1. Cognitive Psychology
Chapter 1.2
Introduction

2. Outline 2/27/2019 Where did Cognitive Psychology come from?
Psychological Antecedents
Two Revolutions?
Or an evolution?
Study Questions.
• Why might we consider cognitive psychology to be a scientific revolution? Why might we consider it to not be a revolution?

3. History of Cognitive Psychology
Psychology in the early 20th century
The study of consciousness
Wundt’s structuralism
Titchener’s introspection
James’ functionalism
Freud’s psychodynamics
Logical positivism. Asserts that only through observation can the truth of statements of fact be established. It holds that metaphysical and subjective arguments not based on observable data are meaningless.

4. History of Cognitive Psychology
Two Revolutions
Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn
Normal science
Accumulation of anomalies
E.g.s, Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, & Einstein.
The Behaviourist and the Cognitive revolutions
Thomas Kuhn
( )

5. History of Cognitive Psychology
John B. Watson
( )
The Death of Mentalism
John B. Watson (1913). Psychology as the behaviourist views it.
“Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness. The behaviorist, in his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, recognizes no dividing line between man and brute. The behavior of man, with all of its refinement and complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorist's total scheme of investigation.”

6. History of Cognitive Psychology
John B. Watson
( )
The Death of Mentalism
On Structuralism:
“I do not wish unduly to criticize psychology. It has failed signally, I believe, during the fifty-odd years of its existence ... Psychology, as it is generally thought of, has something esoteric in its methods. If you fail to reproduce my findings, it is not due to some fault in your apparatus or in the control of your stimulus, but it is due to the fact that your introspection is untrained. The attack is made upon the observer and not upon the experimental setting. In physics and in chemistry the attack is made upon the experimental conditions. The apparatus was not sensitive enough, impure chemicals were used, etc. In these sciences a better technique will give reproducible results. Psychology is otherwise. if you can't observe 3-9 states of clearness in attention, your introspection is poor. If, on the other hand, a feeling seems reasonably clear to you, your introspection is again faulty. You are seeing too much. Feelings are never clear..”

7. History of Cognitive Psychology
John B. Watson
( )
The Death of Mentalism
On Functionalism:
“My psychological quarrel is not with the systematic and structural psychologist alone. The last fifteen years have seen the growth of what is called functional psychology. This type of psychology decries the use of elements in the static sense of the structuralists. It throws emphasis upon the biological significance of conscious processes instead of upon the analysis of conscious states into introspectively isolable elements. I have done my best to understand the difference between functional psychology and structural psychology. Instead of clarity, confusion grows upon me. The terms sensation, perception, affection, emotion, volition are used as much by the functionalist as by the structuralist. The addition of the word 'process' … after each serves in some way to remove the corpse of content' and to leave 'function' in its stead. Surely if these concepts are elusive when looked at from a content standpoint, they are still more deceptive when viewed from the angle of function, and especially so when function is obtained by the introspection method...”

8. History of Cognitive Psychology
John B. Watson
( )
The Death of Mentalism
On Studying conscious or unconscious processes:
“This leads me to the point where I should like to make the argument constructive. I believe we can write a psychology, define it as [the science of behaviour], and never go back upon our definition: never use the terms consciousness, mental states, mind, … imagery, and the like. I believe that we can do it in a few years…. It can be done in terms of stimulus and response, in terms of habit formation, habit integrations and the like.”

9. History of Cognitive Psychology
B. F. Skinner
( )
Two Revolutions
Radical Behaviourism
The Hull - Spence model (neo-behaviourism)
B. F. Skinner (radical behaviourism)
Antimentalism
On Consciousness
On Cognitive Psychology

10. History of Cognitive Psychology
Two Revolutions
The Cognitive Revolution
Noam Chomsky
Rebuttal of Skinner’s “Verbal Behaviour”
Verbal Learning
The problem with human subjects
Neobehaviourists
Spence and cognitive contamination

11. History of Cognitive Psychology
Was there a revolution or an evolution?
The Gestaltist Movement
Rejection of structuralism
Phi phenomenon
Psychophysics
Relating psychological experience to physical stimuli

12. History of Cognitive Psychology
Was there a revolution or an evolution?
D. O. Hebb
Ph.D. under Karl Lashley
Worked with Wilder Penfield
The Organization of behaviour (1949)
Promoted an eclectic approach to psychology
Brain surgery and human behaviour
“The problem of understanding behaviour is the problem of understanding the total action of the nervous system, and vice versa.”
Connected the biology of the brain with higher functions of the mind
The neuropsychological approach
Donald Olding Hebb ( )

13. History of Cognitive Psychology
Was there a revolution or an evolution?
D. O. Hebb
Four themes to Hebb’s program
Interdisciplinary approach
Father of Cognitive Neuroscience
Criticism of learning and perceptual theories
Particularly in the lack of neurological underpinnings
Thought as a central problem in psychology
Attention, imagery, expectancy, hypotheses,and insight.
The development of cell assemblies through Hebbian learning
Cells that fire together wire together
Donald Olding Hebb ( )

14. History of Cognitive Psychology
A revolution …
From behaviourism, the cognitive approach rejected
Extrapolation from a small set of premises
Animal experimentation
Learning a central problem
Logical positivism
Stimulus control over all behaviour
Antimentalism

15. History of Cognitive Psychology
A revolution … or behaviourism + mentalism?
From behaviourism, the cognitive approach took
Nomothetic explanation as a goal
Generalizations and common principles
Empiricism as a method of proof
Laboratory control
Ecological validity - The extent to which laboratory findings can be generalized to the real world.
Rational canons of science
The Law of Parsimony
Occam’s Razor: All things being equal, the simpler of two theories is the better theory.

16. History of Cognitive Psychology
1990
Cognitive Science
Neuroscience
Ethology
Anthropology
1980
1970
1960
Linguistics
Chomsky
Cognitive Psychology
Computer Science
Information Science
1950
D.O. Hebb
Verbal Learning
1940
B.F. Skinner
1930
Neobehaviourism
1920
Behaviourism
Watson
Gestalt Psychology
1910
1900
Functionalism
James
1890
Ebbinghaus
Structuralism
Titchener
1880
Associationism
Experimental Psychology
Wündt (1879)
Natural Sciences
Physiology
Psychophysics
Philosophy