Cognitive Perspective

Key Theorists and their findings

Franciscus Cornelis Donders

John R. Anderson

Benjamin Whorf

L.S. Vygotsky

Aaron T. Beck

Herman Ebbinghaus

CHOMSKY

Endel Tulving

Piaget

Frederich Bartlett

Edward Tolman

By Hiroshi

Name: Franciscus Cornelis Donders

 Perspective: Cognitive

 Key Studies:

• General physiology, evolution, and mental processes.
• Investigated cerebral circulation, and discovered the metabolism of the brain
• "As in all organs, the blood undergoes a change as a consequence of the nourishment of the brain" "discovers in comparing the incoming and outflowing blood that oxygen has been consumed" (Donders, 1868)
• Measured the time taken to perform basic mental processes.

-One of his main experiments-

Donders applied electric shocks to both feet of his subjects (right and left). They were asked to respond by pressing a telegraph key with his right or left hand to indicate whether his right or left foot had received the shock. In one experimental condition the subject knew 'in advance' which foot was to receive the electric shock and in the other condition the subject did not know 'in advance' which foot was to receive the shock. Donders found that the difference between the two conditions was 1/15 second. This measurement represented the very first time that the human mind had been measured. (Thomas B. Perera and Edward J. Haupt (1936-2001), MUSEUM OF THE HISTORY OF REACTION TIME RESEARCH. From- http://www.chss.montclair.edu/psychology/museum/mrt.html)

Key Findings:

            As written above he measured the reaction time of the mind to perform basic mental processes. He showed to the world that for the first time the human mind was measured, when he found the difference between 2 conditions in one of his experiments to be 1/15 second.

By Claudia

John R. Anderson

-Working with Gordon and working in an environment that included Richard Atkinson, Herbert Clark, Edward Feigenbaum, and Edward Smith, he found what would become his lifelong dream--to develop a theory of human cognition sufficiently well specified that it could be simulated on a computer.

Key Studies

-     He first developed the FRAN simulation of free recall

-     Then the HAM theory of memory

-         Together with Gordon he wrote the book, “Human Associative Memory”, which described the HAM theory.

-         In 1976 Anderson wrote the book "Language, Memory, and Thought" which was the first description of the ACT theory.

o       ACT was intended to be a complete theory of higher-level human cognition.

o       It proposed that human cognition arose as an interaction between declarative and procedural knowledge structures

-         In 1980 Anderson published his textbook "Cognitive Psychology and its Implications" which is now in its fourth edition.

-         In 1983 he published  "The Architecture of Cognition" which described a much more mature ACT theory.

o       It addressed a wide range of phenomena in memory, learning, and problem solving.

o       One of the major accomplishments was to describe how a neurally plausible activation-based processing drove symbolic thought.

o        Anderson was rewarded for enduring this intellectual ambiguity.

§         The 1990s saw the development of the ACT-R theory which was described in "Rules of the Mind" published in 1993.

Key Findings

-         Anderson began to pursue the issue of how cognition might be adapted to the statistical structure of the environment.

-         He developed what he called "rational analysis" which is described in a rather mathematically obtuse 1990 book called "The Adaptive Character of Thought".

o       The fundamental idea was that to understand human cognition we did not need develop a theory of its mechanisms but only had to understand the statistical structure of the problems it faced.

§         Developed theories of human memory and categorization

§         Showed that behavioral functions mirrored demands made on human memory

-         The rational analysis work played a major role in defining a better version of the sub symbolic activation processes.

-         Anderson realized that while these sub symbolic processes were tuned to the statistical structure of the environment, one needed an overall computational structure like ACT to understand how they interacted.

-         He has also just completed a second textbook, Learning and Memory, which brings together the various intellectual threads of his career as well as covering the undergraduate material.

Research Interests

-         To understand how people organize knowledge that they acquire from their diverse experiences to produce intelligent behavior

By Pati

Benjamin Whorf

Cognitive Perspective

Benjamin Whorf believed in linguistic determinism, which means that what one thinks is determined by the language one speaks.  He argued that “language is shaped by culture and reflects individual actions of people daily life”. He also supported linguistic relativity, which means that difference in language reflect the different views of different people.

He became well known for his study on the Hopi language. From this study he developed his linguistic relativity theory.  He studied a Hopi speaker who lived in New York. He found out that Hopi speakers don’t include tense in their sentences, therefore he concluded that they must have a different sense of time than the rest of the people. He worked with Edward Sapir in this experiment, that became known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which simply states that the content of language is directly related to the content of a culture, and the structure of language is directly related to the structure of a culture. However, the Hopi study has been studied lately to a further understanding of the topic, and it was found that the Hopis include two different tenses, which are: manifested and becoming manifested. Manifested includes all that is physical, that is senses and concrete items. And becoming manifested is anything that is not physical, something that can’t be perceived by the senses. Verbs are always expressed in terms of any of these two tenses, therefore Hopi language does include time. 

by Gia

L.S. Vygotsky

Cognitive

- Key studies

-Social cognition

-         Social cognition explains that the environment we live in, the culture, is the prime determinant of our behavior.

-         Basically we are affected by the culture we live in, in small or large ways

- Key findings

-         We acquire two things from culture and that is the mayor part of our thinking content and second it shows us how to think and what to think. This is called by the Voygotskians “Tools of intellectual adaptation”

-          A child learns through the communication and he also learns through problem-solving experiences shared with someone else, a parent or a sibling

-         The problem solving skills are initially given by the parent and then it is transferred to the child

-         Language is the main way through which an adult teaches a child how to learn and acquire knowledge

-         Internalization refers to the process of learning this happens mainly through language

-         Zone of proximal development: is the difference between what a child can do by themselves and what they have to do on their own.

-         The interaction between a child and a more culturally aware adult improves the learning skills of a child

He’s finding opened a new realm in cognitive, the social cognitive. This showed the cultural effects on behavior.

http://www.funderstanding.com/vygotsky.cfm

by Gonzo:

 Name:  Aaron T. Beck

 Perspective: Cognitive

 Key studies: Case studies

 Key findings:      

 Beck believes that the main psychological problem responsible for the behavior and emotions of dysfunctional patients is a systematic bias in their thinking. There are those who are depressed and make themselves suffer and others who make others suffer.  For individuals with a psychological disorder the bias is an expression of unrealistic, self-defeating beliefs directed against themselves. For those who cause others to suffer, the biased thinking and harmful behavior are an expression of beliefs directed against other people. He made this principle into a comprehensive theory and therapy of psychiatric disorders and antisocial behavior. Patients with psychiatric disorders show the problematic thinking in a variety of well-defined ways. His theory of depression has been tested and validated in over 900 studies.

   This is perfectly explained in this web site: http://mail.med.upenn.edu/~abeck/research.html

  Importance:

 Beck’s work has been beneficial to psychology because it has offered a better understanding of psychiatric disorders. His research has also provided us with therapy for many of these disorders including depression. 

By Gaby P

Herman Ebbinghaus (19^th Century)

 Perspective: Cognitive

Key Studies

• First to apply experimental methods to human memory
• Most well known for his introduction and use of the nonsense syllables.  Used nonsense syllables to study memory in a quantifiable manner.
• Conducted tests on himself and made a list of nonsense syllables that he would memorize.
• He created 2,300 one syllable consonant-vowel-consonant combinations to make his study easier. He made words such as taz, bok, lef so that he could test the memorization rather than his previous knowledge of the words.
• He divided the material into lists that he memorized in different conditions. He measured them at different times.
• Recorded the average time it took him to memorize the lists perfectly then altered the test. He made observations about the effects of such variables as speed, list length, and number of repetitions 
• Ebbinghaus also wanted to test long term and short term memory retention. He compared the time it took him to memorize any list once with the amount of time it took him to memorize the same list again

Terms:

Forgetting curve: forgetting is rapid in the first few hours

Memory can be defined as your amount of learning or your stored information. The process of storing and retrieving information from the brain that is central to learning and thinking. 

Key findings

• Developed a way to study memory.
• Longer material requires more time and repetition
• Concluded that the learning time per syllable and total learning time both increases with longer lists of syllable overlearning
• He discovered that if he repeated the lists for a longer time, he could remember more the next day.
• Developed the retention curve, this showed how much he could retrieve after a certain time. 

Why is it important to this particular perspective?

• Changed the way in which association or learning could be studied
• The concept of memory could be tested (empiricism is key)

 BY Gaby C

Cognitive Perspective-CHOMSKY

Key Findings:

-Known for Language Development

-Linguist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT

-The best-known advocate for language as an innate capacity

-Human Language is based on innate grammatical rules, which are part of what he calls a language acquisition

-He views language development as “helping a flower to grow in its own way.”

-“Our language acquisition capacity is like a box-a “language acquisition box” in which grammar switches are thrown as children experience their own language.

-The possibility that language is based on innate capacities

Key Studies

-Instead of starting with minimal sounds, as the structural linguists had done, Chomsky began with the rudimentary or primitive sentence; from this base he developed his argument that innumerable syntactic combinations can be generated by means of a complex series of rules.

-According to transformational grammar, every intelligible sentence conforms not only to grammatical rules peculiar to its particular language, but also to “deep structures,” a universal grammar underlying all languages and corresponding to an innate capacity of the human brain.

-Chomsky and other linguists who have built on his work have formulated transformational rules, which transform a sentence with a given grammatical structure (e.g., “John saw Mary” ) into a sentence with a different grammatical structure but the same essential meaning ( “Mary was seen by John” ). 0

Why is he important to this particular perspective:

-Transformational linguistics has been influential in psycholinguistics, particularly in the study of language acquisition by children. In the 1990s Chomsky formulated a “Minimalist Program” in an attempt to simplify the symbolic representations of the language facility.    

Books

Syntactic Structures include Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (1964), The Sound Pattern of English (with Morris Halle, 1968), Language and Mind (1972), Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar (1972), and Knowledge of Language (1986). Among his political writings are American Power and the New Mandarins (1969), Peace in the Middle East? (1974), and Some Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government and Binding (1982).

BY Travis:

Endel Tulving

Cognitive Perspective

Long-term memory

Tulving’s studies were focused on Long-term memory.  More specifically, he studied declarative memory.  There are two distinct types of long-term memory, declarative and procedural.  Declarative memory is knowledge about the world, like your birthday, or how to spell a word.  Procedural learning is how to do things, like how to ride a bike.

            The section that Tulving was involved in was declarative learning.  He identified the two sections of declarative learning, episodic and semantic.  Episodic memories are those that have a specific time frame attached to them.  Semantic memory is memory that the person knows, but has no time frame.  The person can’t remember when or where they learned that information from.  According to Tulving, episodic memory is dependant on semantic memory, which is dependant on procedural memory.

 By Tina:

Piaget

Cognitive Perspective

Key Studies:

• Classical conservation test

http://facultyweb.cortland.edu/andersmd/piaget/a3.html

• Piaget studied a child's conception of time, space, and motion. Piaget published his results in two volumes: The Child's Conception of Time and The Childs Conception of Movement and Speed.

• Piaget's conservation of number experiment displayed two rows of counters placed in one-to-one correspondence . Subjects admit their equality. One of the rows is then elongated or contracted. The subjects are asked whether each row has the same number of counters. Numbers can be reversed (by subtraction) or combined (by addition) and express characteristics of combinativity, association, identity, and reversibility. The ability of a subject to solve this conservation problem depends upon subjects mastery of identity. The average age that a child can conserve number is approximately 6-7 years of age.

• Piaget used a geometrical experiment called "cows on a farm "to test for conservation of area. To illustrate this, Piaget used green cardboard to represent farmland. Two identical green farms were established, each had a little wooden cow placed upon it, subjects were asked whether the cows had the same amount of grass to feed upon. Piaget would proceed to equally add little cubic farmhouses to the models. In one farmyard the houses where all arranged in a tidy row, on the other farmland the houses were all scattered about. Until the ages of 8-9, children are irresistibly inclined to think there is less grazing land on the farmland which contains the scattered houses

• A not B error
• Children of 8-12 months of age can typically retrieve an object that they have seen being hidden even though they can no longer see it (a form of object permanence). However, if the child successfully retrieves the object from the same location (A) a number of times, when the adult hides the object at a different location (B), the child does not reliably search at B for the object, even though they have seen it being hidden there. After 12 months, they start searching in the correct location.

Key Findings:

Piaget believed that children (and adults) constructed reality by accommodating preconceived theories when faced with new observations that collide with these theories.

·        Equilibration: the desire to maintain a balance between our surroundings and the mental structures we use to represent those surroundings.

·        Assimilation: a process of integrating new knowledge or experience into our existing cognitive schemata.

·        Accommodation: a process of modifying our cognitive schemata in response to new knowledge or experience.

Piaget described cognitive development as occurring in four stages:

Why is it important to this particular perspective?:

Piaget identified important cognitive milestones and stimulated interest in how the mind develops. Jean Piaget’s observations of children convinced him, and almost everyone else, that the mind develops by forming schemas the help us assimilate our experiences and that must occasionally be altered to accommodate new information. In this way, children progress from the sensorimeter simplicity of the infant to the more complex stages of thinking

He believed that preschool children are egocentric and unable to perform simple logical operations. However, he thought that at about age 7 children become capable of performing concrete operations. Recent research shows that young children are more capable, and development more continuous, than Piaget believed. The cognitive abilities that emerge at each stage have begun developing in a rudimentary form in the previous stage.

By Lyse:

Frederich Bartlett

Most famous work: Remembering 1932

Bartlett was focused on studying memory objectively. Instead of studying CVCs like Ebbinghaus, Bartlett wanted to “study meaningful material.” The meaningful material that Bartlett focused on was telling stories and seeing how well people would remember the stories later on. He found that people would change the stories; they would alter or distort them in some way when asked to recount story.

Bartlett believed that memory is a “reconstructive process” that what people remember is not necessarily the accurate events that took place. He also said that memory is organized by schemas, the general events of what happened.

Bartlett said that people did three things when remembering –

• Leveling - making the story simpler
• Sharpening - highlighting and overemphasizing certain details

By Luigi:

Edward Tolman

               Before                                              After                              

Part of the Cognitive Perspective

Key Studies

1)      Cognitive maps allow learning faster.

2)      Learning is possible without it being exhibited

Key Findings

1)      One of his most important studies was the research of mice and rats in a maze. This type of research led him to produce the theories of cognitive maps in rats and mice, and how they might be similar to the cognitive maps that humans have.

a.       a rat running in a maze must be learning a lay-out pattern

2)      He expanded behaviorist concepts and included the cognitive patterns that occur between stimulus and response

a.       His work can be considered to be cognitive or behaviorist (Social Learning Theory)

3)      He argued that learning and responding are not the same, and that it is possible to learn without showing a correct response (very similar to latent learning)

4)      Tolman’s work raised basic questions about behaviorism and planted the first seeds of what would be cognitive psychology.

He was important to cognitive perspective, since he was one of the founders of this perspective.