The Cognitive Approach

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about the cognitive approach, focusing in particular on: (i) its origins in work by Piaget, Bandura and many other psychologists through the 1950’s and 60’s; (ii) the parallels drawn by the approach between the workings of the human brain and synthetic computation; (iii) the approach’s popularity and strengths, including its acknowledgement that humans can both be agents and be acted upon, as well as its ability to inform computing; (iv) the weaknesses of the approach, including some of its areas being incompatible with hypothesis testing, and that its theories don’t always map on to the known biology of the brain.

About the lecturer

Dr Ayoub Bouguettaya is a lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham. Dr Bouguettaya’s research interests are in social psychology and how knowledge from that field can be applied to others, particularly health, including how we can apply social identity theory to societal problems, as well as investigating the different perspectives one might take on those issues. Some of Dr Bouguettaya’s recent publications include 'The relationship between gambling advertising and gambling attitudes, intentions and behaviours: a critical and meta-analytic review' (2020) and 'The Effect of a Food Addiction Explanation Model for Weight Control and Obesity on Weight Stigma' (2020).