Cognitive Psychology: The Cognitive Revolution and Classical Studies

Historical Context and Influential Figures

• W. Kohler (1925): Published The Mentality of Apes, focusing on early cognitive insights through animal studies.
• E.C. Tolman (1932): Published Purposive Behaviour in Animals and Man, introducing the idea that behavior is goal-oriented.
• N. Chomsky (1957): Published Syntactic Structure, a foundational text for modern linguistics and a challenge to behaviorist views on language.
• D. Broadbent (1958): Published Perception and Communication, introducing information processing models of attention.
• U. Neisser (1967): Published Cognitive Psychology, which formalised the field and gave it its name.

The Boiling Pot of the Cognitive Revolution

• Dominance of Radical Behaviourism: For several decades, the work of B.F. Skinner dominated psychology. Radical Behaviourism posited that nearly all human behaviour can be explained as reactions to the environment through mechanisms like Operant Conditioning.     * The Behavioral Formula: Environment (Stimulus) (\rightarrow) Behaviour (Response).
• The Emergence of Cracks: Prominent thinkers began to identify limitations in the behaviorist approach. Glassman and Hadad (2009) note three primary challenges:     * Inability to Explain Complexity: Behaviourism failed to account for complex mental activities such as language learning and problem-solving.     * The "Black Box" Problem: Psychologists wanted to understand internal mental states. Behaviourists viewed the mind as a "black box," focusing only on inputs and outputs rather than internal processes.     * Human vs. Nonhuman Studies: While behaviorist techniques were effective for studying nonhuman animals, they often fell short when applied to the nuances of human psychology.

Key Critics and the Shift to Cognitive Approaches

• Edward Tolman (1932): Argued that to understand behaviour, psychologists must consider the "purpose of" and "plan for" the behaviour, as all actions serve a specific goal.
• Karl Lashley: A former student of Watson who ironically challenged the behaviorist view. He argued the brain is not a passive organ but an active, dynamic organiser of behaviour.
• Defining the Cognitive Approach: Unlike the behaviorist stimulus-response model, the cognitive approach includes a mediator:     * The Cognitive Formula: Stimulus (Input) (\rightarrow) Mental Processes (Mediators) (\rightarrow) Response (Output).
• Theoretical Perspective (Sampson, 1981): This approach emphasizes internal structures and processes that play a major role in behaviour, described as "a psychology of subject rather than of the object" (p. 730).

Core Features and the "Limited Processor" Theme

• Information Processing Metaphor: Humans are often compared to computers or limited-capacity processors.
• Resource Management: Individuals possess a set amount of cognitive resources and attempt to use them as efficiently as possible, though this efficiency is not always achieved.
• Example Case: The phrase "PARIS IN THE THE SPRING" illustrates how cognitive processing can bypass repeated words due to expectations and resource allocation.
• Five Key Processes of Cognition (Eysenck & Keane, 2000; Jarvis, 2000):     * Memory     * Language     * Thinking/Reasoning     * Perception     * Attention

The Birth of Cognitive Science: MIT 1956

• The MIT Symposium (September 11, 1956): George Miller (2003) identifies this meeting as the beginning of the cognitive science movement. It was an interdisciplinary symposium involving Computer Science, Linguistics, and Psychology.
• Foundational Papers and Contributions (1956-1959):     * Noam Chomsky: Syntactic Structures (1956) and the later "Review of Verbal Behavior, by B.F. Skinner" (1959).     * George Miller: The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two (1956).     * Newell and Simon: The Logic Theory Machine (1956) and General Problem Solver.     * Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin: A Study of Thinking (1956) focused on concept formation.

Detailed Contributions: Memory and Language

• George Miller - Short Term Memory (STM):     * Established that STM capacity is limited to roughly $7 \pm 2$ items.     * Chunking: The process of grouping individual pieces of information into larger, familiar units to increase memory capacity. For example, 1-9-4-5-1-7-7-6 becomes 1945 and 1776.     * Revisionist Data: Later research by Cowan (2001) suggests the true capacity of STM is closer to $4 \pm 1$.
• Noam Chomsky - Language and Grammar:     * Transformative-Generative Grammar: Introduced rules to explain the creation of language:         * Phase Structure Rules: Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase.         * Transformational Rules: Converting basic structure to surface structure; Active vs. Passive.     * Critique of Skinner: Chomsky argued language is rule-governed, not just a set of learned associations. Evidence includes the fact that children can generate and understand entirely novel sentences they have never heard before.

Detailed Contributions: Thinking and Problem Solving

• Bruner, Goodnow & Austin - Concept Formation:     * Humans actively form, test, and refine concepts based on experience.     * This is a hypothesis-testing process rather than simple reinforcement. Rules (e.g., "A bird must have wings") are adjusted based on feedback to form mental categories for organizing the world.
• Newell & Simon - The Birth of AI:     * Logic Theory Machine (LT, 1956): One of the first AI programs. It mimicked human logical reasoning to prove theorems from Principia Mathematica, successfully finding 38 out of 52 proofs using heuristics.     * General Problem Solver (GPS, 1957-1972): Aimed to solve any well-defined problem using Means-End-Analysis. This involves breaking a problem into smaller components and solving each one.     * Theoretical Framework: All behavior is a function of memory operations, control processes, and sets of rules.

The Growth of Cognitive Science

• Sloan Foundation (1976): The Sloan Special Program in Cognitive Science, led by Steve White and Al Singer, aimed to bridge the gap between neuroscience (the brain) and psychology (the mind).
• Impact: A committee formed in 1978 defined the future of cognitive science, significantly influencing research directions.

Perspectives on Visual Perception

• Gregory (1970) - The Constructivist Approach: Perception is hypothesis-driven. It relies on top-down processing, using prior knowledge and inferences to interpret the world.
• Gibson (1979) - The Ecological Approach: Perception is direct and bottom-up. Internal representations are unnecessary because we directly perceive the "affordances" (potential actions) of objects.
• Marr (1982) - The Computational Approach: Perception occurs in three distinct stages:     1. Primal Sketch: Identification of edges and contrasts.     2. 2.5D Sketch: Adding depth, orientation, shading, texture, and motion cues.     3. 3D Model Representation: A structured, viewpoint-independent representation used for object recognition.

Theories of Attention

• Cherry (1953) - The Cocktail Party Effect:     * Used a dichotic listening task where participants heard different messages in each ear and had to "shadow" (repeat) one.     * Findings: Participants could ignore the unattended ear but still noticed physical characteristics (e.g., gender of voice). They did not notice the meaning of the unattended information.
• Broadbent (1958) - Filter Theory:     * All stimuli enter a sensory buffer. A selective filter chooses one channel based on physical characteristics (pitch, loudness). Only the selected channel is processed for meaning; all other information is lost.
• Treisman (1964) - Attenuator Model:     * Instead of a hard filter, an attenuator weakens (attenuates) unattended messages.     * Important or highly meaningful words (like one's name) have a lower threshold and can reach full awareness even if attenuated.
• Schneider & Shiffrin (1977) - Two-Process Theory:     * Automatic Processing: Fast, involuntary, effortless, requires little resources, and occurs with well-practised tasks.     * Controlled Processing: Slow, effortful, conscious, requires attentional resources, and is used for novel or difficult tasks.

Evaluation of Cognitive Psychology

• Strengths:     * Establishes mental processes as a rigorous scientific topic.     * Generates clear, testable, and scientifically validated models.     * Utilizes controlled experiments.     * Powerful explanatory capacity for specific tasks and eyewitness testimony.
• Weaknesses:     * Limited ecological validity (experimental settings may not mirror real life).     * Over-emphasizes "cold" information processing, often ignoring social and emotional factors.     * Descriptions can be mechanistic and fail to explain "why" a process occurs.     * Historically sidelined biological/neuroscience explanations.

Questions & Discussion

• Recap Activity on Cherry (1953):     * Q: What is the problem or question Cherry is looking to investigate?     * Q: Do we know how the experiments were carried out (the procedure)? And how they were analysed?     * Q: How many participants were in the study?     * Q: How did Cherry assess the listeners' processing of the unattended message?     * Q: What were the main findings from Cherry’s experiments?     * Q: Did the findings of Cherry have an impact on subsequent work of psychologists?     * Q: Why do you think Cherry’s work has been so influential?
• Reflection Question: In what ways do you see the comparison between the human mind and a computer as reasonable?
• Perception Task: In the duck/rabbit image, what factors influence which animal you perceive first? How does context or expectation influence observation?
• Attention Task: Attempting to call out the color of words when the text spells a different color (Stroop-like task) demonstrates the conflict between automatic and controlled processing.