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HS-14-PsychologyResearchersweek13.pptxContemporary Issues: Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology
Unit 14
Psychology’s Researchers
Cognitive Psychology Arrives (Again)
Cognitive research during neobehaviorism
Stroop (1935)
Read list of words printed in black vs the same list of words printed in incongruent colors
no diff in reading time
naming of colors for a list of words printed in incongruent colors
74% longer to name ink colors of incongruent words
Jenkins & Dallenbach (1924)
F/U on Ebbinghaus: no drop retention @8-14 hrs because E asleep
Learn list @ midnight & sleep vs early morn before classes
remembered more if they slept during the retention interval
Retroactive interference reduced by sleep
European Psychology: not affected by behaviorism
Jean Piaget
Frederick C. Bartlett
Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
1920s & 30s in Europe, not in U.S. until 1960s
Doctorate in biology (evolutionary adaptation; stage theory)
Binet Institute: develop French versions of English intelligence tests
important differences between the thinking of adults and children
Pre-Piaget: children less competent thinkers than adults
***NEXT SLIDE***
young children think in strikingly different ways compared to adults
made a systematic study of cognitive development.
The Language and Thought of the Child (1923)
Piaget's Cognitive Theory:
Schemas (general concepts that comprise understanding of world)
Adaptation: transition from one stage to another
equilibrium, assimilation, and accommodation
Stages Theory of Development
sensorimotor,
preoperational
concrete operational
formal operational
Children as Little Adults
“Pinkie” 11yo
Looks like an adult
Dress
Body Proportions
Shakespeare's Juliet
Behavior of an adult
She was 13yo
Piaget Changed That
Hall as well by introducing Adolescence
RETURN
Frederick C. Bartlett (1886-1969)
Cambridge University
studied several areas; lab director & Prof of Exp. Psych
Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (1932)
Took issue with Ebbinghaus nonsense syllable strategy
Studied memory in more ‘ecological’ contexts
Emphasize memorizer vs materials to be memorized
i.e., a social psych of memory
War of the Ghosts (In Remembering)
***NEXT SLIDE***
Constructive memory and schemata
Recall at various times
Longer recall gap – more forgetting
Memory constructed with reference to cultural beliefs
Contributions:
"ecologically valid" experimental tasks
memory is reconstructive
"schema" to represent generic knowledge
The War of the Ghosts
Edwardian English participants read Native American Folklore titled "War of the Ghosts".
S told to recall the story at extended intervals numerous times.
Found:
longer intervals between reading & recall, S less accurate & forgot much of the information from story
elements of the that story failed to fit into listeners’ schemata, they were omitted or transformed into more familiar forms.
Recall mirrored own culture
e,g, remembering "canoes" from the story as "boats".
KEYS
Memory is Generative
Over time – recall became:
Shoter
Increased omissions
Increased inaccuracies
Recall altered to make more consistent with own culture
**RETURN**
Changes in Psychology
Internal to Psychology
Problems with behaviorism
Language (behaviorism had no way of dealing with this
Lashley – the serial order problem
Brain physiology makes sequential S-R impossible
External to Psychology
Computer science
Computer-brain metaphor
Flow charts
Information theory
Linguistics
The So-called “Cognitive Revolution”
Kuhn (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Paradigms
Normal science
Anomalies, then crisis
New paradigm (revolution)
Amer Psych
1879- mentalist (consciousness & introspection)
1913- behaviorist
1956- cognitivist
Thomas Leahy (1992) NOT scientific revolutions
Cognitive psychology (behaviorism)
Didn’t develop in response to any crisis
Took too long – more evolutionary than revolutionary
Kuhn’s book, in the 60s, may be responsible for bringing “revolution” into the discussion
Landmarks: Early Cognitive Psych
George Miller (1920-2012)
Miller (1956) The magical number seven plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information.
Limits of STM
Donald Broadbent (1926-1993)
information processing metaphor
Filter model of selective attention
Perception and Communication (1958)
Miller, Galanter, & Pribram
Plans and the Structure of Behavior (1960)
TOTE (Test-Operate-Test-Exit) replace S-R
a goal is tested to see if it has been achieved and if not, an operation is performed to achieve the goal
Cybernetics & feedback systems
Neisser’s Cognitive Psychology (1967)
an attack on behaviorism
mental processes could be measured and analyzed
Cognition and Reality (1976): many of the same themes as Bartlett
Cognition and Reality Ulric Neisser (1976)
Emphasizing ecologically valid memory studies
From cognitive psychology to cognitive science
Cognitive science interdisciplinary
Psychology, epistemology, anthropology, linguistics, computer science, math, …
Evaluating Cognitive Psychology
Pervasive impact
Cognitive factors in other subdisciplines
social cognition in social psychology
cognitive theories of depression
Criticisms of Cog Psych
Skinner: explanatory fiction problem
i.e., no empirical evidence of internal states
Cognitive Neuroscience doesn’t explain things
Computer metaphor
Overlooks emotions and motivation
Challenges from
Dynamical systems: no need for Info Processing
Embodied Cognition: all aspects of cog determined by body processes (like motor system)
Cf: brain really doesn’t work like a digital computer
Other Research Areas
The Brain and Behavior
Karl Lashley (1890-1958) 1911 PhD JHU – biology
Also studied with Watson, completed animal behavior research
Brain Mechanisms and Intelligence (1929)
Maze Learning via connections of neurons not ‘globally’
Mass Action: learning is distributed across all parts of the brain rather than stored in a single regions.
complex function of the brain is reduced proportionately to how much damage the brain has sustained, but not to the damage of any particular area of the brain.
In search of the engram 1950
Equipotentiality: brain has the ability to use any functioning part of the brain to do what a damaged part of the brain no longer can do
complex sequential behavior (playing piano) could not be S-R
Behavior controlled by a central, hierarchically organized program (not by simple environmental S-R)
The problem of serial order in behavior (1951)
Perception
James J. Gibson (1904-1979)
Princeton Ph.D. 1928; Edwin Holt (W. James student)
Ecological Perception
Connection with Neisser’s ecological validity
Affordances
Environmental Invariances
Moving through the environment
Focus of expansion
Optic flow
Eleanor J. Gibson (1910-2002)
Grad student of James Gibson @ Smith College; later married
Yale PhD (Clark Hull) 1938
Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development (1969)
Famous depth perception studies - visual cliff (1960)
Gibson’s Visual Cliff
Social Psychology
Floyd Allport (1890-1978)
Social Psychology (1924)
Group fallacy (1927)
There is no such thing as a group mind distinct from an individual
Leon Festinger (1919-1989)
Student of Kurt Lewin (University of Iowa, PhD 1942)
Theory of cognitive dissonance
Derives from Lewinian equilibrium concept
When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World. Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, Stanley Schachter (1956)
social behavior = responses of a thinking organism continually acting to bring order into his world
Note: left Social, Worked in Perception (60s), Archaeology (80s)
When Prophecy Fails (pt. 1)
Small apocalyptic cult. Leader received messages from "the Guardians," (superior beings from another planet)
Told a flood would destroy the world on Dec 21, 1954.
Festinger et. al. observed group firsthand for months before and after the predicted apocalypse.
Many members quit their jobs & disposed of possessions in preparation for the apocalypse.
Doomsday came and went, Leader claimed that the world had been spared because of the "force of Good and light" that the group members had spread.
Group members adhered to beliefs even more strongly and began proselytizing with fervor.
When Prophecy Fails (pt. 2)
Festinger et.al, concluded that the following conditions lead to increased conviction in beliefs following disconfirmation (belief perseverance):
The belief must be held with deep conviction and be relevant to the believer's actions or behavior. (thus, resistant to change)
The belief must have produced actions that are arguably difficult to undo. (thus, resistant to change)
The belief must be sufficiently specific and concerned with the real world such that it can be clearly disconfirmed.
The disconfirmatory evidence must be recognized by the believer. (thus pressure to change)
***The believer must have social support from other believers. – The group supports resistance to change
Specific case of Cognitive Dissonance
i.e., increased proselytizing reduced dissonance by producing the knowledge that others also accepted their beliefs
Stanley Milgram (1933-1984)
PhD from Harvard with Gordon Allport
Famous studies of obedience at Yale in the 1960s and 1970s
Obedience not a result of personality but the response to strong situational demands when individuals are faced with orders from those perceived to be in authority
Personality Psychology
Nomothetic vs. idiographic strategies
N: generalize objective law from the specific (study a population represented by individual) e.g., Trait Theory
I: understand the specific (study of the individual)
Henry Murray (1897-1967)
Background in medicine; strong interest in psychoanalysis & Jung’s Analytic Psych (was a patient)
Personology – emphasis on the entire individual
no isolated piece of behavior could ever be understood without taking into account the fully functioning person.
Primary method – case study
Developed TAT (Thematic Apperception Test): ambiguous test materials for assessing individual differences in
patterns of thought, attitudes, observational capacity, and emotional responses
Note: controversy about ethics of many of his experiments described as "purposely brutalizing." One Sub: Ted Kaczynski (the unabomber)
Personality Psychology (cont)
Gordon Allport (1897-1967)
PhD 1922 (Harvard); H Langfeld & Münsterberg – Exp Psych
Studied Gestalt Psych in Europe (after PhD)
“Personality: Its Psychological and Social Aspects”
1st US personality course (taught @ Harvard)
rejected both psychoanalysis (he had met Freud), which he thought often went too deep, and behaviorism, which he thought often did not go deep enough
Personality: A Psychological Interpretation (1937)
Emphasis on case study & present context
e.g., Letters from Jenny (1965)
301 letters (1926-1937) of 58yo widow – Case Anal
Personality organized by “traits”
Cardinal traits
Central traits
Secondary traits
traits are "habits possessed of social significance" and become very predictable
