Text: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Author: De Vega

Cognitive psychology uses a new language (information processing). The study of the mind has
an empirical foundation. Your object of study has difficulties. First, mental phenomena are
inaccessible to public observation. Second, mental phenomena can be very fast, producing a
misleading impression of simplicity. Third, the cognitive system is interactive, so that there is a
functional interdependence of all components of the system.

 INFORMATION PROCESSING

Current cognitive psychology has a great variety of approaches or ''paradigms'', which only
have in common their emphasis on mental phenomena as causal agents of behavior.

A) Origin of the cognitive paradigm

Behaviorism postulated an associationist analysis, which denied the functional value of mental
processes. Towards the mid-1950s, a progressive abandonment of associationist assumptions
and an acceptance of mental processes was observed. Initially they show this open attitude:
Millar, Bruner and Broadbent. But the greatest influence had the work of Millar. He and his
collaborators extensively elaborate a mind-computer analogy and a program in which
mentalistic concepts such as ''mental image'', ''plans'', ''strategies'', etc. are handled.
The new paradigm supposes a Copernican turn in anti-mentalistic attitudes, to the point of
placing the emphasis precisely on mental processes.

 Paradigm shift
 Paradigms
A paradigm is a ''disciplinary matrix'' that includes everything from beliefs and preconceptions
to prescriptions accepted by the scientific community (types of problems that should be posed,
instrumentation, theoretical models, applications). Examples of paradigms are Newton's
physics, or Darwin's evolutionary theory.
Science does not progress in a continuous and cumulative way, but is a discontinuous
evolution punctuated by crises and revolutions. There are periods of normal science (presence
of a dominant paradigm)
During periods of normal science, novel findings or anomalies occur that are difficult to
interpret by the dominant paradigm. These anomalies are usually overcome and incorporated.
But other times, the accumulation is very accelerated, or the anomalies resist interpretation,
producing a crisis. The crisis is eventually followed by a period of revolutionary science, where
the foundations of a new paradigm are formed, which will gradually lead to a new period of
normal science. The transition from one paradigm to another does not generally involve a
rational evaluation of both. Supporters of competing paradigms remain distant without even
considering a debate. The differences in theoretical vocabulary, and even observations,
prevent the slightest understanding.
 ''Crisis'' and ''revolutions'' in psychology
The transition from behaviorism (normal science) to cognitivism can be interpreted within the
framework of the Kuhnian conception. At a certain point a crisis of behaviorism occurs,
followed by a period in which the cognitive paradigm emerges.
During this time, many psychologists embrace the behavioral disciplinary matrix that
prescribes what the relevant problems are, and how they should be investigated. But the study
of mental processes remains outside behavioral concerns.
The fundamental assumptions of behaviorism are questioned in three:
 1) Criticisms of the insufficiency of associationism: Behaviorism was a contemporary
variant of historical associationism, related to Aristotle or the English empiricists. Like
these, behaviorists are reductionists, connectionists, sensorialists. In the 1950s, there
was a widespread insufficiency of behaviorism to interpret the most complex human
behavior.
2) The inadequate interpretation of evolutionism: Behaviorism assumes Darwin's
evolutionary principles. Starting from Thorndike, a fixist reading is carried out. He and
the behaviorists assure that the laws of behavior are universal and shared by all
species, including man. This fixist assumption allows us to understand that for decades
experimental psychologists investigated the learning of rats, cats, dogs or pigeons,
with the aim of generalizing the results and models to human behavior. This
psychology suffered paralysis.
3) Crisis of the notion assumed by behaviorists: This factor contributes to the crisis of
behaviorism, of the epistemological conception of science on which it was based,
logical positivism, which postulated a physicalist language for theories. However, most
of the postulates of logical positivism have been rejected by the next generation of
philosophers of science so that behaviorism also lost its epistemological support.
This crisis situation leads to a revolutionary period, in which some isolated individuals publish
works that seek a new language and openly address the study of mental processes. The
cognitive paradigm emerging in the 1950s soon stabilizes and currently dominates a new
period of normal science.
 Factors outside of psychology
The emergence of cognitivism is due not only to the crisis of behaviorism but also to certain
social or historical factors. Among the factors that influence the configuration of cognitivism
are: the theory of communication, the development of computer sciences, certain practical
problems and psycholinguistics.
- The theory of communication:
Shannon formulated the theory of communication, which established a series of
mathematical laws to explain the flow of information through a channel. A channel is a device
that receives an external information input and generates an output (transmitted
information). The physical nature of the channel is immaterial. This was very suggestive for
some psychologists. of the time, who extended by analogy the notion of channel to the
description of the human mind. The nervous system can be considered as a biological channel
that transmits information.
The first contributions of the cognitive paradigm literally used Shannon's concepts to describe
the mind. Many were applied to measure information in bits (probabilistic measurement).
The mind-information channel analogy was soon abandoned, since an information channel is
a passive device, while the human mind is an active system that encodes information, stores
it and transforms (processes information).
- Computer science:
At the end of the Second World War, a revolution in electronic technology took place with
repercussions on the new cognitive psychology. Wiener developed the notion of feedback
that describes a process of self-regulation and control, and he also coined the term
cybernetics for the new discipline that would deal with control systems.
Later the first digital computers (information processing systems) were built. In a computer, a
distinction is usually made between the physical support (hardware) and the logical support
(software). The development of the computer provides psychology with a mind-computer
analogy.
- psycholinguistics
Chomsky's work constituted a milestone in the field of linguistics and a turning point in the
psychological study of language. Chomsky rejects the associative conceptions of the verbal
learning school and behaviorism. He proposes his transformational grammar that comprises a
 series of generative rules and transformation rules. Language can be studied as a device of
competence.
He established an important distinction between linguistic competence and updating. The
main task of linguistics is to develop a model of grammatical competence, that is, the rules
that allow all the grammatical phrases of a language to be generated. The production and
understanding of a language by a user does not depend exclusively on competence. The user
is influenced by his intentions, his knowledge of the world and the interlocutor, his mental
states, his attentional and memory limitations, the context, etc. Verbal performance depends
on both competence and a set of psychological variables.
Chomsky's theory was immediately accepted by the nascent cognitive psychology.
- Practical problems:
Industrial engineers during the Second World War faced certain practical problems related to
the man-machine relationship. Psychologists propose to engineers that the machine and the
operator should be considered as a single ''man-machine system'' whose performance must
be optimized. The new conception of industrial design requires pragmatic solutions and a
certain degree of understanding of the psychic processes of the ''human factor''.
Broadbent (a cognitive psychologist) worked as a military psychologist. He begins to be
interested in attention processes. Among his contributions stands out the first human care
model formalized as a flow diagram.

B) The computer analogy

 Functional analogy

The analogy between the human mind and artificial computing systems was proposed even
before computers were invented. The origin dates back to the works of the mathematician
Turing. He described a hypothetical machine demonstrating that it could simulate any
computation including human intelligent behaviors.
The Turing machine is an abstraction, but digital computers are real and equivalent to the
Turing machine ("general purpose" systems)
For its part, the human nervous system has great functional versatility, so it can also be
categorized as a general-purpose processor.
Electronic engineers and Artificial Engineering (AI) technicians try to transfer their ideas about
mental functioning to the computer field. For their part, cognitive psychologists take the
computer as a model to pose psychological hypotheses and develop theoretical
interpretations.
The mind-computer analogy is functional, not physical. The mind and the computer are
general-purpose processing systems: both encode, retain, and operate on symbols and
internal representations.

 Consequences of the analogy

Mentalism, banished from academic psychology since the end of the 19th century, is decisively
resumed by the new cognitive psychology. The computer analogy on which it is based provides
psychologists with vocabulary, guidelines and instrumentation suitable for the study of the
mind:
 Vocabulary:
Many of the topics covered by cognitive psychology use ''information processing'' terminology,
common to computers and mental processes. The associationist vocabulary has been replaced
by processes of ''coding'', ''storage'', ''information search'', etc., and by structural components
such as ''operational memory'', ''long-term memory''. '', ''buffers'', etc.
-Distinction between the weak version and the strong version of the computer mind analogy:
Weak version: establishes a functional similarity between both systems and uses the
processing vocabulary, in an instrumental way. This version corresponds to what is called
''Cognitive Psychology''.
Strong version: consider that the computer is more than a simple conceptual tool. The
scientist's goal is to develop a unified theory of information processing. This version has given
rise to a discipline called ''Cognitive Science'', and its interest is confined to the construction of
AI programs.
 Guidance
Computational analogy exercises the function of metapostulate (assumed beliefs that imposed
guidelines and prohibitions on theory and method) for cognitive psychology, since it dictates
and legitimizes certain research objectives, and conditions the development of theories and
models.
Cognitive psychology is freeing itself from these paradigmatic restrictions and its scope is
beginning to cover the initial gaps, although to do so it is forced to detach itself from the
computational analogy.
 instrumental function
The computer offers cognitive psychology the possibility of building two types of
computational models: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Simulation (S). AI models, whose
execution is analogous or superior to human cognitive performance on identical tasks, but
without there being an express intention for the AI program to reproduce human cognitive
processes.
S models are programs that mimic human intelligent behavior and aim to emulate mental
processes and mechanisms.
Flowcharts are another type of computational modeling.