The Cognitive Revolution Psychology 4006

Introduction Psychology, at least academic psychology, had become basically behaviourism Especially in North America There were holdouts The Gestaltists Bartlett

Really, what was the alternative? Freud? Freud did have impact in academic settings, but it is pretty hard to do research using a theory that is not falsifiable So you had physiological types, some social psychologists, some people doing stuff with testing, psychophysics and behaviourism But the behaviourists influenced everyone

Then they got greedy….. Were people studying memory? Yeah The verbal learners Really just Skinner with people Then Skinner publishes a thing that says language is just operant conditioning Really Even creates a clever demonstration where he ‘teaches’ pigeons language

Before he was a third rate political commentator…... Noam Chomsky Linguist ‘Father of cognitive science’ The idea of universal grammar Language is special It’s not just operant conditioning

The Case of HM Scoville and Milner You know this one No new long term memories But could learn stuff, didn’t remember it Suggest different systems

Memory systems Endel Tulving at U of T Craik and Lockhart at U of T Episodic and semantic memory Craik and Lockhart at U of T Levels of processing Al Paivio at UWO imagery

Even where the behaviourists were the strongest…. Even the animal learners took note Sara Shettleworth at U of T Bill Roberts at UWO Al Kamil at Nebraska The importance of biology and neuroscience, not just behaviour The largest organization of people who study animal psychology is the Comparative Cognition society, not the use of the word Cognition…. Follow them on twitter, you might know the guy who runs the account....

Today Can you imagine psychology without cognition? Can you imagine psychology without say cognitive neuroscience? Can you imagine studying memory without using the word ‘memory’? Can you imagine psychology without ‘internal mental events’ and representations? Did you notice the Canadian content?