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The Rise of Cognitive Psychology (Cognitivism as a Interdisciplinary…
The Rise of Cognitive Psychology
Contributing events/factors
Computer development
Lashley
: stimuli-response associations are not sufficient! (behaviourist would say that multiple S-R can explain complex beh but Lashley disagrees): there are
anticipatory speech errors
which show evidence of planning and this cannot be explained by S-R
e.g:
Tolman
: rat studies, cognitive mapping and the 'little man' in our mind controlling behaviour & utilising goals... computers function without a homunculus, how?: Info feedback in computers: thermostat!
the Turing test: if a human interacts with a machine is that human aware that it is a machine and not a human which it is interacting with? (AI)
Symposium on Information theory
Behaviourism under pressure: 1956
Miller
: digit span & STM limits... the brain is a computer, cognition transforms, reduces, elaborates, stores, recovers and uses information
Simon, Newell, Chomsky
Math/tech advances
WW2: need to handle and process info efficiently, crack codes & be able to communicate over long distances
machines needed to be flexible
Turing
: can use Boolean to simulate more complex processes in simple machines: originally just hypothetical to describe how a computer would work
Boolean logic
: 0 (F), 1 (T), and (both T), or (one, other or both T), xor (one or other T), not (negation)
These operations allowed electrical circuits to be developed & process info
In humans?
McCulloch & Pitts
: Boolean operations in the brain: neural psychology: many basic neurons are connected to perform complex functions using binary responses (emitting signals) @ each stage... using 'threshold' theory that need multiple signals to reach reaction signal e.g. purple & round = blueberry = eat response
referred to as McCulloch Pitts Neuron (MCP) with an 'all or nothing' response
New approaches
Neisser
: publishes "Cognitive Psych", evidence supporting information processing in the mind: same terms related to cog. as Miller
e.g. memory is mainly reconstructed in the mind rather than being a snapshot: Challenger explosion study!
Behaviourists had to start including cognitive processes in their models!
Central Tenets
Mental representations: info patterns which represent knowledge: understood through observation and algorithms
Complex processes = top-down processes: perceptions formed starting with larger/abstract concept/idea and narrow in on detail
Use experimental methods and observations of humans! (Beh used mostly animal studies)
Importance of scientific methods
testing the hypothesis
analysing & interpreting the data
Gathering Info to form hypothesis
publishing results
defining Q/hypothesis
replication!
Boxes-and-arrows diagrams
used to construct mental representations
Broadbent
Filter model
: sensory (physical properties) --> STM --> filter --> higher level processes (semantics) --> LTM/ working memory
early selection view: limited capacity means that info needs to be narrowed down quickly
:!?: how much info is actually stored/processed?
filtered out info is lost completely! :warning: prob not true: thresholds cnfjkksdndifbsfdsifkjdsnkj
all box and arrows must be present for product to be good: funtionality
Using computers to understand the mind
Computational models: computer programs which simulate human cognitions
:warning:How can complexity of info processing be explained by top-down processing?
e.g.
Syntatic ambiguity
: when a sentence is structured in such a way that it may have multiple possible meanings depending on interpretation (also homonyms/ homophones)
explanation: there is constant feedback & info is moving in many directions: in top-down processing info from higher stages is fed back to previous stages to influence processing at these stages
Bottom-up processing: sense of basic feautures of stimuli are integrated
Scientific methods:
Sperling's
test of
Broadbent's
theory
stimulus= letters and numbers on screen; immediate recall
only 4 of 12 remembered on average
when row specified after stimulus: able to correctly report entire row (4)
shows that
all
are processed/encoded (as any row can be correctly recalled when prompted) but max remembered is 4: limits of memory...
iconic memory
goes against filter theory that only limited amount of info is processed: this evidence shows that
all
is processed and is
then lost
afterwards rather than being filtered out
before
encoding
Cognitivism as a Interdisciplinary pursuit
psychology
sociology
education
anthropology
AI
linguistics
philosophy
neuroscience