Theoretical Perspective: Cognitive

Introduction

Generally, the terms ‘cognition’ and ‘cognitive assessment’ refer to different cognitive abilities and to different perspectives of treatment. If we accept a broad definition, numerous authors and theoretical approaches can be defined as belonging to a cognitive perspective, such as James (1890), Bartlett (1932), and Piaget (e.g. Piaget & Inhelder, 1969). More specifically, the cognitive approach focuses on the analysis of basic cognitive processes, such as perception, attention, memory, language and reasoning. In particular, the Human Information Processing approach, which inspired contemporary cognitive theories, first drew attention to the analysis of such basic processes. One of the main differences between a cognitive and behavioural approach is that the first focuses on the cognitive operations used by the human mind when a subject is engaged in ...