Cognitive Psychology

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Cognitive Psychology
Lucie Johnson
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What is Cognitive Psychology?

• Cognitive psychology is interested in attention,
  reasoning, judgment, concept formation, memory,
  language etc.
• Those are topics psychologists and philosophers
  have always found interesting EXCEPT for the
  extreme behaviorists such as Watson who
  considered that cognitive events were simply
  epiphenomena, byproducts of brain activity

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Early contributions (1)

• Ebbinghaus (1885) study of memory for nonsense
  syllables
• William James study of memory, consciousness etc.
• Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett (1886-1969) book on
  Remembering importance of personal themes,
  schemas for remembering

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Early contributions (2)

• Jean Piaget schemata build the individuals
  cognitive structure through processes of
  equilibration.(a blend of Kantian and Hegelian
  processes)
• Hull and Tolman notion od intervening variables
• Carl Rogers the importance of consciousness in
  the therapeutic situation.

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The rise of Cybernetics

• Founder Norbert Wiener (1894-1964). In 1948, he
  defines cybernetics as the study of the
  structure and function of information processing
  systems. (esp. how homeostatic systems can use
  feedback to maintain balance ex thermostat,
  automatic pilot etc.)
• Start of information theory
• More about cybernetics

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Harvards Center for Cognitive Studies

• George Miller (1920-) information processing
  theory of cognition. Famous article the Magical
  Number Seven
• Jerome Bruner (1915-) concept learning, active
  learning, constructivism
• Ulric Neisser (1928-), student of Miller, wants
  cognitive psych to be more applied and useful

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Artificial Intelligence (1)

• Alan M. Turing (1912-1954) the Turing test. What
  does it mean when a computer passes it? Weak AI
  vs. strong AI.
• See if this poetry writing program passes the
  Turing test.
• What would it mean if it did?

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Artificial Intelligence (2)

• The American association for Artificial
  Intelligence
• AI lab at MIT
• AI Depot

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Cognitive Neuroscience

• Cognitive neuroscience society
• Center for cognitive neuroscience

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The end