Theoretical and Methodological Approaches

Theoretical and Methodological Approaches
To understand cognitive psychology, one must be familiar not only with the
relevant questions—the topic matter of the discipline—but also with the approach
taken to answer these questions. Cognitive psychologists typically
employ an information-processing model to help them better understand
mental events. An assumption of this model is that mental activities (the processing
of information) can be broken down into a series of interrelated
stages and scientifically studied. A general comparison can be made between
the information processing of a human and a computer. For example,
both have data input into the system, humans through their sense organs
and computers via the keyboard. Both systems then translate and
encode (store) the data. The computer translates the keyboard input into
electromagnetic signals for storage on a disk. People oftentimes translate
the raw data from their senses to a linguistic code which is retained in some
unique human storage device (for example, a piercing, rising-and-falling
pitch may be stored in memory as “baby’s cry”). Both humans and computers
can manipulate the stored information in virtually limitless ways, and
both can later retrieve information from storage for output. Although there
are many dissimilarities between how computers and humans function, this
comparison accurately imparts the flavor of the information-processing
model.
In addition to constructing computational models that specify the stages
and processes involved in human thought, cognitive psychologists use a variety
of observational and experimental methods to determine how the mind
works. Much can be learned, for example, from the study of patients with
neuropsychological disorders such as the progressive dementias, including
Alzheimer’s disease. The “lesion,” or brain injury, study is the oldest and
most widely used technique to study brain function. Examining what happens
when one aspect of cognition is disrupted can reveal much about the
operation of the remaining mechanisms.
Behavioral studies—in contrast to “lesion” studies—examine cognitive function in healthy subjects, using a variety of experimental methods developed
throughout the twentieth century. One of the continuing challenges
of cognitive psychology is the construction of experiments in which observable
behaviors accurately reveal mental processes. Researchers bring volunteers
into the laboratory and measure, for example, the time it takes for subjects
to judge whether a word they are shown had appeared in a list of words
they had earlier studied.
Other researchers study human cognition in more naturalistic settings
called field studies. In one such study, the average score of grocery shoppers
on a paper-and-pencil arithmetic test was 59 percent, but their proficiency
in the supermarket on analogous tasks reached ceiling level (98 percent).
Much of what is done in the laboratory could be thought of as basic research,
whereas field approaches to the study of cognition could be characterized
as applied research.

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