Ch02 Model Answers - Routledge

Chapter 2 Cognitive psychology

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7 (a) Outline one assumption of the cognitive approach in psychology. (b) Describe how the cognitive approach could explain autism. (c) Describe one similarity and one difference between the Baron-Cohen et al. study and any other cognitive approach study. (d) Discuss the strengths and limitations of the cognitive approach using examples from the Baron-Cohen et al. study. (a) One assumption of the cognitive approach is that humans are like computers. In particular, the way the mind works is like a computer in that it has information inputted (stimuli), it does some processing (e.g. storing information) and it gives some output (e.g. recalling information). (b) The cognitive approach would explain autism along the lines of a cognitive deficit. So, it wouldn’t explain it in terms of genes, or biology or neurotransmitters, or brain areas, but in terms of some faulty thinking processes. For autism, a popular cognitive explanation is lack of Theory of Mind (ToM) as suggested by Baron-Cohen. This means that an autistic person is not able to infer in other people mental states such as beliefs and emotions. So, an autistic child might think that someone else is thinking and feeling the same way as they themselves do, and knows the same things. This cognitive deficit impacts upon a lot of social behaviour in terms of communication and styles of communication as well as what an autistic chooses to communicate. The background research to Baron-Cohen suggests that autistic individuals might have trouble with both first order tasks e.g. (‘what do you think Tom thinks?’) as well as second order tasks (‘what do you think Tom thinks about Jack?’). (c) One similarity between Baron-Cohen et al. and Loftus and Palmer is that they both use an experimental approach and this is a popular methodology for cognitive studies. In BaronCohen, the IV is whether the participant is autistic, Tourettes or normal. The DV is measured through a task (the Eyes Task). In Loftus and Palmer, the IV is the word given to the participants and again, the DV is measured through a task (recall of speed of the car in the video). One difference between Baron-Cohen et al. and Loftus and Palmer is that Baron Cohen is a quasi-experiment while Loftus and Palmer is a ‘true’ experiment. In a true experiment, the IV is directly manipulated by the experimenters. In other words the conditions of the IV are ‘imposed’ upon the participants. However, in a quasi- (or ‘natural’) experiment, the conditions of the IV happen naturally and are not (or cannot) be manipulated by the experimenter. So, in Loftus and Palmer, the experimenters manipulated which word a participant was exposed to in the key question (hit, smashed, contacted etc.) whereas in the Baron-Cohen study, the different conditions of the IV happened all by themselves – whether the participants were autistic, normal or Tourette’s. In fact, the researchers could not manipulate this IV! A quasi-experiment does not demonstrate a causal relationship, so the Baron-Cohen study doesn’t show that autism caused the difficulties on the Eyes Task, it just shows that the two are associated.

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(d) One strength of the cognitive approach is that it focuses upon what people think and this is really important to the study of psychology! For example, in Baron-Cohen’s study, he has demonstrated how autistic people are not able to comprehend what other people are feeling as easily as nonautistic people i.e. not capable of ‘mind reading’. This is shown because the autistic/AS participants scored less well on the Eyes Task than the non-autistic sample. This is useful research because it can help people know how best to communicate with and treat autistic children. Parents and teachers of autistic children can be trained to understand these deficits as well as to use techniques to find ways around these problems when teaching or communicating with autistic children. Another strength of the cognitive approach is that it is quite scientific. For example, in Baron-Cohen’s study it is scientific because it uses the experimental method and there are many controls (e.g. matched ages, two control groups, standardised tasks etc.). On the upside, this means we can be more sure that the findings are valid i.e. that the changes in the DV are the result of the IV. In this case, it means we can feel more certain that the ability to correctly read emotion from the eyes is a function of the syndrome/normality and not just chance or random error. One weakness of the cognitive approach is that it tends to ignore emotion. We do not know from this study how it feels to be an autistic child or person and what their experience is. This means that the cognitive approach is reductionist as it does not take enough of a whole-person view and so gives a very restricted view of autism. Another weakness of the cognitive approach is that really it is only guessing about how people think as you cannot directly observe thinking in the way that you can observe behaviour. So, in the Eyes Task, we do not know why the autistic people did less well – it might not be because of poor Theory of Mind or it might have been for some other reason e.g. they didn’t understand the adjectives, or they didn’t concentrate etc. Really, we are only guessing because thought processes cannot be directly observed. This means that there might be some uncertainty about the validity of the conclusions of the study.