History of Psychology: Cognitive Psychology PDF

History of Psychology Session 7: Cognitive Psychology Rui Mata, Center for Cognitive and Decision Sciences November 4, 2024 Learning Objectives for Today Identify key gures and ideas leading to the emergence of cognitive psychology Discuss tensions between nativist and associationist...

History of Psychology Session 7: Cognitive Psychology Rui Mata, Center for Cognitive and Decision Sciences November 4, 2024 Learning Objectives for Today Identify key gures and ideas leading to the emergence of cognitive psychology Discuss tensions between nativist and associationist perspectives within cognitive psychology Discuss the impact of the “cognitive revolution” and cognitive science 3 fi  The Hixon Symposium (1948) The 1948 Hixon Symposium marks the beginning of a period in which scientists, including mathematicians and neurophysiologists, proposed a parallel between mind and machine (i.e., information-processing logical devices) and strongly criticised behavioural theories… Hixon Symposium on Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior," California Institute of Technology, Paci c State Hospital, Pomona, California. September 20, 1948 Gardner, H. (1985). The mind's new science: A history of the cognitive revolution. New York: Basic Books. 4 fi  The Hixon Symposium (1948) Karl Lashley Warren McCulloch John von Neumann (1890-1958) (1898-1969) (1903-1957) Zoologist/Psychologist, worked with John Mathematician, physicist, computer Neurophysiologist, made contributions scientist, made major contributions to a Watson on learning in rats, conducted to cybernetics. For example, wrote with number of elds, including foundations of studies to observe the effects of cortical Walter Pitts "A Logical Calculus of the mathematics, computing of self- lesions on trained rats. In 1951, Lashley Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity” replicating machines (cells), and game published a famous paper called “The (1943) to demonstrate that a Turing theory. Problem of Serial Order in Behavior,” in machine program could be implemented which he pointed out that complex in a nite network of formal neurons, sequential behavior (such as playing a that the neuron was the base logic unit piece on the piano) could not be executed of the brain. Later, Pitts and McCulloch by one response sending a proprioceptive suggested how "nervous nets" can be signal back to the brain which would then used to recognise visual inputs despite trigger the next response in the sequence – changes in orientation or size. as there wasn’t enough time for the neural signals to travel up to the brain and back down. Instead, behavior had to be controlled by a central, hierarchically organized program. 5 fi fi The Dartmouth Workshop (1956) A summer workshop initiated by John McCarthy (University of Dartmouth, USA) considered by many the seminal event for arti cial intelligence, convened key gures in the arti cial intelligence and cognitive psychology movement (the names below are just some of those who attended). Solomonoff, G.. Ray Solomonoff and the Dartmouth Summer Research Project in Arti cial Intelligence, 1956. Retrieved from http://raysolomonoff.com/dartmouth/dartray.pdf 6 fi fi fi fi  The Dartmouth Workshop (1956) A summer workshop initiated by John McCarthy (University of Dartmouth, USA) considered by many the seminal event for arti cial intelligence, convened key gures in the arti cial intelligence and cognitive psychology movement (the names below are just some of those who attended). Claude Shannon Allen Newell Herbert Simon Marvin Minsky Oliver Selfridge (1916-2001) (1927-1992) (1916-2001) (1927-2016) (1926-2008) information theory: de ned general problem solver: computer arti cial neural networks: information mathematically, how program that could solve simple computing systems inspired by the information can be communicated problems (e.g., Tower of Hanoi) biological neural networks that over (noisy) limited channels, and constitute animal brains how it can be reconstructed with low probability of error Solomonoff, G.. Ray Solomonoff and the Dartmouth Summer Research Project in Arti cial Intelligence, 1956. Retrieved from http://raysolomonoff.com/dartmouth/dartray.pdf 7 fi fi fi fi fi fi Noam Chomsky: (innate) Universal Grammar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLk47AMBdTA 8 Noam Chomsky: (innate) Universal Grammar “Chomsky has been one of behaviorism's most successful and damaging critics. In a review of Skinner's book on verbal behavior, Chomsky (1959) charged that behaviorist models of language learning cannot explain various facts about language acquisition, such as the rapid acquisition of language by young children, which is sometimes referred to as the phenomenon of “lexical explosion.” A child's linguistic abilities appear to be radically underdetermined by the evidence of verbal behavior offered to the child in the short period in which he or she expresses those abilities. By the age of four or ve (normal) children have an almost limitless capacity to understand and produce sentences which they have never heard before. Chomsky also argued that it seems plainly untrue that language learning depends on the application of reinforcement. A child does not, as an English speaker in the presence of a house, utter “house” repeatedly in the presence of reinforcing elders. Language as such seems to be learned without, in a sense, being explicitly taught or taught in detail, and behaviorism doesn't offer an account of how this could be so. (…) Our history of reinforcement is often too impoverished to determine uniquely what we do or how we do it. Much learning, therefore, seems to require pre-existing or innate representational structures or principled constraints within which learning occurs.” Graham, G. (2017), "Behaviorism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/behaviorism/ 9 fi Noam Chomsky: (innate) Universal Grammar Chomsky’s views evolved considerably. Chomsky rst proposed a set of innate (universal) syntactic structures and grammatical principles. More recently, Chomsky and colleagues described a grammar that included only one feature, called computational recursion. Hauser, M. D., Chomsky, N., & Fitch, W. T. (2002). The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve? Science, 298(5598), 1569–1579. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/298/5598/1569 10 fi Connectionism (Parallel distributed processing) “Connectionism is a movement in cognitive science that hopes to explain intellectual abilities using arti cial neural networks (also known as “neural networks” or “neural nets”). Neural networks are simpli ed models of the brain composed of large numbers of units (the analogs of neurons) together with weights that David James measure the strength of connections between Rumelhart McClelland the units. These weights model the effects of the synapses that link one neuron to another. 1986 Experiments on models of this kind have demonstrated an ability to learn such skills as face recognition, reading, and the detection of simple grammatical structure.” Connectionism presented itself as a plausible, mechanistic alternative to innate (grammatical) principles…. Buckner, C. & Garson, J. (2019), "Connectionism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/connectionism/ 11 fi fi  The Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies (1960) George Miller Jerome Bruner (1920-2012) (1915-2016) “Whatever we called it, the cognitive counter-revolution in psychology brought the mind back into experimental psychology. I think it is important to remember that the mind had never disappeared from social or clinical psychology. It was only experimentalists in the US who really believed that behaviorism would work. In my own case, when I became dissatis ed at Harvard between B.F. Skinner ’s strict behaviorism and S.S. Stevens’ psychophysics, I turned to Jerry Bruner’s social psychology, and in 1960 that led to the creation at Harvard of the Center for Cognitive Studies. Bruner’s group at Bow Street had been calling themselves the ‘Cognition Project’ for some time, so we simply changed it from a project to a center. Bruner obtained a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Dean Bundy gave us space to house the enterprise. (…) Behaviorism ourished primarily in the US and this cognitive revolution in psychology re- opened communication with some distinguished psychologists abroad. In Cambridge, UK, Sir Frederic Bartlett’s work on memory and thinking had remained unaffected by behaviorism. In Geneva, Jean Piaget’s insights into the minds of children had inspired a small army of followers. And in Moscow, A.R. Luria was one of the rst to see the brain and mind as a whole. None of these three spent time at the Center but we knew their work well. Whenever we doubted ourselves we thought of such people and took courage from their accomplishments. (…) The bright young graduates grew up to become important psychologists unafraid of words like mind and expectation and perception and memory. Miller, G. (2003). The cognitive revolution: A historical perspective. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 141-144. 12 fi fl fi How many can you recall? Q C N H D B A S Y X Z T L J The Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies (1960) George Miller (1920-2012) Miller observed that memory span of young adults is approximately seven items and noticed that memory span is approximately the same for stimuli with vastly different amount of information (e.g., letters, digits, words). Miller concluded that memory span is not limited in terms of bits but rather in terms of chunks. More importantly, his paper became an important manifesto for the idea that the mind could be studied and described like an information processing system with signi cant capacity limitations. Miller, G. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97. 14 fi Cognitive Psychology: Theses and Methods Psychology became fascinated with information-processing diagrams, in which boxes and arrows stand for (temporary) stores of information and/or processes that transform the information and the transmission of information. Broadbent, D. (1958). Perception and Communication. London: Pergamon Press. 15  WHAT DO YOU THINK? Compare and contrast the schools: behaviourism, gestalt, cognitive psychology 16 Cognitive Psychology: Theses and Methods Cognitivism and cognitive psychology is the movement in psychology which explains behaviour as a function of mental processes (e.g., thinking, remembering, planning, attending) and representations (such as Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar). Cognitivism gained importance and acceptance in psychology based on the analogy of information processing carried out by computers. - Cognitive psychology stands in contrast to behaviorism by focusing on trying to understand internal representations and processes while the latter focused on theorising about observable behaviour. Both schools agreed on the importance of rigourous experimental methods. - Cognitive psychology stands in contrast to Gestalt psychology in its ambition to provide mechanistic models of cognition. Improvements in computing gave rise to new methods, such as computational models that simulated cognition based on rules (e.g., Newell & Simon’s General Problem Solver) or through learning of associations (e.g., neural networks) 17 Cognitive Science and the cognitive revolution (1977) (1985) Gardner, H. (1985). The mind's new science: A history of the cognitive revolution. New York: Basic Books. 18  Cognitive Science and the cognitive revolution Marr’s Levels Computational level: What is the Addition goal of a given process/ computation? ST=Z1+…+ZN David Marr (1945-1980) Studied mathematics and Algorithmic level: How can a goal physiology but later worked as be achieved using a particular set a professor of Psychology at of inputs/outputs, which MIT. He integrated results from algorithm describes the required psychology, arti cial intelligence, and neurophysiology to transformations? produce a new model of vision. He is particularly famous for Implementational level: How is an proposing a three level view of algorithm physically implemented how to understand information (e.g., neural activity)? processing systems. Marr, D. C., & Poggio, T. (1977). From understanding computation to understanding neural circuitry. Neurosciences Research Program Bulletin, 15(3), 470–488. 19 fi  Cognitive science and the cognitive revolution “More than a half-century ago, the ‘cognitive revolution’, with the in uential tenet ‘cognition is computation’, launched the investigation of the mind through a multidisciplinary endeavour called cognitive science. (…) indicators consistently show that the devised multi-disciplinary program failed to transition to a mature inter-disciplinary coherent eld. Bibliometrically, the eld has been largely subsumed by (cognitive) psychology, and educationally, it exhibits a striking lack of curricular consensus, raising questions about the future of the cognitive science enterprise.” Núñez, R., Allen, M., Gao, R., Miller Rigoli, C., Relaford-Doyle, J., & Semenuks, A. (2019). What happened to cognitive science? Nature Human Behaviour, 3(8), 782–791. http://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0626-2 20 fl fi fi The myths of revolutions? “The history of experimental psychology in America is typically told as a series of two Kuhnian revolutions separating three periods of normal science dominated by the mentalist, then behaviorist, and nally today's cognitivist paradigm. (…) The history of the behaviorist and cognitivist "revolutions" as seen by contemporaries shows that each was in fact a period of rapid but continuous and nonrevolutionary change.” “Save for Wundt's founding of psychology, revolution in psychology is a myth.” Leahey, T. H. (1992). The mythical revolutions of American psychology. American Psychologist, 47(2), 308–318. http://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.47.2.308 21 fi An empirical approach to the impact of “Schools” Keyword searches on all refereed journal articles in PyscINFO Gardner (1986) Neisser (1967) Spear, J. H. (2007). Prominent schools or other active specialties? A fresh look at some trends in psychology. Review of General Psychology, 11(4), 363–380. 22  WHAT DO YOU THINK? Things missing in this history of psychology… 23  Summary Cognitive psychology: focus on computation and information processing; mental representation; formal/computational models of different nature (algorithmic, if-then rules) and connectionist (parallel distributed processing); experimental methods with a focus on attention, language, memory Lashley: critique of behaviourism based on principles of plausibility and empirical results in the domain of motor learning and memory Chomsky: critique of behaviourism regarding language (poverty of the stimulus argument); computational principles in linguistics; universal grammar Miller: introduction of information-processing principles to the study of attention (7±2) Cognitive Science: interdisciplinary enterprise; Marr’s levels; boom/peak in the 80s and 90, at present mostly a branch of cognitive psychology; Impact: cognitive psychology became the predominant school in the second half of the 20th century; debate about implementation questions (neuroscience) and other neglected aspects of psychology (e.g., affect) increase at the end of the 20th century 24