History of Cognition Flashcards
when was cognition studied?
late 19th century
Hermann Ebbinghaus
1850-1909
Germany
Memory studies - learned from psychophysics and applied to the study of memory
Early experiments on cognitive processes - Ebb - 1885 - studies memories of materials initially devoid of meaning - nonsense syllables - such as DEV, JUPM, POK - He tested on himself.
Extraneous + confounding variables - of individual differences in the associations and the meanings of words so Ebb used nonsense syllables words - in a way to study basic units of memory - he’s overcome the problem of meaning by doing the nonsense syllables
Within-subject testing - he wanted to control everything - time of day, how long it takes to learn and forget.
Typically presented discrete lists at fixed rate and timed how long it took to learn lists completely.
He was looking for objective measures of memory capacity but was specifically interested in how memories were formed, today we call this, ENCODING,
Ebb had similar insights about limitations of STM to WILLIAM JAMES.
He noted that he could get only about 7 syllables correct after singular presentation - MILLER 1965
If 12 numbers of syllables in series»_space;> 17 number of repetitions necessary for effortless reproduction
Ebb is known for his work on long term learning and retention.
The more repetition u go over a material the time it takes to reproduce the next day is decreased.
Spaced learning over time - you dont forget it.
Ebb = the forgetting curve
Data taken from ebb and replotted by Baddeley
This curve is fundamental to memory.
The forgetting curve
Data taken from Ebbinghaus and replotted by Baddeley
Georg Muller
1850 - 1934
Replicated Ebb experiments but also added a QUALITATIVE ELEMENT by asking participants what they were thinking.
He was interested in parti subjective experience of thinking!
Asked if they used any particular strategy to remember
He learned that people could describe number of strategies»_space;> assigning meaning to meaningless words (ebb thought he got away from this but nope hahaha) and chunking of syllables to give them meaning
Inspired by Ebb work on the rate of rate of forgetting - Mullers experiments explored why we forget
Explored conditions under which learning on one task would transfer to another (transfer appropriate processing). This concept is core to cognitive today.
Created a device which systematically presented stimuli under the same conditions and equally spaced apart. He questioned how he could get around the limitation and make it so he could study multiple people systematically. So he came up with the MULLERS MEMORY DRUM.
Georg Muller replicated ebb experiment but also added what element?
A qualitative element - asking participants what they were thinking.
Muller experiments were inspired by Ebbinghaus work and explored what?
Why we forget.
He explored conditions under which learning on one task would transfer to another. (transfer appropriate processing)
Transfer appropriate processing
learning on one task would transfer to another
Muller’s memory drum
A device created by Muller - which systematically presents stimuli under the same conditions and equally spaced apart.
He questioned how he could get around the limitations and make it so he could study multiple people sytematically.
Kind of the first theory of interference really. To explain why we forget.
List A »_space;» LIST X »_space;> Test»_space;> % correct 23
List B»_space;» NO LIST»_space;> Test»_space;> % correct 40 something
list b was nearly double correct
Carl Stumpf
1848- 1936
Also happening at the same time in Germany as Muller and ebb
Perception and sensation were being explored beyond vision
Ebb and muller were exploring forgetting
Stumpf was exploring music - especially how tone is perceived
Importantly this work shows that perception is sensory and explored how combinations of different tones impacted auditory perception
Vision, memory and thinking and audition
Latin verb Cognoscere means
to know, to become acquainted with
Cognition was studied in the late 19th century by two near contemporaries who took very different approaches which were?
Structuralist - Hermann Ebbinghaus - Germany - 1850- 1909
- interested in the STRUCTURE of CONSCIOUSNESS
- with prof Bryce > learned > Titchener, introspection and structuralism
- structuralism sought to understand the elements of consciousness and how they were arranged. He was particularly interested in underlying psychological connections as a way to explain consciousness.
Functionalist - William James - US - 1842- 1910
- Interested in the FUNCTION of CONSCIOUSNESS
- He was a writer
- What is the utility of consciousness and how do our experiences change and lead to different types of consciousness
William James - the famous quote about him =
’ A psychologist who writes like a novelist, brother of a novelist who writes like a psychologist.’
The principles of psychology
1890 - written version of William James psych lectures at Harvard - 12 years to write
William James
19th century
James was insightful about the structure and function of attention, memory etc
He distinguished primary memory from secondary memory (‘memory proper’) - ‘the knowledge of an event or fact… with the additional consciousness that we have thought or experienced it before’
lil note here - primary memory reflects the current contents of consciousness
Whereas secondary memory reflects the current contents of consciousness
Whereas secondary memory consists of memory of the distant past that must be bought back into consciousness by retrieval process.
William James felt that Wundt, who he studied under, was way too reductionist - said the same ad Titchener.
He thought that consciousness was not formed as building blocks or discrete units (structuralism) but rather that consciousness flowed as a stream, a stream of consciousness that functioned as a set of processes.
Questions centred around how these processes functioned!
Looking ahead - A note on the behaviourist era -
Some 50 years from WATSON 1913 TO SKINNER 1963
Actions should be explained only by things observable – ‘stimuli’ and ‘responses’
‘attention’, ‘memory’, ‘imagery’ are not observable
Skinners 1975 ‘verbal behaviour’ – tries to explain the things we say by reinforcement history and associations between words
There were some exceptions during the behaviourist era - BARLETT’S ‘remembering’ 1932
- CRITICISED EBBINGHAUS: Lists of nonsense syllables set up mass of associations which may be more esoteric than real world meanings.
(IRONICALLY THE WORD ESOTERIC MEANS»_space; intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest.)
- to offset this, must ‘train’ the learner to an ‘automatic attitude’ - but this means we are studying special laboratory habits, not ‘remembering’
Barletts paradigm he used was called ‘THE WAR OF THE GHOSTS’
Was interested in cultural differences - he did this study in the first world war.
Barlett argued that we had schemas (stole the word from neurology - know where parts of your body are because of the model inside of head) that we had.
Schemas of assumtions about the world and we use this to understand. When something new comes up we understand it and store it in something thats old.
When things differ quite markedly then it stretches and challenges the schema and u get interesting errors,
Only in the 60s in America could when the cognitive analogy of the computure did they then accept wooly terms such as Schema.
Barletts studies -
Used real stimuli - not list of nonsense > barlett said in order to have meaning it needs to have ecological validity.
Used real, sometimes quite unusual, passage, pictures
Used methods such as serial reproduction.
Examined qualitative aspects of recall to deduce some general principles. e.g. the war of the ghosts
Mental schema - a method of organising incoming information with past experiences/ concepts
A cognitive framework to explain mental processes (inlcuding memory)
THE CONSTRUCTED MIND -
- Memory was not merely about associations
- Memory was an active process that was constructed based on incoming sensory information
- Argued that the mind was involved in construction, not just reconstruction > the mind wasn’t simply fishing up things from the past but constantly buffering and constructing new reality from experiences and stimuli
