Contribution of Cognitive psychology to the Study of Behavio

It assumes a dual flow of information can be processed; we can do two thought incurring processes at once. Bruner and Minturn illustrated this using the example below in 1951.

From this we can see how experimental hypotheses and models are linked. The mediating processes in humans take place in the central nervous system, including the mind, and through running programs in computers. Our senses are similar to that of the input due to software or the keyboard. By deliberately producing a change in the independent variable one can record its effect on the dependent variable. The difference between computers and us is that the computer does not have an affect on what is input. The mind interprets the information to help itself understand and to make the information mean something in relation to another context.

A scientific experiment is a rigorous procedure that determines whether one variable causes a change in another. If people are told different sets of numbers into each ear at the same time and then asked to recall them; they would either write the numbers separately, for each ear, or join the information they heard through each ear to gain one set of numbers. Ultimately, though from many angles, cognitive psychology’s contribution to science’s study of behaviour is the information processing approach. The cyclic model describes how top-down and bottom-up processing interacts for a single flow of information. Experimental biases, extraneous variables and the fact that people subconsciously act differently under experimental conditions can all change the results. Hypotheses are originally needed to conceive models, and to prove these models extensive testing is needed.