3/22/2016
• Outline
»Course and Instructor
»What is Cognitive Psychology?
»Where did Cognitive Psychology
come from?
◊Psychological Antecedents
–Two Revolutions
◊Precursors from other disciplines
»Information processing approach
Study Questions.
• Define and briefly describe Cognitive
Psychology.
• Why might we consider cognitive
psychology to be a scientific revolution?
Why might we consider it to not be a
revolution?
Introduction
• Course and Instructor
» Course web site
• Cognitive Psychology
Ulric Neisser (1928 - )
» Neisser’s (1968) definition:
◊ Cognitive Psychology: refers to all processes by which the
sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored,
recovered, and used.
Introduction
• Cognitive Psychology
» Ascroft’s definitions:
◊ Cognition: the mental events and knowledge we use when we
recognize an object, remember a name, have an idea,
understand a sentence, or solve a problem.
◊ Cognitive Science: the scientific study of thought, language,
and the brain - in short the study of the mind.
Introduction
True or False
AA
canary
canary
can
can
breath
fly
Introduction
• Studying mental processes
Reaction Time (ms)
» The sentence verification task
Dependent Variable:
1500
- Measurement variable
- “Y” axis
- E.g, RT,
Independent Variable:
1400
- Manipulated variable
- “X” axis
- E.g, Sentence type
A canary can
fly
A canary can
breath
Introduction
Read the following
Paris
in the
the Spring
History of Cognitive Psychology
• Birth of Experimental Psychology
» The Longitude Prize of 1714
◊ The Chronological and the Lunar Method
– John Harrison and Nevil Maskelyne
◊ Greenwich “mean” time and star-transits
– The “eye and ear” method
Interpolate the transit + 4 measures
– The Royal Astronomer fires his assistant
History of Cognitive Psychology
• Birth of Experimental Psychology
◊ Bessel’s solution
– Trained astronomers differed by as much 1.1 s (1820s)
– Introduced correction factors (“personal equations”)
◊ Introduction of chronometers
◊ Early investigations in cognitive processing
–
–
–
–
Wundt: The personal equation as psychology
Attending to two stimuli at the same time
Willful Attention
Reaction Time
The Hipp Chronoscope (1844)
History of Cognitive Psychology
• The Birth of Experimental Psychology
◊ Neurophysiology - Helmoltz
– Finite timing of nerve impulses
– Subtractive method
Hermann von Helmholtz
(1821-1894)
◊ Donders (Reaction Time and Mental Processes, 1865)
– A-task: SRT
– B-task: SRT+Categorization+selection
– C-task: SRT+Categorization
◊ Wundt’s Experimental Laboratory at Leipzig
– Published over 53,000 pages
– Wundt’s Structuralism
Wilhelm Wündt
(1832-1920)
History of Cognitive Psychology
• The Death of Experimental Psychology
» Titchener’s Structuralism
Edward Bradford Titchener
(1867-1927)
◊ Introspection as a method
» William James and Functionalism
◊ First Introductory textbook
◊ Influence of Darwin
» Freud’s Psychodynamics hit America
William James
(1842-1910 )
◊ 1909 Clark University Lectures
Group photo 1909 in front of Clark
University. Front row: Sigmund Freud,
Granville Stanley Hall, C.G.Jung; back row:
Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sandor
Ferenczi.
History of Cognitive Psychology
• The Death of Mentalism
John B. Watson
(1878-1958)
◊ John B. Watson (1913). Psychology as the behaviourist views it.
“Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural
science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no
essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness
with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness. The behaviorist, in
his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, recognizes no dividing line between man
and brute. The behavior of man, with all of its refinement and complexity, forms only a part of
the behaviorist's total scheme of investigation.”
History of Cognitive Psychology
• The Death of Mentalism
John B. Watson
(1878-1958)
◊ On Structuralism:
“I do not wish unduly to criticize psychology. It has failed signally, I believe, during
the fifty-odd years of its existence as an experimental discipline to make its place in
the world as an undisputed natural science. Psychology, as it is generally thought of,
has something esoteric in its methods. If you fail to reproduce my findings, it is not
due to some fault in your apparatus or in the control of your stimulus, but it is due to
the fact that your introspection is untrained. The attack is made upon the observer
and not upon the experimental setting. In physics and in chemistry the attack is made
upon the experimental conditions. The apparatus was not sensitive enough, impure
chemicals were used, etc. In these sciences a better technique will give reproducible
results. Psychology is otherwise. if you can't observe 3-9 states of clearness in
attention, your introspection is poor. If, on the other hand, a feeling seems
reasonably clear to you, your introspection is again faulty. You are seeing too much.
Feelings are never clear..”
History of Cognitive Psychology
• The Death of Mentalism
John B. Watson
(1878-1958)
◊ On Functionalism:
“My psychological quarrel is not with the systematic and structural psychologist alone. The
last fifteen years have seen the growth of what is called functional psychology. This type of
psychology decries the use of elements in the static sense of the structuralists. It throws
emphasis upon the biological significance of conscious processes instead of upon the analysis
of conscious states into introspectively isolable elements. I have done my best to understand
the difference between functional psychology and structural psychology. Instead of clarity,
confusion grows upon me. The terms sensation, perception, affection, emotion, volition are
used as much by the functionalist as by the structuralist. The addition of the word 'process'
('mental act as a whole', and like terms are frequently met) after each serves in some way to
remove the corpse of content' and to leave 'function' in its stead. Surely if these concepts are
elusive when looked at from a content standpoint, they are still more deceptive when viewed
from the angle of function, and especially so when function is obtained by the introspection
method...”
History of Cognitive Psychology
• The Death of Mentalism
John B. Watson
(1878-1958)
◊ On Studying conscious or unconscious processes:
This leads me to the point where I should like to make the argument
constructive. I believe we can write a psychology, define it as [the
science of behaviour], and never go back upon our definition: never
use the terms consciousness, mental states, mind, content,
introspectively verifiable, imagery, and the like. I believe that we can
do it in a few years…. It can be done in terms of stimulus and
response, in terms of habit formation, habit integrations and the like.
History of Cognitive Psychology
• Two Revolutions
» Scientific Revolutions
◊ Thomas Kuhn
– Normal science
– Accumulation of anomalies
– Scientific Revolutions
E.g.s, Copernicus, Darwin, & Einstein.
Thomas Kuhn
(1922-1996)
◊ Behaviourism and the Cognitive revolutions
History of Cognitive Psychology
• Two Revolutions
» Radical Behaviourism
◊ The Hull - Spence model
◊ B. F. Skinner
– Antimentalism
– On Consciousness
– On Cognitive Psychology
B. F. Skinner
(1904 - 1990)
History of Cognitive Psychology
• Two Revolutions
» The Cognitive Revolution
◊ Noam Chomsky
– Rebuttal of Skinner’s “Verbal Behaviour”
◊ Verbal Learning
– The problem with human subjects
◊ Neobehaviourists
– Spence and cognitive contamination
History of Cognitive Psychology
• A scientific revolution … or a renaissance
» The Gestaltist Movement
◊ Rejection of structuralism
◊ Phi phenomenon
◊ Problem solving
» Psychophysics
◊ Relating psychological experience to physical stimuli
History of Cognitive Psychology
• A revolution … or behaviourism + mentalism?
» From behaviourism, the cognitive approach
rejected
◊
◊
◊
◊
◊
◊
Extrapolation from a small set of premises
Animal experimentation
Learning a central problem
Logical positivism
Stimulus control over all behaviour
Antimentalism
History of Cognitive Psychology
• A revolution … or behaviourism + mentalism?
» From behaviourism, the cognitive approach took
◊
◊
◊
◊
◊
Nomothetic explanation as a goal
Empiricism as a method of proof
Laboratory control
Rational canons of science
The Law of Parsimony
History of Cognitive Psychology
• The Birth of Cognitive Psychology
» WW II
◊ Human engineering
◊ Brain-damaged soldiers
◊ Advances in Communications
» Information theory and the human information processor
◊ Development of servo-mechanical devices
◊ Tackling teleology (purposeful behaviour)
» The development of the computer
◊ AI / Simulations
History of Cognitive Psychology
• The Birth of Cognitive Psychology
» WW II and Human Engineering
◊ Limits of the behaviourist approach
◊ Problems of perception, judgment, decision making, problem
solving
◊ “man / machine system” concept
◊ Humans as receivers, processors, and transmitters of
information.
» From human engineering, cognitive psychology has
retained:
◊ Humans as information processors
◊ Processing limits
◊ Government interest in funding (e.g., NASA)
History of Cognitive Psychology
• The Birth of Cognitive Psychology
» Advances in Communications Engineering
◊ Information theory and the human information
channels
» From communications engineering,
cognitive psychology retained:
◊Coding
◊Limited channel capacity
◊Serial and parallel transmission / processing
History of Cognitive Psychology
• The Birth of Cognitive Psychology
» The Hixon Symposium (Sept. 1948)
◊ Karl Lashley
– The Problem of Serial Order in Behaviour
◊ Alan Turing:
– Turing Machine
◊ Warren McCulloch & Walter Pitts:
– First artificial neural network
◊ Norbert Weiner:
– “Cybernetics” or the “man and the machine
◊ Claude Shannon:
– Information Theory
– Information as binary digits
History of Cognitive Psychology
• The Birth of Cognitive Psychology
» Miller’s recollections
◊ Cognitive science as a counter-revolution
◊ Birthdate of Cognitive Science: Sept. 11, 1956
George Miller (1920 - )
– Key events in 1956:
• Bruner, Goodenough, & Austin publish “A Study of Thinking”
• Tanner & Swets apply signal detection theory to perception
• Miller’s “magical number” paper is published
• Carol publishes a volume of Whorf’s works on the effects of language on thought
• Sept 11: Symposium at M.I.T. by the “Special Interest Group in Information theory”
- Newell & Simon with a “logic machine”
- Rochester used a computer to test Hebb’s cell assemblies theory
- Chomsky laid the foundations for “Syntactic Stuctures”
- Other papers discussed the speed of perceptual processes and SDT.