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Question Record – Cognitive: ib-cog-question-record NOV 2019 UPDATE

Methods and Ethics

Cognitive Processing

Reliability of Cognitive Processes

Emotion and Cognition

HL Extension: Cognitive processing in the digital world

The cognitive approach to behaviour views human beings as processors of information much in the same way as a computer processes information. The cognitive approach to behaviour focuses on areas of research such as schema processing, memory processing, and thinking, and how cognition may influence behaviour. Researchers are also interested in the extent to which cognitive processes are reliable, for example, in relation to thinking and memory. How cognitive processes may be affected in the modern digitalized world is an emerging field within the cognitive approach to behaviour.

Cognitive processes are often influenced in complex ways by emotions. The influence of emotions on cognitive processes is studied not only by cognitive psychologists, but is developing as an area of interest for cognitive neuroscientists as well as social psychologists.

Research methods in the cognitive approach to understanding of behaviour rely on experiments and brain imaging technologies as well as qualitative approaches to understanding everyday memory and thinking, making the cognitive approach an example of the holistic approach to understanding human behaviour.