Cognitive Psychology

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Cognitive Psychology Chapter 1.3 Introduction
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11/17/2009

• Outline
• Psychological Antecedents
• Two Revolutions
• Precursors from other disciplines
• The Birth of Cognitive Science

Study Questions. Why might we consider
cognitive psychology to be a scientific
revolution? Why might we consider it to not be a
revolution?
3
History of Cognitive Psychology

• Two Revolutions
• Behaviourism
• The Cognitive Revolution
• Noam Chomsky
• Rebuttal of Skinners Verbal Behaviour
• Verbal Learning
• The problem with human subjects

4
History of Cognitive Psychology

• A scientific revolution or a renaissance
• The Gestaltist Movement
• Rejection of structuralism
• Phi-phenomena
• Psychophysics
• Relating psychological experience to physical
  stimuli

5
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

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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History of Cognitive Psychology

• The Birth of Cognitive Psychology
• Millers recollections
• Cognitive science as a counter-revolution
• Birthdate of Cognitive Science Sept. 11, 1956
• Key events in 1956
• Bruner, Goodenough, Austin publish A Study
  of Thinking
• Tanner Swets apply signal detection theory to
  perception
• Millers magical number paper is published
• Carol publishes a volume of Whorfs 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 Hebbs cell
  assemblies theory
• - Chomsky laid the foundations for Syntactic
  Stuctures
• - Other papers discussed the speed of perceptual
  processes and SDT.