing.
“Cognition is an adaptive process that evolves from the interaction between an individual and the world, both physical and social,” according to certain theorists (Smith and Semin 2004, 55).
Features of the individual’s environment/context are thus both resources for and restrictions on his or her cognition and behavior (Smith and Semin 2004).
The environment is both a source and a receiver of inputs, and it is an interactive and responsive “unit” that responds to human actions in a continual reciprocal causation process (Clark 1997).