The Mind as a Computer - link & response for last week

While browsing the web, I found this blog which directly relates to our topic of last week's discussion. More specifically, this post detailed an interesting study that showed, through sensory imaging tests, that the mind-computer metaphor doesn't always work so well.

I find this metaphor interesting. I wonder if von Neumann thought he had hit the theoretical jackpot when he came up with this metaphor. All along, psychologists had been trying to answer the question of, "what is going on in the mind and why?" As Larry White put it in chapter 1 of his book, structuralism was a question of "what is mind?" and functionalism was a question of "what is mind for?" In my opinion, behaviorism was looking at "what can we do to control the mind?" and psychoanalysis was "how can we extract what is happening in the mind?" To answer this with a metaphor that explains the mind as a mass of connections that all have a specific purpose and specific applications seems to be the end point of wondering "what is going on in the mind?"

It doesn't answer the question of "why" though. And even though, at the time, not as much was known about computers as is now, doesn't it impersonalize our existence? If we can be programmed to perform in a certain way (which, I guess was the aim of behaviorism...) what is the point? And the computer metaphor does nothing for explaining emotion and other affectual things about the mind. However I think it was probably a breakthrough metaphor that also influenced the development of technology (which, as we all know, was extremely important and significant - without it we wouldn't be able to blog for class!).

Darnell Wilson

Debra A. Poole and Larry T. White began some research studies after the death of a young boy named Darnell Wilson in Beloit, Wisconsin in the 80's.

Hint: What did they decide to study and why?


Here's a link on some of the background information about the case. It's a little heavy, but you can get the idea...
openjurist.org/942/f2d/1143/dsa-v-circuit-court-branch

Professor Tawney's Chronoscope Book

So, tomorrow Larry White will lead the class in discussion regarding his book and his findings...

After that, we have a fun game for you all, so be sure to come prepared!!!

Cognitive Psych blog

Doing a quick review of last week's readings I noticed something that I hadn't before. In Ch 11 of the blue book, Ludy T. Benjamin Jr. talks a great deal about Gestalt Psychology, Bartlett, and the Computer metaphor, however he only briefly mentions Chomsky, Miller, and Brown. The reason this struck me as strange was because last semester in my Human Learning and Cognition class (in Florida) most of what we learned was coined and developed by Chomsky, Miller, and Brown. So I guess my question is, why did Benjamin not dive deeper into a discussion of those three, when seemingly their concepts are the most well-known or best understood of all that was discussed in Ch 11.

The most interesting part of Ch 11 to me though was the discussion of Bartlett and the mind as actively constructing information. I think it makes perfect sense that when we learn new information our mind doesn't just place it anywhere, but instead finds, I guess, it's common relatives, and places it in that area of your memory. This would explain why sometimes people don't seem to make sense, when in reality the associations being made are directly related to where information is stored in their head. Bartlett's concept of memory as subject to error I believe also makes perfect sense. How many times can I recall holding my daddy's hand in the gas station and looking up and realizing it wasn't my daddy, but according to Bartlett the question becomes, is that really my memory, did my mind fill in the blanks or make part of it up based on what my parents have told me? Hmmmm....

Cognitive Psych Link

http://www.gestalttherapy.net/welcome/index.html

This link is to a website that has blogs for discussion between gestalt therapists, trainees, etc as well as projects that are going on. An interesting aspect of the website is "The Writer's Page" it is a link to the life and work of many gestalt therapists, written by them, discussing their practice, theory, and methods.

Week 11: Reflection and Link

I decided to do some additional exploration of the zeigarnik effect after our wrap-up discussion of cognitive psychology and this phenomenon in particular this past week. As you'll recall from the reading, this effect was coined by the Russian psychologist B. Zeigarnik, who claimed that the recall ratio for tasks interrupted in the middle or toward the end is higher than those interrupted early on. Additional research since this time has shown that this effect is more likely to appear if the subject is ego-involved in the task in some way. In addition, studies have shown that individuals with a genuine level of aspiration to complete the task are also more likely to show the zeigarnik effect than other participants.

Apparently musicians like to utilize this phenomenon when composing "hooks," or for the conclusion of pieces. Being rather non-musically inclined, I'm not entirely sure I understand how this works, but in essence, it involes a suspended chord that created initial dissonance and is then resolved by the final note. Check it out here: http://elearningcurve.blogspot.com/2008/07/learning-zeigarnik-effect.html. This article claims the effect can be heard at the end of the Beatles' She's Leaving Home.

Interestingly enough, there seems to be a dearth of information on Bluma Zeigarnik beyond short descriptions of her work under Kurt Lewin and subsequent discovery of the phenomenon later named after her. The only other credit I could find to her was her presence in helping to establish experimental psychopathology as a separate discipline. Also, am I the only one that didn't realize Zeigarnik was a woman? Is this due to the tendency to just call scientists by their first intitial/last name, or does it say something more about our tendency to assume important, noted discoveries were made by men? It's interesting to think about the number of men we've studied in this course versus the number of women...

Link and Reflection

The topic that interested me the most this week was the debate about language acquisition during the cognitive revolution. While we were learning about Noam Chomsky's language acquisition device theory and how it opposes Skinner, I was fascinated with the differences between the two. Chomsky's theory makes perfect sense, and I wonder how Skinner completely overlooked these ideas. In my opinion, behaviorism was simply too narrow of a scope to view psychology and it limited research far too much. Skinner MUST have considered the ideas that Chomsky presented because it is so obvious and true. However, Skinner's ideas are clearly lacking important elements that Chomsky discovered. I've discussed my 3 year old cousin on a previous blog post, and I'll refer to him again here. I got him a mini-guitar for Christmas and when he opened the gift he screamed, "How did you know I wanted a buitar? I seeed one of these at the store!" It was funny at the moment because of the words he mispronounced, but it's a great example of Chomsky's theory. There's no way that my cousin was reinforced in the words he said in that sentence. A buitar? Seeed? Sorry Skinner, but I just can't see you point of view. I am very happy that we've moved beyond behaviorism so that research doesn't have to be limited and narrow. Below is a link that provides a pretty cool flow-chart of Chomsky's language/grammar acquisition device, and it has some quotes from Chomsky about his views on bheaviorism.

http://academics.tjhsst.edu/psych/oldPsych/language/chomsky.html

Seth