COGNITION: AN INTRODUCTION

 

Philosophical Underpinnings: Rationalism and Empiricism

Hume (radical empiricist) can’t know causation; only know through sensory experience. What is available is event A preceding event B in time or space and it is reliable . We notice and remember and come to believe that A causes B.

Kant (rationalist) knowledge arises out of experience but is not grounded in experience. Must have a concept of time through which the perceptions are being filtered. The concept of time must precede the sensory experience. Conceptual representations are abstract and not available to sensory experience. We know a concept and use that knowledge to explain percepts.

 

RATIONALISM

An invisible reality- not present to the senses which can only be attained through reason and contemplation. Center of thought and the soul is in the head..

The mind is acquainted primarily with abstract concepts and , only derivatively concrete particulars (deduction).

Plato - learning is remembering (Socrates; The Meno- the slave boy - shows that he had implicit knowledge of geometry - knowing without awareness, implicit memory, the unconscious). Plato - we cannot come to know something unless we already know it.

Reason is the primary source of knowledge and understanding is the aim of knowledge Processing produces abstract knowledge

NATIVISM - what we know is built in

INNATE PERCEPTUAL ASSUMPTIONS - innate competencies or knowledge (capacity not concrete particulars).
James - Sensory data is "unstructured undifferentiated chaos" providing the raw material to be interpreted by the perceiver.
Construction - man searches, filters, selects, organizes, reorganizes, and creates information out of sensory data (active).

Facts can’t serve as the raw data of observation.

We don’t simply sense, we construct a percept or an interpretation (two people see the same thing differently). Facts are relative. Without a prior framework or point of view from which we impose order on reality, there is only the changing phenomenal flux of experience - the “booming, buzzing, confusion” of James.

“Observation is not merely focusing on the data but rather the assimilation of data into the conceptual scheme of the observer” (Weimer)

Immanuel Kant - we construct our own reality - the meaning of an object does not exist in the object but in how the individual perceives the object (imagine if a person you like gives you a gift or that same gift is given to you by someone you do not like - a problem with the simple concept of reinforcement - when is reinforcement punishment?)

Revolt against the reductionistic analysis of experience. Rationalists do not say that associations are not formed but are concerned with the relationships among associations - how and why are associations formed? Does it make sense that these items are associated versus that anythings occurring together in time or space become associated (Empiricist).

Descartes, Leibniz, Kant - thinking is an innate perceptual capacity in humans, causality is innate, truth is obtained through the construction of formal systems (math, logic). The mind actively seeks knowledge it is not simply shaped by the world .Although the mind lives in the brain it is immaterial and entirely separate from the physical tissue of the brain. “I think therefore I am.”

led to Gestalt Psychology - the emphasis was on perception and laws of perceptual organization (Figure-Ground; Similarity; Proximity; Pragnance; Closure; Common Direction) - built-in abilities
Wundt (1832-1920) - Psychology as a natural science; structuralism - mental events have sturcture, the mind actively combines or synthesizes basic mental elements (introspection); memory is the process of reconstruction

Piaget - genetic epistemology

Mental Structures and cognitive processes -

Bartlett - memory is reconstructive not reproductive - we transform information through our schema

Piaget - development of thought - qualitative changes in conceptual operations over time - structure or schema change through assimilation and accomodation

Miller, Galanter, & Pribram - TOTE - a self-regulating system that uses available information to guide subsequent behavior

Bruner - the active nature of the learner (discovery)

Chomsky's Linguistic Theory - opposed Skinner's reinforcement view of language arguing that humans possess innate syntactical rules and that linguistic behavior is creative and cannot be reduced to mechanistic chaining. Generative component of language - language is generated via rules which are abstractions and can be applied without reference to a particular prior experience (rule vs stimulus). Non-reductionistic - can only understand human behavior by studying humans

EMPIRICISM  sometimes called copy theory (we perceive an object through our senses, making a copy of the object in our minds)

         ARISTOTLE  knowledge is founded or based on facts (concrete events, objects, sensory experience). All learning is the learning of particulars and their recombination. Abstract concept formation is a derivative result of this process .

Subtractive theory - our generic concepts result from the association of common elements or features of particular objects, eg. mankind is the sum of properties or features found to be common in particular men; feline is the sum of the features found in common among particular cats. Productive thinking is the association of new combinations of elements or properties.

EXPERIENCE IS THE SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE

Features of empiricism:
     SENSATIONISM , ASSOCIATIONISM, REDUCTIONISM, MECHANISM

     Sensationism - your experiences are recorded in memory as copies and they provide infromation that leads to formation  of abstract concepts through recombination. The senses are the foundation of knowledge. They present us with the particulars that are associated by the mind. (We don't perceive reddness or mankind, we perceive red objects and men). Repeated experience with similar objects leads to knowledge.
     Associationism - the sequence of cognitive events is not random, it is organized. Habit and associationism are the organizing principles. One occurrence precedes another, thus when the first one is stimulated, it stimulates the second (chaining of associations). Associations are formed on three bases: similarity (things that are alike are seen as belonging together); contrast (opposites are associated); contiguity ( things that occur together in time or space are viewed as belonging together). The degree of association formed is determined by: vividness, duration, frequency, and recency
 
     Reductionism - all complex ideas are built up out of simpler ideas (subtractive theory) and are reducible to these elements.
     Mechanism - the mind is like a machine built out of simple components (copy theory). The cause of al thought is anchored in the external world.

Reflection - frees the mind from simple passive copying. Calling up memories and comparing them leads to abstraction (taking out the critical properties to form a generic concept); deduction (bringing into reflection a logical consequence of things we know); inference(drawing an implied conclusion).

  Basic assumptions of empiricism:
     1) internal representations of simple ideas originate by copying the sense impressions into the memory store
     2) complex ideas are formed by connecting simple ideas that are experienced contiguiously

Logical Positivitism  emerged from empiricism ( John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, James and John Stuart Mill)
     LP says that there are only two kinds of meaningful statements:
     1) factual propositions
     2) mathematical or logical propositions
 
     tabula rasa - the mind is a blank slate at birth upon which the environment makes impressions
 
     LP led to experimentation and, in psychology, the experimental analysis of behavior.

BEHAVIORISM - truth is obtained via observation and experimentation
              The formation of conditioned associations between external stimulus events and responses through contiguity.
              We are shaped by our environments (determinism).

   Behavior is all reduced to responses / doesn't matter whether you study animals or people. Learning occurs through S-R connections and there is cross situational generalization. Learning is the fundamental process in the study of behavior.

   If going to predict behavior must be able to identify the stimulus and the response in a given situation (e.g. serial learning vs. paired associate learning). If present Ss with a serial list and another group with the same words as pairs which should be learned better? Why? What happens, S-R associations are not formed in the serial list.

   Skinner - language is learned via reinforcement. Is this so? Chomsky - no . To understand behavior must  understand coding.

   Computer model of the mind  (information processing); an analogy not a theory; allowed concretization of mental processes.  Encoding - storage and retrieval Empiricism studies perception, learning, and memory; rationalism explains thinking, problem solving, and reasoning

Hume (radical empiricist) can’t know causation; only know through sensory experience. What is available is event A preceding event B in time or space and it is reliable . We notice and remember and come to believe that A causes B.

Associationism

Watson - thinking is laryngeal habits (subvocal speech); only study that which is observable. Herbert Feigh says that Watson “made up his windpipe that he had no mind”
Skinner believed that the proper study of psychology was observable behavior; can’t study the mind because can’t see it 

Science - combines empiricism and rationalism in its approach to gathering knowledge; science is a methodology, a means of knowing; it sets up premises

 

Cognitive psychology - focus on the higher mental processes and the construction of meaning (the notion of construction has been around a long time. The idea is that man searches, filters, selects, organizes, reorganizes, and creates information out of sensory data. We don’t simply sense, we construct a perception or an interpretation of the data. Facts are relative. James, Kant - the meaning of an object does not exist in the object but in how the individual interprets the object. Behavior is a function of the subjective world as transformed and internally represented by the perceiver. 

 

INTERACTIONIST - considers both the individual and the situation as active. Culture affects ideas and inferences and inferences and ideas affect culture (dynamic)

Neuropsychologists - Broca, Wernicke

Theories of communication - Hebb, Broadbent - information processing flowing through the cognitive system (perception, memory, attention)

.EXPERIMENTAL COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY - semantic network models of memory/ Production systems?experimental methodology

INFORMATION PROCESSING MODEL

cognitive activity consists of interactive bottom-up and top-down processing at the same time.(afferent and efferent; data-driven and conceptually-driven processing) 
Interests:
how we process information
what kinds of information we process
whether processing is conscious or unconscious
how we store and transfer information
how we organize information, retrieve it, etc.
"The information in the stimulus is simply the initiating event ; it is not in the recoded mental forms" (bottom-up:top-down); mentally processing an event changes it. "The mind is different from the environment, shaped and constrained by it, but not a pale reflection of it".
Wundt - "creative synthesis" - what we know is the result of thought processes and will

COGNITIVE SCIENCE

Cognitive scientists construct models to represent cognitive theories. Three main types of models are in common use by cognitive psychologists:

1) Semantic Network Models,

2) Production Systems,

3) Connectionist Networks.

Semantic networks and production systems are computer models whereas Connectionist networks are brain based models.

CONNECTIONIST NETWORKS

Connectionist networks, neural networks, or parallel distributed processing models all characterize concepts as patterns of activation in the network.
CONNECTIONISM models pattern recognition on the activity of the brain instead of a computer. All processing is assumed to be parallel and knowledge resides in the connections among units rather than in the units themselves.
Information in the sensory field is processes in parallel. The parts of an object are processed simultaneously with the whole object (interactive). Recognizing the whole helps in the recognition of the part and vice versa

 

COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY

Concerned with the patterns of cognition in the brain. Using CAT scans and PET scans, cog. neuroscientists study normal brain functioning while thinking or engaging in a particular type of task and the brain functioning of people who have suffered from brain trauma.
In studying brain damaged subjects, cog,neuroscientists look for DISSOCIATIONS which occur when a patient performs normally on one task but is impaired in his performance on another task. KF (Shallice and Warrington, 1970) suffered brain damage to a part of the brain specialized for speech perception and production resulting in severely impaired STM but an intact LTM (a dissociation).
Dissociation refers tothe fact that a variable has a different effect on performance depending on the type of test; a system performing one function has been damaged but the system performing another function has been spared. Information processing can continue in a particular structure (STM) without being processed in another structure (LTM) - Phineas Gage - couldn’t learn anything new).A problem with this method of studying brain functions is that the tasks may not be equal therefore psychologists look for DOUBLE DISSOCIATIONS.
A double dissociation between two tasks occurs when one patient performs normally on task one and is impaired on task 2 while another patient performs normally on task 2 and is impaired on task 1. If a double dissociation occurs then the results cannot be explained in terms of task difficulty.
A double dissociation has been shown with KF AND AMNESIACS. While he has a severely impaired STM and an intact LTM, amnesic patients have the opposite.
Problem: brain damage is often rather extensive, so that different cognitive systems are impaired to a greater or lessor degree. If the damage was limited it would be simple to equate localization and functioning , not so (contralaterality - split brain studies),
e.g., HM lost much of his hippocampus through surgery to reduce epilepsy and consequently could not form new “verbal memories” (always lived in the 1950s) but found that he could learn new skills. Originally, he was viewed as having a dissociation between his short-term memory processes and his long-term memory processes 

 

Basic premises of neuropsychologists:

1.The cognitive system exhibits modularity, i.e. there are several relatively independent cognitive processors or modules that carry out specific functions. Brain damage will typically impair only some of these modules. These modules are relatively independent ofeach other in their functioning (informational encapsulation), so that damage to one module does not directly affect the functioning of other modules. Each module can only process one kind of input (e.g. words, pictures), they are domain specific. The functioning of the module is not under voluntary control (mandatory operation). Modules are innate. (Fodor,1983). Prosopagnosia - face recognition - left underside of occipital and temporal cortex
2.There is a meaningful relationship between the organization of the physical brain and that of the mind (isomorphism)(localization of functioning)
3.Investigation of cognition in brain damaged Ss can tell us much about cog. processes in normal individuals. Question: are they really like normals? What kinds of compensatory mechanisms do they develop to overcome the damage?

4. Most patients can be categorized in terms of SYNDROMES. Certain sets of symptoms or impairments were usually found together, e.g. the amnesic syndrome - patients with intact STM and severely impaired LTM.

 

Different approaches for studying the cognitive processes:

Three types of analysis: How should cognition be analyzed?

1. Stage

2. Coding

3. Task

1.Stage analysis - separates the cognitive processes into three stages;
a)acquisition - placing info into memory
b)retention - persistence of memory over time
c)retrieval - extraction of information 
(traditionally learning is used to describe a and memory to describe b and c)
If performance on a memory task is perfect one can be assured that info has been successfully acquired, retained and retrieved. However, if performance is less than perfect one has no idea whether the information has been: a) acquired adequately but is inaccessible for retrieval(retrieval failure); b) acquired adequately but lost during the retention interval (retention failure); or c) inadequately acquired in the first place (acquisition failure)

 

2. Coding Analysis - which aspects of an experience are recorded in memory? In what form in the information recorded? 
Assumption: all aspects of an experience do not necessarily become the basis for memories of that experience. Encoding - transforming information into a form suitable for memory store: encoding = acquisition, recoding - retention, decoding = retrieval.
The difficulty of the decoding process may vary considerably in different situations (depending on retrieval cues, context, distractions, etc.) Acquisition, retention, and retrieval could proceed smoothly but performance could be impaired due to an encoding problem. 
Identical stimuli are often encoded differently depending on the task requirements, what you are thinking about at the moment
Coding analysis shows that learning is not a unitary process; we acquire many different types of information about a stimulus when we encode it.
We spend considerable time trying to find meaning in stimuli 
Coding can be selective (entailing loss of information) when the information is greater than needed or elaborative (adding information) going beyond the information given - again mnemonics

 

3. Task Analysis - the nature of the task can determine the findings experimental variables can have different effects on components of the overall task:.
Conrad (1964) read letters silently; recall in order (serial recall)
Experimenters often assume that if they use a particular type of task that the subject is going to automatically conform to that task (e.g. auditory information will be encoded auditorily, etc

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