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IB DP Psychology — Cognitive Approach | SL & HL | Paper 1
🎯 Learning Intentions By the end of this note, you will be able to:
- Define cognitive models, schema, and cognitive processing using IB-aligned terminology.
- Explain how the Multi-Store Model of Memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin) describes the flow of information through sensory, short-term, and long-term memory.
- Describe the role of schema in guiding perception, memory encoding, and recall.
- Evaluate research evidence for cognitive models using supporting and opposing studies in ACAS format.
- Apply cognitive model concepts to a real-world case study from the cognitive approach perspective.
- Discuss the extent to which cognitive models provide a complete explanation of human memory and thinking.
- Analyse cognitive models using relevant concept areas: Bias, Causality, Measurement, and Perspective.
Introduction & Context
Have you ever walked into a room and completely forgotten why you went there? Or perhaps you vividly remembered the general plot of a film but got several specific details wrong when discussing it with a friend? These everyday experiences hint at something fascinating: the human mind does not record and replay information like a video camera. Instead, it actively processes, filters, organises, and sometimes distorts what we experience.
Psychologists working within the cognitive approach became interested in explaining exactly how this mental processing works. Rather than simply observing behaviour from the outside, they wanted to understand the internal mechanisms — the mental structures and processes — that sit between a stimulus in the world and a person's response to it. To do this, they developed cognitive models: structured theoretical frameworks that describe how information enters the mind, how it is stored, and how it is retrieved or used.
Two of the most influential cognitive models in IB Psychology are the Multi-Store Model of Memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968) and the concept of schema (Bartlett, 1932). Together, these models offer a powerful — though not complete — account of how human cognition operates. Understanding them is essential for analysing human behaviour from the cognitive perspective.
🔌 Analogy — The Computer Metaphor Think of the human mind as a computer. Information from the world enters through input devices (like a keyboard or camera) — this is like sensory memory. It is then temporarily held in RAM (working memory / short-term memory) where active processing happens. If you save a file, it moves to the hard drive (long-term memory) for permanent storage. Just as a computer uses pre-existing file structures to organise new data, the mind uses schemas — mental frameworks built from past experience — to make sense of new information. The analogy is imperfect (the brain is far more flexible and emotional than any computer), but it captures the core idea that cognition involves structured, sequential processing.
Core Concepts
Before we can evaluate specific models, we need to understand what a cognitive model actually is and why psychologists find them useful. When we cannot directly observe a mental process — like memory or attention — we build a model: a simplified, testable representation of how that process might work. Models make predictions that can be tested through experiments, which is