Name: Adina Pascalau
Date: 24th of October, 2011
Course: Media and Communication Basics (EVA), UNIT 3 “DoublePlusGood”
Assignment: You have learned that the Stimulus-Response-Model was based on a certain
psychological/scientific philosophy that regarded the human mind as a ― black box‖ and stated that
humans equally reacted to stimuli. In the 20th century this scientific philosophy was eclipsed as a result
of a process called the ― cognitive revolution‖.
1. Please explain the changes that this process brought to the view of human mind and behavior.
2. Which psychological/scientific philosophy originated from this process?
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Bibliography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_revolution
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rit/geo/Miller.pdf
http://mind.ucsd.edu/papers/phil_cogsci/phil_cogsci.html
http://www.learning-theories.com/cognitivism.html
Changes brought to the view of human mind and behavior by the cognitive revolution:
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the cognitive revolution appeared as a response to behaviorism (behaviorists argued that
because mental events are not publicly observable, psychologists should avoid description
of mental processes or the mind in their theories); the cognitive revolution in essence was the

realization that any adequate theory of human and animal mentality would need to posit
representational states between sensory stimulus and behavioral response -- at least for a great
many domains of behavior; these states would be theoretical, and not simply reducible to
constructs of observables.
as George A. Miller states in “The cognitive revolution: a historical perspective”, the cognitive
revolution in psychology is actually a counter-revolution that brought the mind back into
experimental psychology.
“The first revolution occurred much earlier when a group of experimental psychologists,
influenced by Pavlov and other physiologists, proposed to redefine psychology as the science of
behavior. They argued that mental events are not publicly observable. The only objective
evidence available is, and must be, behavioral. By changing the subject to the study of behavior,
psychology could become an objective science based on scientific laws of behavior. The
behavioral revolution transformed experimental psychology in the US. Perception became

discrimination, memory became learning, language became verbal behavior, intelligence
became what intelligence tests test.” (George A. Miller)
George A. Miller anticipated the changes the information theory will bring to human brain/mind
research, as he said in his article “The cognitive revolution: a historical perspective”:
“I left the symposium [the moment of conception of the cognitive revolution - 11 September,
1956, the second day of a symposium organized by the ‘Special Interest Group in Information
Theory’ at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology] with a conviction, more intuitive than
rational, that experimental psychology, theoretical linguistics, and the computer simulation of
cognitive processes were all pieces from a larger whole and that the future would see a
progressive elaboration and coordination of their shared concerns.”
 the cognitive revolution was a interdisciplinary revolution
Fig. Cognitive science in 1978. Each line joining two disciplines represents interdisciplinary inquiry that
already existed in 1978.
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by studying and developing successful functions in artificial intelligence and computer science, it
became possible to make testable inferences about human mental processes.
some psychologists started considering the brain and the mind as whole
cognitive psychologists sustained that the science of psychology must include the study of
internal events (what happens inside the brain, the mental processes)
Psychological/scientific philosophy originated from this process:
Cognitivism - the cognitivist paradigm argues that the “black box” of the mind should be opened and
understood; the learner is viewed as an information processor (like a computer).
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it focused on the inner mental activities; cognitive psychologists sustained that mental
processes such as thinking, memory, knowing, and problem-solving needed to be explored
cognitivism compared the brain with a computer: the mind is like a program, and the brain is the
hardware; information comes in, is being processed, and leads to certain outcomes
cognitivism was a response to behaviorism - people are not “programmed animals” that merely
respond to environmental stimuli; people are rational beings that require active participation in
order to learn, and whose actions are a consequence of thinking; changes in behavior are
observed, but only as an indication of what is happening in the brain of the learner