The Cognitive Revolution

Question 1

When cognitive psychology re-emerged as an alternative to behaviourism, it made heavy use of…

Answer 1

a computer metaphor

Question 2

What is the similarity between computers and cognitive psychology?

Answer 2

Computers of course receive input and produce output, just like the S-R formulation of the behaviourists, but the interesting part is the internal processing of information, and concepts of information processing were poorly developed before computers became prominent.

Question 3

Who coined the term cognitive psychology? When?

Answer 3

Ulric Neisser coined the term “cognitive psychology” in his 1967 book of that name.

Question 4

The work of which early psychologists can be considered cognitive?

Answer 4

Wundt, Ebbinghaus, Titchener, etc.

Question 5

When did it become fashionable to once again consider thinking about thinking in psychology? Why?

Answer 5

1950s - became fashionable again (thinking about thinking) - but instead of studying consciousness, computer metaphors were used
Can study the relationship between input and output

Question 6

Why is Gestalt psychology considered cognitive psychology?

Answer 6

it largely studies how sense impressions come to be perceived as integrated wholes

Question 7

Who is generally credited with founding Gestalt psychology? How?

Answer 7

Max Wertheimer is generally credited with founding Gestalt psychology with his studies of the phi phenomenon (which began with a toy stroboscope).

Question 8

What is the phi phenomenon? Whose work is it associated with? How did he first study this phenomenon?

Answer 8

a form of apparent movement that works best at a time-lapse of about 60ms

Max Wertheimer

began with a toy stroboscope

Question 9

What was the basic approach of Gestalt psychology?

Answer 9

The basic approach was phenomenological (i.e. people’s own experiences were examined).

Question 10

Other than Wertheimer, which other two famous psychologists of the Gestalt school?

Answer 10

Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler.

Question 11

What was the Gestalt argument that formed the basis of perception?

Answer 11

Gestalt psychologists argued that the perception of wholes proceeds according to general principles, such as grouping, closure, and figure-ground.

Question 12

What did the operation of principles such as grouping, closure, and figure-ground suggest to the Gestaltists? Whose approach is this compatible with?

Answer 12

The operation of these principles suggested to the Gestaltists that innate cognitive structures were at work.

compatible with the approach of Noam Chomsky and his Language Acquisition Device

Question 13

What is the Zeigarnik effect? How does this relate to Gestalt psychology?

Answer 13

Zeigarnik effect - details of incomplete tasks stay in memory - those that are completed are released

The operation of these principles suggested to the Gestaltists that innate cognitive structures were at work.
- Similar principles could be seen at work in other cognitive processes such as memory.

Question 14

What did Kohler study? What tradition did these studies fall into?

Answer 14

Köhler’s studies of insight learning in apes, as well as his studies of chickens’ ability to distinguish two shades of grey,

chimps - believed that successful problem‐solving meant seeing the problem as a whole, by linking all of the elements together in a unified whole

chickens - argued that such a result indicated that the chicken had learned the problem as a relationship, that is, as a whole

Fell into Gestalt tradition

Question 15

Who was doing cognitive work (specifically on memory) during the behaviourist era? How did he think of memory? Who revived this idea?

Answer 15

Bartlett

He thought of memory as a construction, an idea that languished for about 3 decades after he completed his work.

Neisser and Loftus both followed up on this work

Question 16

What was Bartlett’s most famous study? What was his conclusion? What concept did he introduce in this regard?

Answer 16

His most famous study was the one in which he had people read “The War of the Ghosts” and then try to recall it.
The recalled story was almost always substantially different from the original, and more similar to a European story than the original.

conclusion - idea of memory as a construction (rather than recollection) - modified to fit with their own schemas when they recall/retell story

Bartlett introduced the concept of schemas, which are still very important in psychology.

Question 17

What was the Hixon Symposium on Cerebral Mechanisms of Behaviour? What relevance did it have to the cognitive revolution? When?

Answer 17

1948 - a lineup of very distinguished speakers across several scientific disciplines

it posed a direct challenge to the adequacy of behaviorism as an explanatory system for the complexities of human behavior

early precursor of the cognitive revolution, though its significance was only recognized afterwards

Question 18

Who was the “star of the show” at the Hixon Symposium on Cerebral Mechanisms of Behaviour? Why? What metaphor did he use?

Answer 18

Several presenters started to use computer metaphors, but the star of the show appears to have been Karl Lashley -
a physiological psychologist

his topic was serial order (e.g. the order of words in a sentence)

Lashley disputed the traditional behaviourist claim that each word in a sentence serves as a stimulus for the production of the next word; in this account each sentence was seen as a long sequence of S-R couplets.
This seemed implausible to Lashley, and he argued that the alternative was that the brain engages in central processing.

Question 19

Who were the among the founding fathers of AI research?

Answer 19

Allen Newell and Herbert Simon

Question 20

What were Newell and Simon’s first attempts to mimic human intelligence? What could the second of these two do?

Answer 20

the Logic Theorist in 1955, followed by the General Problem Solver in 1957.

The latter could take a bunch of raw data about the motions of the planets and infer Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.

Question 21

What did Herbert Simon claim about computers and cognitive psychology?

Answer 21

Simon predicted in 1957 that, among other things, a computer would beat the world chess champion within 10 years. He was three decades off.

Simon also argued around the same time that theories in cognitive psychology should be written as computer programs.
He later dropped this proposal.

Question 22

What was one aspect of the computer that did transfer to cognitive psychology?

Answer 22

the use of flow charts to diagram the flow of information within the system

Question 23

Which two theories used the format of a flow chart (aspect of computer technology) to diagram the flow of information within the system?

Answer 23

Donald Broadbent formulated his theory of attention as a flow chart, with a filter not long after the sensation stage.
Later data suggested that the filtering occurred later in the process than Broadbent had originally thought. The flow chart was modified.

Atkinson and Schiffrin’s model of memory was also structured as a flow chart.
-essentially the three-part model of memory (sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory)

Question 24

Why was Bruner an important figure in the cognitive revolution?

Answer 24

He was one of the pioneers of the “New Look” school of perception in the 1940s, in which motivational factors in perception were studied alongside cognitive ones.
He also did seminal work in concept formation in the 1950s.
He was still doing cognitive work on narratives in the 1990s.

Question 25

Why was Roger Brown an important figure in the cognitive revolution? What term did he coin? What phenomenon did he study?

Answer 25

Roger Brown was also an important figure around this time.
In addition to studying the cognitive psychology of language (e.g. the degree to which language influences thought), he also coined the term “flashbulb memory,” and found a way of studying tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states.
Brown and McNeill were able to generate 233 TOT states in the laboratory.

Question 26

Though he was not a psychologist, Noam Chomsky played what important role in the cognitive revolution?

Answer 26

His review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior was devastating, one of the few instances where a book review became more famous than the book being reviewed.

Chomsky revolutionized linguistics in a way that was very cognitive.
He focused on syntax, and argued that children could not possibly learn it as fast as they do if they were not prepared for it with some sort of innate language acquisition device.
He also argued that the process of formulating a sentence may not go directly from the meaning one intends to convey to a sentence. Instead, he thought people formulate what he called a deep structure, which they then turn into a surface structure (the way the sentence is actually structured) through a series of transformational rules.
Again, he thought this process was carried out by innate neural wetware.

Question 27

Why was George Miller an important figure in the early history of cognitive psychology? What important concept did he come up with?

Answer 27

His article (which you had the option of reading) discusses channel capacity, which is now more usually discussed as the capacity of short-term memory.

He also gave us chunking, an important concept that is still current.