Cognition: Process & Representation

William James (1890), The Principles of Psychology “ " as one great blooming, buzzing confusion” (pp 462)

Hermann Helmoltz (1878) Our sensations are simply effects which are produced in our organs by objective causes; precisely how these effects manifest themselves depends principally and in essence upon the type of apparatus that reacts to the objective causes. What information, then, can the qualities of such sensations give us about the characteristics of the external causes and influences which produce them? Only this: our sensations are signs, not images, of such characteristics.

Direct Perception J. J. Gibson (1950, 1979) ● organism and the environment bound together ● environment determines organism's actions (affords behavior) ● organism active not passive – explores

The Magic Number George A. Miller (1956) legitimized research on cognitive process and representation Stimulus is not whole story How many stimuli can we Discriminate?

Miller 7+-2

So, how is information processed?

The Information Processing Model assumptions: ● limited capacity -> bottlenecks ● allocation of capacity ● top-down, bottom-up ● biological predispositions

Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) Type of info? Capacity? duration?

The Information Processing Model assumptions: ● limited capacity -> bottlenecks ● allocation of capacity ● top-down, bottom-up ● biological predispositions

Early Bottleneck Filter Theory Broadbent (1958) information is selected on the basis of physical characteristics

Problems with Broadbent's Filter theory ● Approximately 33% of participants hear their names in the unattended message (Moray, 1959). ● If the shadowed message is switched from one ear to the other, participants will follow it for a few words (Triesman, 1960) Attention can be filtered on a semantic level too

Attenuation Model Treisman (1960) ● selective filter – unattended information attenuated ● some info (name) has lower threshold ● information not attenuated enters awareness

Late Bottleneck Response Selection Theory Deutsch & Deutsh (1963) Pertinence Model Norman (1968) i nformation is selected on the basis of the momentary importance of information

Structural Constraints capacity – how much? duration – how long?

● sensory buffer ● holds raw sensory trace ● iconic, echoic stores ● Sperling (1960) partial-report ● capacity ~ 12 characters ● Up to 1000 ms duration N G K F N P D A Z K F O

Partial Report, Sperling 1960

● Short-term memory ● capacity 7 +/- 2 ● duration up to 20s ● Brown-Peterson task (1959) ● Long-term memory ● capacity infinite ? ● duration years

– Goal: Determine how long non-rehearsed information stays in STM. – On each trial, the subject sees three letters, followed by three numbers. – Subjects must remember the letters while counting backward by 3’s from the number. – Plot recall accuracy by time spent counting. Brown & Petersen (1959)

The Information Processing Model assumptions: ● limited capacity -> bottlenecks ● allocation of capacity ● top-down, bottom-up ● biological predispositions

Processing Constraints data-limited processes ● depends on input quality ● independent of effort resource-limited processes ● depends on cognitive resources ● increased effort -> better performance

controlled (effortful) processing ● limited in capacity, slow ● requires attentional resources can be used flexibly in changing circumstances for example: learning new skill, solving equations

automatic processing ● no capacity limitation, fast ● does not require attention ● difficult to modify once learned for example: frequency, spatial location, temporal order (Hasher & Zacks, 1979)

The Information Processing Model assumptions: ● limited capacity -> bottlenecks ● allocation of capacity ● bottom-up, top-down ● biological predispositions

bottom-up processing -> sensory top-down processing -> conceptual

Stroop Effect Read the Color of the print of the words

The Information Processing Model assumptions: ● limited capacity -> bottlenecks ● allocation of capacity ● bottom-up, top-down ● Perceptual ● Conceptual ● biological predispositions

Context:

word superiority effect (Reicher, 1969) - present a single letter (K) in a word (WORK) or a scrambled word (ORWK) - subject decides if a K or a D is present - faster when the letter is in a word than alone

context 1 Bugelski and Alampay (1961)

context 2

Perceptual Cycle (Neisser, 1976)

Memory - process - representation

Chunking - organization of input into meaningful units - rhythm, racing times, patterns

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the quick red fox