Lecture 2 – History of Cognition 1

Three topics:

1. Pre-history of study of cognition

2. Early history

3. Recent history

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Pre-history of study of Cognition

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Classical times

1. No integrated model of mind.

• Reference to many functions, but not to relations among these functions.

• Analogy: Homer has words for limbs, muscles, bones, joints, but not for body.

• Rich, complex behaviour seen as produced by an interaction among parts.

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Imagine describing a library –

• By listing the books it holds, or

• By describing its functions, or

• By developing a theory of what libraries are and how they work

Homeric model of mind was like the list.

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Classical times

2. Causes of behaviour

A. Gods and demons

• Basic idea: behaviour comes from outside the person, not from inside

• Note similar views today: e.g., television causes violence, or images cause anorexia.

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Classical times

B. Internal organs

• e.g., “he doesn’t have the stomach for it.”

• “my heart is broken.”

• brain had no special status

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Early History of Study of Psychology

1. Rene Descartes

2. John Locke

3. 19th century German physiologists

4. Darwin

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Rene Descartes(1596-1650)

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Descartes

• Grew up during chaos of Thirty Years War.

• System and order were very important to him.

• Knew that animals share many psychological functions with humans (e.g., learning).

• But there are some things we do that animals do not do – these are the most interesting.

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Descartes

• We are conscious in a way that animals are not (we are self-aware)

• Our consciousness allows us to think and use language.

• This made how humans are different from animals the central issue for psychology.

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Descartes argued

(a) animals do not have the same sort of consciousness we do,

(b) animals do not have souls,

(c) the soul is the seat of consciousness.

• The problem for a science that does not recognize the soul is, what is consciousness?

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John Locke(1632-1704)

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Locke:

(1) Against divine right of kings to rule.

(2) Against idea that some people are special, and should rule because of that.

(3) All people are born as “blank slates,” and that knowledge comes from experience.

(4) So, anybody with right experience can govern.

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Locke – two types of knowledge:

Sensation

• sensory impressions of the world

Reflection

• combining sensory impressions (association)

• only source of complex knowledge

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Interim summary:

In classical Greece, complexity of behaviour seen as due to interaction of many parts & agencies.

Descartes said most functions similar in humans and animals. Distinctively-human (complex) behaviour produced by thinking, which is done by the soul.

Locke argued that behaviour is driven by knowledge and knowledge comes from experience

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19th Century German physiologists

• Physiology an established science

• Studied nerve conduction speed

• Developed psychophysics

• Showed you can have a science of behaviour

• Led to first psychology lab at Leipzig in 1879

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Darwin (1809-1882)

• people, animals evolved from common ancestors.

• human functions evolved from animal functions.

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Darwin

• Continuity paradox: some human functions have no animal analogue (e.g., language).

• Descartes had made what was different about humans the central problem.

• After Darwin, Psychology focused on what was shared with animals – learning.

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Interim summary:

19th century physiologists studied nerve conduction speed. This made study of mental states respectable.

Darwin made continuity of function between humans and animals central tenet of psychology.

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3. Recent history

A. World War II – technology

B. World War II – movements of refugees

C. Computer science

D. Linguistics

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World War II - technology

• More complex machines and weaponry

• Psychologists brought in to answer new questions

• E.g., how can fighter cockpit be designed to improve pilot’s information processing?

• How long can a radar operator be on station before performance falls off?

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Problem:

Behaviourists had no relevant knowledge or research techniques.

• They studied learning in pigeons and rats.

• Accounts of behaviour involved life history, not current state of the organism.

Behaviourists had to start all over again.

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World War II – Movements of refugees

• Many psychologists uprooted in Europe went to N. America

• Tended not to have Behaviourist biases

• Didn’t mind referring to mental events

• Met U.S. psychologists returning from military

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Computer Science

• Computers capable of sophisticated behaviour

• Program specifies processes that produce that behaviour

• Psychologists wanted to find the ‘program’ for human cognition

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Linguistics

Two contributions from Noam Chomsky:

1. Attacked Behaviourism – devastating review of Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior (1959)

2. Developed Transformational Generative Grammar in the fifties.

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Chomsky’s Review of Verbal Behavior

• Showed language function cannot be explained in terms of reinforcement.

Tranformational Generative Grammar

• Infinite # of utterances from finite set of words + finite number of rules for combining

• A theory of mental processes

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All these threads came together in the 1950s, a time of great change in North America…

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It was the 50’s. Fins were in.

Vinyl was in demand.

Elvis was thin.

And governments were throwing money at the universities.

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Graduate schools opened up and turned out lots of young turks.

Like all young turks, they thought the old farts were wrong about everything. Including psychology.

Change was unavoidable.

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That change produced a new way of understanding human mental function.

That new way focused on mental representations and the processes that operate on them.

It was called Cognitive Psychology.

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Quick evaluation:

On a piece of paper, please write down one or two sentences about each of:

• What you liked best about today’s lecture.

• What you still have some confusion about.

Be constructive – but don’t put your name on the paper! (Please hand it in as you leave.)