Behaviorism, Cognition, and AI

• Cognitive psychology studies how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information, including perception, attention, memory, problem-solving, decision-making, reasoning, and language.
• Cognitive psychologists explore how people perceive shapes, why they remember some facts and forget others, and how they learn languages.
• The field looks into why objects appear farther away on foggy days and why people remember experiences but forget names.

Dialectic Process

• Dialectic involves ideas evolving over time through a pattern of transformation.
• A thesis is a statement of belief.
• An antithesis counters a previous statement of belief.
• A synthesis integrates the most credible features of multiple views.

Philosophical Antecedents

• Philosophy seeks to understand the general nature of the world through introspection.
• Introspection involves examining inner ideas and experiences.
• Physiology seeks a scientific study of life-sustaining functions through empirical, observation-based methods.
• Rationalists acquire knowledge through thinking and logical analysis.
• Empiricists acquire knowledge via empirical evidence.
• Plato was a rationalist, while Aristotle was an empiricist.
• Rationalists believe knowledge comes from thinking and logical analysis.
• Empiricists believe that we acquire knowledge via empirical evidence, through experience and observation and would design experiments and conduct studies to observe behavior and of interest processes.
• René Descartes posited dualism between a material body and immaterial mind/soul and gave mechanistic explanations for the body's functions.
• John Locke theorized that the human mind was a tabula rasa at birth and that all human knowledge comes through experience.
• Immanuel Kant proposed two domains of reality: noumenal and phenomenal
• The phenomenal world is the world we are aware of.
• The noumenal world consists of things we seem compelled to believe in, but which we can never know.

Psychological Antecedents

• Psychology as a science can be described spatially, manipulated experimentally, and described mathematically.

Two Fathers of Psychology

• Structuralism seeks to identify the elementary contents or structures of the human mind.
• Wilhelm Wundt, a German psychologist, used introspection to understand the structure of the mind by analyzing perceptions into constituent components like affection, attention, memory, and sensation.
• Structuralists sought to deconstruct the mind into its elementary components.
• Structuralists were interested in how elementary components work together to create the mind.
• Functionalism explores how and why the mind works, focusing on the processes of thought.
• Functionalism seeks to understand what people do and why.
• William James authored "Principles of Psychology" and established the first psychology laboratory in America.
• James advocated for pragmatism, the philosophy that ideologies are true if they work satisfactorily and unpractical ideas are rejected.

Associationism

• Elements of the mind, like events or ideas, can become associated with one another, leading to a form of learning.
• Edward Lee Thorndike studied trial-and-error learning and formulated the law of effect.
• Associationism may result from:
  • Contiguity: associating things that tend to occur together.
  • Similarity: associating things with similar features or properties.
  • Contrast: associating things that show polarities.

Law of Effect

• Thorndike's law asserts that stimulus-response connections followed by pleasure are strengthened, while those followed by annoyance/pain are "stamped out".
• Hermann Ebbinghaus studied how people learn and remember material through rehearsal.

Behaviorism

• Behaviorism explores the relation between behavior and environment.
• John Watson, the "father" of radical behaviorism, believed psychologists should only study observable behavior.
• B.F. Skinner believed that almost all forms of human behavior could be explained by behavior emitted in reaction to the environment, which is known as operant conditioning.
• Gestalt psychology emphasizes understanding psychological phenomena by viewing them as organized, structured wholes.
• Cognitions should play an active role in psychology, and behavior cannot always be understood when broken down into smaller parts.

Emergence of Cognitive Psychology

• Cognitivism, emerging in the early 1950s ("cognitive revolution"), posits that much of human behavior can be understood in terms of how people think.
• In the 1950s, the development of computers led to the Turing test, where a computer program's success is judged by whether its output is indistinguishable from humans.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) attempts to construct systems showing intelligence and intelligent information processing.
• Developments in other fields, like psychobiology, linguistics, anthropology, and artificial intelligence, converged to create an atmosphere for revolution in the early 1960s.

Concept of Modularity of Mind

• Jerry Fodor proposed that the mind has distinct modules for dealing with linguistic and other information.
• Modularity suggests that processing in one domain operates independently of processes in other domains.
• Karl Spencer Lashley considered the brain an active, dynamic organizer of behavior, studying its macro-organization for complex activities.
• Lashley's monograph "Brain Mechanisms and Intelligence" contained two principles:
  • Mass action: Certain types of learning involve the cerebral cortex as a whole.
  • Equipotentiality: Some parts of a system can take over functions of damaged parts.

Alan Turing

• Alan Turing was a founder of computer science, mathematician, and philosopher who broke the German Enigma code in WWII.

Ada, Countess of Lovelace

• Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Byron, was a gifted mathematician who wrote the first computer program.

Intelligence

• Intelligence is the capacity to learn from experience and adapt to the surrounding environment.
• Some argue that machines can only do what we know how to order them to do.

Three Cognitive Models of Intelligence

• Carroll's Three-Stratum Model of Intelligence suggests intelligence comprises a hierarchy of cognitive abilities.
  • Stratum III: General intelligence (g).
  • Stratum II: Includes various broad abilities like fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence, learning and memory processes, visual perception, auditory perception, facile production of ideas, and speed.
  • Stratum I: Includes many narrow, specific abilities.
• Fluid ability is the speed and accuracy of abstract reasoning.
• Crystallized ability is accumulated knowledge and vocabulary.
• Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences proposes that intelligence comprises multiple independent constructs, including:
  • Linguistic intelligence: Used in reading and understanding spoken words.
  • Logical-mathematical intelligence: Used in solving math problems and logical reasoning.
  • Spatial intelligence: Used in getting from one place to another and logical reasoning.
  • Musical intelligence: Used in singing or composing.
  • Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence: Used in dancing or playing sports.
  • Interpersonal intelligence: Used in relating to other people.
  • Intrapersonal intelligence: Used in understanding ourselves.
  • Naturalist intelligence: Used in understanding patterns in nature.
• Sternberg's Triarchic Theory of Intelligence includes:
  • Analytical intelligence for academic problem solving.
  • Creative intelligence for imaginative problem solving.
  • Practical intelligence for street smarts/common sense.

Creative/Analytical/Practical Abilities

• Creative abilities are used to generate novel ideas.
• Analytical abilities ascertain whether ideas are good.
• Practical abilities implement ideas and persuade others of their value.

Research Methods

• Controlled Laboratory Experiments:
  • Obtain performance samples at a particular time/place.
  • Manipulate the independent variable ("cause") to measure the dependent variable ("effect").
  • Control all other variables to prevent confounds.
• Correlational Studies:
  • Cannot infer causation, only the nature and strength of a relationship.
• Psychobiological Research:
  • Investigates the relationship between cognitive performance and cerebral events/structures.
  • Includes postmortem studies, studies on brain-damaged individuals, and monitoring participants during cognitive tasks.
• Self-Reports:
  • Obtain participants' reports of their cognition.
• Case Studies:
  • Engage in intensive study of single individuals.
• Natural observation
  • Observe real-life situations
• Computer simulations and artificial intelligence
  • Attempt to make computers perform cognitive performance.

Basic Ideas in Cognitive Psychology

• Empirical data and theories are both important.
• Cognition is generally adaptive, but not in all specific instances.
• Cognitive processes interact with each other and with noncognitive processes.
• Cognition needs to be studied through a variety of scientific methods.
• Research may lead to applications, and applied research may lead to basic understandings.

Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology

• Nature versus nurture: Debate over whether nature or nurture is more influential in human cognition.
• Synthesis: Explores covariations and interactions in the environment.
• Rationalism versus empiricism: Debate over how to discover truth.
• Synthesis: Combines theory with empirical methods.
• Structures versus processes: Debate between studying the structures or processes of the human mind.
• Synthesis: Explores how mental processes operate on mental structures.
• Domain generality versus domain specificity: Asks if processes are limited to single domains or general across many
• Synthesis: Explores which precesses might be domain-general might be or domain-specific
• Validity of causal inferences versus ecological validity: Balances controlled experiments with naturalistic techniques.
• Synthesis: Combines a variety of methods so as to converge on findings.
• Applied versus basic research: Debate about fundamental cognitive processes.
• Synthesis: Combines both research types.
• Biological versus behavioral methods:
  • Should scientists directly study the brain and its function?
  • Or should scientists study peoples behaviour in cognitive tasks to test correct answers and reaction time?
• Synthesis: Scientists should combine biological and behavioural methods for cognitive phenomena.

Explore behaviorism's stimulus-response, Watson's impact, and Skinner's contributions. Understand the Turing Test, AI's focus, and cognitive psychology's rise. Learn about pragmatism, event associations, and holistic behavior understanding.