How the Brain Gives Rise to the Mind How the Brain Gives Rise to the Mind

(useful for preparing for the interview in advance and anticipating the interviewer’s retain memories). The French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes
likely response to points you make); (1596–1650) gave us the famous distinction between mind and body, asserting that
n and—of course—language, which is what you use to understand the questions and mind is qualitatively distinct from body, as different as heat is from light. This dis-
reply to them; what you say ultimately will make or break your interview. tinction has permeated our culture and now seems obvious to many, but in fact re-
search is now revealing that it is not as clear-cut as it may seem (as we shall see when
This chapter is about all these mental activities—for that is in fact what they are—and more. we consider the effects of mind on body—and vice versa—when we discuss emo-
Mental activity, also known as cognition, is the internal interpretation or transforma- tion). John Locke (1632–1704), writing in England, considered what the contents of
tion of stored information. You acquire information through your senses and you store it in the mind might be like and argued that thought is a series of mental images. Bishop
memory. Cognition occurs when you derive implications or associations from an observation, George Berkeley (1685–1753) begged to disagree, arguing in part that abstract
fact, or event. For example, you might realize that you would have to move to a new city for one concepts—such as “justice” and “truth”—could not be conveyed effectively by im-
job but not another and then consider the pros and cons of the night life of that new city. Sim- ages. Such discussions set the stage for many contemporary research programs, such
ilarly, when you consider whether or not to apply for a particular job, you weigh facts and con- as those aimed at discovering the various ways in which we can store information,
siderations about the salary, cost of living, possible promotions, skills you can learn that might which—as Berkeley argued—cannot be limited to mental images.
help you move onto a better job, and so on. Mental activity, in one form or another, is what al- Although philosophers raised many fascinating ideas and often identified key is-
lows you to play out in your head the various ramifications of such facts and considerations. sues that are still with us today, their methods simply were not up to the task of re-
How can we study mental activity? We seem to think effortlessly, and often can easily talk solving many questions about mental activity. Philosophy rests on argument (that’s
about our beliefs and desires. Perhaps you know that you want a certain type of job because why logic is taught in philosophy departments), but sometimes the available facts are
you’ve majored in that subject and focused like a laser beam on such employment ever since not sufficient to allow argument alone to answer a question. Science, unlike philos-
high school—end of story. But how can you come to realize whether a particular job situation is ophy, relies on a method that produces new facts, and by so doing allows all partic-
a good fit for your own personal circumstances? In fact, how is it that you, and not your pet dog ipants to agree on the answer to a question. The scientific study of the mind began
or cat, has the concept of a “job”? And what do you mean by the “mind”? Do you mean “con- in the late nineteenth century, which by the standards of science means that it is still
sciousness,” that is, what you are aware of? If so, then what is responsible for the presence of in its infancy.
some thoughts in consciousness but not others? Neither you, the authors, nor any other human
beings are aware of most mental activities. So how can we come to understand them?
This chapter sets the stage for our investigation, first describing the nature of theories of 1.1. In the Beginning: The Contents of Consciousness
mental activities and then looking at ways in which scientists have come to develop and We can mark the birth of the scientific study of mental activity with the establish-
evaluate such theories in detail. We specifically address four questions: ment of the first modern psychology laboratory in 1879, in Leipzig, Germany. The
1. How did the field of cognitive psychology arise? head of that laboratory was Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), who focused on under-
2. What is a scientific theory of cognition, and what roles does knowledge about the standing the nature of consciousness (Figure 1). Wundt’s guiding idea was that the
brain play in such theories? contents of consciousness—the things we are aware of—can be approached by anal-
ogy to the way chemists approach the structure of molecules: (1) by characterizing
3. What are the major structures of the brain, and what roles do they play in our skills
basic sensations (such as feeling heat or cold, or seeing red or blue) and feelings (such
and abilities?
as fear and love), and (2) by finding the rules whereby such elements are combined
4. What methods are used to study cognition? (such as the ways simple sensations are combined to form the perception of seeing
an entire object, with its shape, texture, and color). An American student of Wundt,
Edward Titchener (1867–1927), extended this approach to cover not only sensa-
1. A BRIEF HISTORY: HOW WE GOT HERE tions and feelings but all mental activity.
The early psychologists of Wundt’s school made at least two major contribu-
Most of the topics in this chapter, in one guise or another, are old hat for philosophers, tions. First, they showed that mental activity can be broken down into more basic
who have picked over numerous and varied theories of the mind for well over operations (such as the perception of color, shape, and location); this strategy of “di-
two thousand years. For example, the Greek philosopher Plato (427–347 B.C.) be- vide and conquer” has withstood the test of time. Second, they developed objective
lieved that memories are like etchings on a wax tablet—and that people differ in the methods for assessing mental activity, such as measuring the amount of time people
hardness and purity of the “wax,” which would explain why some people have need to make certain decisions.
better memories than others. This notion is interesting in part because there is no However, these scientists also relied heavily on introspection, the process of in-
clear-cut distinction between the physical substance (the wax) and its function (to ternal perception, that is, looking within oneself to assess one’s mental activity. To
 How the Brain Gives Rise to the Mind How the Brain Gives Rise to the Mind

as those occurring in your head as you understand these words, are unconscious—they
are not accompanied by mental images. Kulpe and his colleagues found, for example,
that when participants were asked to heft two weights and decide which was the heav-
ier, they could do this, but they had no idea how they reached their decisions. Partici-
pants reported that they had kinesthetic images of the weights (that is, they had the
“feeling” of lifting them), but the decision process itself left no trail in consciousness.
Similarly, you will be aware of your decision to apply for a particular job and not to
apply for others, but you may not be aware of just how you made that decision.

1.2. Psychology in the World

At about the same time that Wundt’s laboratory was up and running, another approach
to scientific psychology was developed, primarily in America, by William James
(1842–1910). These “functionalist” psychologists, as they became known, focused not
on the nature of mental activity, but rather on the functions of specific mental activities
in the world. The idea was that certain practices or approaches are better suited than
others to accomplishing certain tasks, and that we should change our thoughts and be-
havior as we discover those that are increasingly “better adapted” to our environment.
For example, if you discover that you learn better by listening to lectures than by read-
ing the text, you should be sure to attend all the lectures. But more than that, you
should note what it is about lectures (the chance to ask questions? the visual aids?) that
engages you and try to select courses in which the lectures have those characteristics.
The functionalist approach produced firm foundations for future studies. In par-
ticular, in proposing theories of the functions of behaviors and mental activities, it re-
lied in large part on ideas about evolution proposed by Charles Darwin—and this
FIGURE 1 Wilhelm Wundt (standing, with gray beard) and colleagues evolutionary perspective has flourished (e.g., Pinker, 1997, 2002). Conceiving of men-
The first psychology laboratories focused on understanding the nature of mental activity, but used in- tal activities and behavior in an evolutionary context has led researchers to study ani-
trospection in ways that later proved unreliable. mal behavior, which has continued to be a valuable source of insights into some mental
(Archives of the History of American Psychology—The University of Akron.) functions, especially with regard to their relationship to the brain (Hauser, 1996).

experience introspection, try to answer this question: What shape are a cat’s ears?
1.3. Behaviorism: Reaction against the Unobservable
Most people report that they visualize the animal’s head and “look” at its ears. Did
you have this experience? Not everyone does. What can we conclude when people The early psychologists sensibly tried to model their new science on the success sto-
disagree about their introspections? And now consider, what color were the ears, ries of the day, the methods of physics, chemistry, and biology. But different psy-
what texture? Were these characteristics present in your mental image? Are you sure? chologists took different lessons from the successes of other sciences, and some
What do we do when people who report on their own mental activity aren’t certain? declared that psychology should not attempt to understand hidden mental events but
Wundt trained observers to be sensitive to their reactions to stimuli, noticing sub- rather should focus purely on the immediately observable: stimuli, responses, and
tle changes in the duration, quality, or intensity when stimuli were changed slightly the consequences of those responses (Figure 2). This was the central doctrine of the
(for example, having a different shade of color or tone). Nevertheless, this reliance on behaviorists, who avoided discussion of mental activity. Behaviorist theories spec-
introspective reports turned out to be their Achilles’ heel; no amount of training could ify ways in which stimuli lead to responses, and ways in which the consequences
solve another difficulty. Oswald Kulpe (1862–1915), another German philosopher- of responses set up associations between stimuli and responses. Some of the behav-
scientist, demonstrated that mental images do not always accompany mental activity. iorists, among them Clark L. Hull (1884–1952), were willing to propose internal
A mental image is signaled by the experience of perceiving when the appropriate sen- events that are inferred directly from behavior, such as motivation, even though
sory input is absent; a mental image creates the experience of “seeing with the mind’s these events were not themselves immediately observable. However, many later be-
eye” (or “hearing with the mind’s ear,” and so on). Some types of mental activity, such haviorists, notably B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) and his followers, went so far as to
 How the Brain Gives Rise to the Mind How the Brain Gives Rise to the Mind

This new approach, developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was directly tied to
the development of the computer (Gardner, 1985) and so dominated the field that
this period of transition is now known as the cognitive revolution. The behaviorists
had simply described stimulus–response–consequences relations. Now researchers
seized on the computer as a model for the way in which human mental activity takes
place; the computer was a tool that allowed researchers to specify the internal
mechanisms that produce behavior. Psychologist/computer scientists Herbert A.
Simon and Alan Newell and linguist Noam Chomsky played a central role in this
revolution, providing examples of how progress could be achieved by comparing the
mind to a computing machine (Figure 3).
The cognitive revolution blossomed when researchers developed new methods
to test predictions from computational models, which often specified the order in
which specific mental activities purportedly take place. These methods were an im-
portant part of the cognitive revolution because they allowed mental activity to be
studied more objectively than did introspection, thereby allowing many researchers

FIGURE 2 Observing rat behavior

Behavioral methods, if not the theory that initially led to their pursuit, have proved important to the
study of cognition.
(Photograph by Richard Wood. Courtesy of Index Stock Imagery, Inc. Royalty Free.)

reject absolutely all discussion of internal events. In all cases, however, the approach of
the behaviorists had severe limits; in fact, it simply could not explain the most
interesting human behaviors, notably language (Chomsky, 1957, 1959). Behaviorism
also failed to provide insights into the nature of perception, memory, decision making.
Nevertheless, the behaviorists contributed a host of rigorous experimental tech-
niques that have since been put to good use in the study of cognition. In addition, the
behaviorists made many discoveries, particularly about the nature of learning, that now
must be explained by all theories in psychology. Moreover, behaviorist approaches led
to sophisticated views of how animals use information to make choices, which in turn
have inspired much contemporary work (e.g., Grafen, 2002; Herrnstein, 1990).

1.4. The Cognitive Revolution

Today the study of mental activity is again respectable. As the limitations of behav-
iorism became widely appreciated, researchers became open to other approaches—
but this backlash against behaviorism would have had much less of an effect if not FIGURE 3 BINAC, the Binary Automatic Computer, developed in 1949
for key technological changes, which led to a new way to envision mental activity. Computer technology has evolved so quickly that complex models of mental activity can now be
programmed into an ordinary desktop machine.
(Courtesy of Corbis/Bettmann.)
 How the Brain Gives Rise to the Mind

to move beyond behaviorism without giving up a desire for empiricism, the discov-
ery of new facts via systematic observation.
One reason why the computer was so important as a model is that it demon-
strated, once and for all, why researchers need to think about internal events, not
just observable stimuli, responses, and consequences of responses. For example,
imagine that your word-processing program has started printing EVERYTHING
YOU TYPE IN UPPERCASE. What do you do? First, you would probably look to
see if the shift key is stuck. Any good behaviorist would approve of this: you are
looking at stimuli and responses. But say it isn’t stuck. Now what? Now you suspect
that something has gone wrong inside. For some reason, the key presses aren’t being
interpreted correctly. To fix the problem, you must examine the program itself to see
exactly what it is doing. Studying stimuli and responses is only the beginning; a true
understanding of what’s going on, in people and in computers, requires going inside,
looking at the mechanism that underlies what you can observe directly.
Finally, in recent years biology has come to be a major part of the mix. To see
why, we need to consider the nature of mental activity in more detail, to which we
turn in the following section.

Comprehension Check: ¸
1. What are the differences between behaviorism and the cognitive approach?
2. Why did the “cognitive revolution” occur?

2. UNDERSTANDING THE MIND:

THE FORM OF THEORIES OF COGNITION
The cognitive revolution led to a detailed conception of the form of a theory of men-
tal activity, but to say that mental activities are like computer programs is a leap.
Consider the machines that run computer programs versus the “machine” that pro-
duces mental activity—that is, the brain. Certainly, computers and brains look very
different and are composed of different materials. Moreover, computer programs are
separate from the computers that run them; the same program can run on many dif-
ferent machines. But the mental activities taking place in your head right now are
yours and yours alone. Why should we assume that programs for computers have
anything to do with mental activities produced by brains? Clearly the analogy is re-
stricted to only certain aspects of computer programs. But which ones?

2.1. Mind and Brain

The distinction between a computer’s software—its programs—and its hardware is a
good first step because it focuses us on how computers operate, not simply on their
physical natures. But the idea that mental activity is like software and the brain itself is
like hardware isn’t quite right. If a computer program is useful, it sometimes is con-
verted into a chip and thus “becomes” a piece of hardware. Once converted, what used
to be a program (that is, the instructions to the computer) is now etched as physical
Introduction to
Cognitive Psychology 1 SOME QUESTIONS
WE WILL CONSIDER
◗ How is cognitive psychology
relevant to everyday experience?
(5)
I t’s been 16 years since the accident. Sam, lying in the long-term care facility, has been in a
coma ever since. Observing Sam, who shows no signs of awareness or ability to commu-
nicate, it seems reasonable to conclude that “there’s nobody in there.” But is that true? Does
the fact that Sam hasn’t moved or responded to stimulation mean he doesn’t have a mind?
Is there any probability that his eyes, which appear to be vacantly staring into space, could
◗ How is it possible to study the be perceiving, and that these perceptions might be accompanied by thoughts?
Cognitive Psychology: Studying the Mind Flow Diagrams for Computers inner workings of the mind
These are the questions Lorina Naci and coworkers (2014, 2015) were asking when
Flow Diagrams for the Mind when we can’t really see the
What Is the Mind? they placed Sam in a brain scanner that measured increases and decreases in electrical
mind directly? (7)
Studying the Mind: Early Work in Cognitive Psychology Conferences on Artificial Intelligence and Information Theory
◗ What was the cognitive activity throughout his brain, and then showed him an 8-minute excerpt from an Alfred
Donders’s Pioneering Experiment: How Long Does It The Cognitive “Revolution” Took a While
revolution? (13) Hitchcock television program called “Bang. You’re Dead.” At the beginning, a 5-year-old
Take to Make a Decision?
The Evolution of Cognitive Psychology boy is playing with his toy gun. But then he discovers a real gun and some bullets in his
Wundt’s Psychology Laboratory: Structuralism and
Analytic Introspection What Neisser Wrote uncle’s suitcase. The boy loads one bullet into the gun, spins the chamber that contains the
Ebbinghaus’s Memory Experiment: What Is the Time Studying Higher Mental Processes single bullet, and shoves the weapon into his toy-gun holster.
Course of Forgetting? Studying the Physiology of Cognition As the boy roams the neighborhood, pointing the gun at a number of different people,
William James’s Principles of Psychology the tension mounts. He points the gun at someone! He pulls the trigger! The gun doesn’t
New Perspectives on Behavior
Abandoning the Study of the Mind fire because the single bullet isn’t in the firing chamber. But thoughts such as “Will the gun
Watson Founds Behaviorism Something to Consider: Learning from This Book go off ?” and “Will someone be killed?” are racing through the viewers’ minds, knowing
➤ TEST YOURSELF 1.1
Skinner’s Operant Conditioning that the boy’s “play” could, at any moment, turn tragic. (There was a reason Hitchcock was
Setting the Stage for the Reemergence of the Mind in called “the master of suspense.”) In the last scene, back at the boy’s house, the boy’s father,
Psychology realizing that he is pointing a real gun, lunges toward the boy. The gun fires! A mirror
shatters. Luckily, no one is hurt. The boy’s father grabs the gun, and the audience breathes
The Rebirth of the Study of the Mind
Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts a sigh of relief.

Introduction of the Digital Computer When this film was shown to healthy participants in the scanner, their brain activ-
CHAPTER SUMMARY ity increased and decreased at the same time for all of the participants, with changes in
THINK ABOUT IT brain activity being linked to what was happening in the movie. Activity was highest at
KEY TERMS suspenseful moments in the film, such as when the child was loading the gun or pointing
it at someone. So the viewer’s brains weren’t just responding to the images on the screen;
COGLAB EXPERIMENTS
their brain activity was being driven both by the images and by the movie’s plot. And—
here’s the important point—to understand the plot, it is necessary to understand things
that weren’t specifically presented in the movie, like “guns are dangerous when loaded,”
“guns can kill people,” and “a 5-year-old boy may not be aware that he could accidentally
kill someone.”
So, how did Sam’s brain respond to the movie? Amazingly, his response was the
same as the healthy participants’ responses: brain activity increased during periods of
tension and decreased when danger wasn’t imminent. This indicates that Sam was not
only seeing the images and hearing the soundtrack, but that he was reacting to the
movie’s plot! His brain activity therefore indicated that Sam was consciously aware;
3 4 that “someone was in there.”

Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
 Cognitive Psychology : Studying the Mind 5 6 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

This story about Sam, who appears to have a mental life despite appearances to the contrary, has are related to the following definition of the mind: The mind creates and controls mental
an important message as we embark on the adventure of understanding the mind. Perhaps the functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, and
most important message is that the mind is hidden from view. Sam is an extreme case because reasoning. This definition reflects the mind’s central role in determining our various mental
he can’t move or talk, but you will see that the “normal” mind also holds many secrets. Just as we abilities, which are reflected in the chapter titles in this book.
can’t know exactly what Sam is experiencing, we don’t know exactly what other people are expe- Another definition, which focuses on how the mind operates, is this: The mind is a
riencing, even though they are able to tell us about their thoughts and observations. system that creates representations of the world so that we can act within it to achieve our goals.
And although you may be aware of your own thoughts and observations, you are un- This definition reflects the mind’s importance for functioning and survival, and also pro-
aware of most of what’s happening in your mind. This means that as you understand what vides the beginnings of a description of how the mind achieves these ends. The idea of
you are reading right now, there are hidden processes operating within your mind, beneath creating representations is something we will return to throughout this book.
your awareness, that make this understanding possible. These two definitions of the mind are not incompatible. The first one indicates dif-
As you read this book, you will see how research has revealed many of these secret aspects ferent types of cognition—the mental processes, such as perception, attention, and mem-
of the mind’s operation. This is no trivial thing, because your mind not only makes it possible ory, which is what the mind creates. The second definition indicates something about how
for you to read this text and understand the plots of movies, but it is responsible for who you the mind operates (it creates representations) and its function (it enables us to act and to
are and what you do. It creates your thoughts, perceptions, desires, emotions, memories, lan- achieve goals). It is no coincidence that all of the cognitions in the first definition play im-
guage, and physical actions. It guides your decision making and problem solving. It has been portant roles in acting to achieve goals.
compared to a computer, although your brain outperforms your smartphone, laptop, or even Statements 4, 5, and 6 emphasize the mind’s importance for normal functioning, and
a powerful supercomputer on many tasks. And, of course, your mind does something else that the amazing abilities of the mind. The mind is something to be used, and the products of
computers can’t even dream of (if only they could dream!): it creates your consciousness of some people’s minds are considered extraordinary. But one of the messages of this book is
what’s out there, what’s going on with your body, and, simply, what it’s like to be you! that the idea that the mind is amazing is not reserved for “extraordinary” minds, because
In this book, we will be describing what the mind is, what it does, and how it does it. even the most “routine” things—recognizing a person, having a conversation, or deciding
The first step in doing this is to look at some of the things the mind does. As we do this, we what courses to take next semester—become amazing in themselves when we consider the
will see that the mind is multifaceted, involving multiple functions and mechanisms. We properties of the mind that enable us to achieve these familiar activities.
begin this chapter by looking at the multifaceted nature of the mind and then describing Cognitive psychology is the study of mental processes, which includes determining
some of the history behind the field of cognitive psychology. the characteristics and properties of the mind and how it operates. Our goals in the rest of
this chapter are to describe how the field of cognitive psychology evolved from its early be-
ginnings to where it is today, and to begin describing how cognitive psychologists approach
Cognitive Psychology: Studying the Mind the scientific study of the mind.
You may have noticed that we have been using the term mind without precisely defining it.
As we will see, mind, like other concepts in psychology such as intelligence or emotion, can Studying the Mind: Early Work in Cognitive Psychology
be thought of in a number of different ways.
In the 1800s, ideas about the mind were dominated by the belief that it is not possible to study
the mind. One reason given for this belief was that it is not possible for the mind to study itself,
What Is the Mind? but there were other reasons as well, including the idea that the properties of the mind simply
One way to approach the question “What is the mind?” is to consider how “mind” is used cannot be measured. Nonetheless, some researchers defied the common wisdom and decided to
in everyday conversation. Here are a few examples: study the mind anyway. One of these people was the Dutch physiologist Franciscus Donders,
who in 1868, 11 years before the founding of the first laboratory of scientific psychology, did
1. “He was able to call to mind what he was doing on the day of the accident.”
one of the first experiments that today would be called a cognitive psychology experiment. (It
(The mind as involved in memory)
is important to note that the term cognitive psychology was not coined until 1967, but the early
2. “If you put your mind to it, I’m sure you can solve that math problem.” (The mind experiments we are going to describe qualify as cognitive psychology experiments.)
as problem-solver)
3. “I haven’t made up my mind yet” or “I’m of two minds about this.” (The mind as Donders’s Pioneering Experiment: How Long Does It Take to Make a Decision?
used to make decisions or consider possibilities) Donders was interested in determining how long it takes for a person to make a decision.
4. “He is of sound mind and body” or “When he talks about his encounter with aliens, He determined this by measuring reaction time—how long it takes to respond to presen-
it sounds like he is out of his mind.” (A healthy mind being associated with normal tation of a stimulus. He used two measures of reaction time. He measured simple reaction
functioning, a nonfunctioning mind with abnormal functioning) time by asking his participants to push a button as rapidly as possible when they saw a light
go on (Figure 1.1a). He measured choice reaction time by using two lights and asking his
5. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” (The mind as valuable, something that should
participants to push the left button when they saw the left light go on and the right button
be used)
when they saw the right light go on (Figure 1.1b).
6. “He has a brilliant mind.” (Used to describe people who are particularly intelligent The steps that occur in the simple reaction time task are shown in Figure 1.2a. Present-
or creative) ing the stimulus (the light flashes) causes a mental response (perceiving the light), which
These statements tell us some important things about what the mind is. Statements 1, 2, leads to a behavioral response (pushing the button). The reaction time (dashed line) is the
and 3, which highlight the mind’s role in memory, problem solving, and making decisions, time between the presentation of the stimulus and the behavioral response.

Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
 Cognitive Psychology : Studying the Mind 7 8 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

in Germany. Wundt’s approach, which dominated psychology in the late 1800s and early
1900s, was called structuralism. According to structuralism, our overall experience is de-
termined by combining basic elements of experience the structuralists called sensations.
Thus, just as chemistry developed a periodic table of the elements, which combine to create
molecules, Wundt wanted to create a “periodic table of the mind,” which would include all
of the basic sensations involved in creating experience.
Wundt thought he could achieve this scientific description of the components of expe-
rience by using analytic introspection, a technique in which trained participants described
their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli. Analytic introspection re-
quired extensive training because the participants’ goal was to describe their experience in
(a) Press J when light goes on. (b) Press J for left light, K for right. terms of elementary mental elements. For example, in one experiment, Wundt asked par-
ticipants to describe their experience of hearing a five-note chord played on the piano. One
➤ Figure 1.1 A modern version of Donders’s (1868) reaction time experiment: (a) the of the questions Wundt hoped to answer was whether his participants were able to hear
simple reaction time task and (b) the choice reaction time task. In the simple reaction each of the individual notes that made up the chord. As we will see when we consider per-
time task, the participant pushes the J key when the light goes on. In the choice ception in Chapter 3, structuralism was not a fruitful approach and so was abandoned in
reaction time task, the participant pushes the J key if the left light goes on and the the early 1900s. Nonetheless, Wundt made a substantial contribution to psychology by his
K key if the right light goes on. The purpose of Donders’s experiment was to determine commitment to studying behavior and the mind under controlled conditions. In addition,
how much time it took to decide which key to press in the choice reaction time task.
he trained many PhDs who established psychology departments at other universities, in-
cluding many in the United States.

But remember that Donders was interested in determining how long it took for a per- Ebbinghaus’s Memory Experiment: What Is the Time Course of Forgetting?
son to make a decision. The choice reaction time task added decisions by requiring partici- Meanwhile, 120 miles from Leipzig, at the University of Berlin, German psychologist
pants to first decide whether the left or right light was illuminated and then which button Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885/1913) was using another approach to measuring the prop-
to push. The diagram for this task, in Figure 1.2b, changes the mental response to “Perceive erties of the mind. Ebbinghaus was interested in determining the nature of memory and
left light” and “Decide which button to push.” Donders reasoned that the difference in forgetting—specifically, how rapidly information that is learned is lost over time. Rather
reaction time between the simple and choice conditions would indicate how long it took to than using Wundt’s method of analytic introspection, Ebbinghaus used a quantitative
make the decision that led to pushing the correct button. Because the choice reaction time method for measuring memory. Using himself as the participant, he repeated lists of
took one-tenth of a second longer than simple reaction time, Donders concluded that the 13 nonsense syllables such as DAX, QEH, LUH, and ZIF to himself one at a time at a con-
decision-making process took one-tenth of a second. stant rate. He used nonsense syllables so that his memory would not be influenced by the
Donders’s experiment is important, both because it was one of the first cognitive psy- meaning of a particular word.
chology experiments and because it illustrates something extremely significant about studying Ebbinghaus determined how long it took to learn a list for the first time. He then waited
the mind: Mental responses (perceiving the light for a specific amount of time (the delay) and then determined how long it took to relearn
and deciding which button to push, in this exam- the list. Because forgetting had occurred during the delay, Ebbinghaus made errors when he
ple) cannot be measured directly, but must be in- Light flashes Left light flashes Stimulus first tried to remember the list. But because he had retained
ferred from behavior. We can see why this is so by something from his original learning, he relearned the list
noting the dashed lines in Figure 1.2. These lines Savings = 600 Savings = 350 Savings = 270 more rapidly than when he had learned it for the first time.
indicate that when Donders measured reaction 1,000 Ebbinghaus used a measure called savings, calculated as
time, he was measuring the relationship between follows, to determine how much was forgotten after a par-

Time (sec)
650 730
presentation of the stimulus and the participant’s Reaction “Perceive left light” and Mental ticular delay: Savings 5 (Original time to learn the list) 2
“Perceive the light” 400
response. He did not measure mental responses time
“Decide which button to push”
response (Time to relearn the list after the delay). Thus, if it took 1,000
directly, but inferred how long they took from the seconds to learn the list the first time and 400 seconds to re-
reaction times. The fact that mental responses can- 0 19 0 1 0 6 learn the list after the delay, the savings would be 1,000 2
minutes day days
not be measured directly, but must be inferred from 400 5 600 seconds. Figure 1.3, which represents original
observing behavior, is a principle that holds not (a) (b) (c)
learning and relearning after three different delays, shows
only for Donders’s experiment but for all research Press button Press left button
Behavioral that longer delays result in smaller savings.
response
in cognitive psychology. (a) (b)
➤ Figure 1.3 Calculating the savings score in Ebbinghaus’s According to Ebbinghaus, this reduction in savings pro-
experiment. In this example, it took 1,000 seconds to learn the list vided a measure of forgetting, with smaller savings mean-
of nonsense syllables for the first time. This is indicated by the lines
Wundt’s Psychology Laboratory: Structur- ing more forgetting. Thus, the plot of percent savings
➤ Figure 1.2 Sequence of events between presentation of the stimulus and the at 0. The time needed to relearn the list at delays of (a) 19 minutes,
alism and Analytic Introspection In 1879, behavioral response in Donders’s experiments: (a) simple reaction time task (b) 1 day, and (c) 6 days are indicated by the line to the right of versus time in Figure 1.4, called a savings curve, shows
11 years after Donders’s reaction time experiment, and (b) choice reaction time task. The dashed line indicates that Donders the 0 line. The red arrows indicate the savings score for each delay. that memory drops rapidly for the first 2 days after the
Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory of measured reaction time—the time between presentation of the light and the Notice that savings decrease for longer delays. This decrease in initial learning and then levels off. This curve was important
scientific psychology at the University of Leipzig participant’s response. savings provides a measure of forgetting. because it demonstrated that memory could be quantified and

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 Cognitive Psychology : Studying the Mind 9 10 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

that functions like the savings curve could be used to describe a property of
the mind—in this case, the ability to retain information. Notice that although
60 19 minutes Abandoning the Study of the Mind
Ebbinghaus’s savings method was very different from Donders’s reaction time 50 Many early departments of psychology conducted research in the tradition of Wundt’s
method, both measured behavior to determine a property of the mind. 1 hour laboratory, using analytic introspection to analyze mental processes. This emphasis on
William James’s Principles of Psychology William James, one of the 40 studying the mind was to change, however, because of the efforts of John Watson, who

Percent savings
8.75 hours
early American psychologists (although not a student of Wundt’s), taught 1 day
received his PhD in psychology in 1904 from the University of Chicago.
Harvard’s first psychology course and made significant observations about 30 2 days
31 days
the mind in his textbook, Principles of Psychology (1890). James’s observa- 6 days Watson Founds Behaviorism
tions were based not on the results of experiments but on observations about 20
the operation of his own mind. One of the best known of James’s observa- The story of how John Watson founded an approach to psychology called behaviorism is
tions is the following, on the nature of attention: 10 well known to introductory psychology students. We will briefly review it here because of
its importance to the history of cognitive psychology.
Millions of items . . . are present to my senses which never properly 0 As a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Watson became dissatisfied with
enter my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. 0 Time the method of analytic introspection. His problems with this method were (1) it produced
My experience is what I agree to attend to. . . . Everyone knows what extremely variable results from person to person, and (2) these results were difficult to ver-
attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid ➤ Figure 1.4 Ebbinghaus’s savings curve. Ebbinghaus ify because they were interpreted in terms of invisible inner mental processes. In response to
form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects considered the percent savings to be a measure of what he perceived to be deficiencies in analytic introspection, Watson proposed a new ap-
or trains of thought. . . . It implies withdrawal from some things in the amount remembered, so he plotted this versus
proach called behaviorism. One of Watson’s papers, “Psychology As the Behaviorist Views
the time between initial learning and testing. The
order to deal effectively with others. It,” set forth the goals of this approach to psychology in this famous quote:
decrease in savings (remembering) with increasing
The observation that paying attention to one thing involves with- delays indicates that forgetting occurs rapidly Psychology as the Behaviorist sees it is a purely objective, experimental branch of natu-
drawing from other things still rings true today and has been the topic of over the first 2 days and then occurs more slowly ral science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection
many modern studies of attention. As impressive as the accuracy of James’s after that.
forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data depen-
(Source: Based on data from Ebbinghaus, 1885/1913.)
observations, so too was the range of cognitive topics he considered, which dent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of
included thinking, consciousness, attention, memory, perception, imagi- consciousness. . . . What we need to do is start work upon psychology making behav-
nation, and reasoning. ior, not consciousness, the objective point of our attack. (Watson, 1913, pp. 158, 176;
The founding of the first laboratory of psychology by Wundt, the quantitative experi- emphasis added)
ments of Donders and Ebbinghaus, and the perceptive observations of James provided what
seemed to be a promising start to the study of the mind (Table 1.1). However, research on This passage makes two key points: (1) Watson rejects introspection as a method, and
the mind was soon to be curtailed, largely because of events early in the 20th century that (2) observable behavior, not consciousness (which would involve unobservable processes
shifted the focus of psychology away from the study of the mind and mental processes. One such as thinking, emotions, and reasoning), is the main topic of study. In other words,
of the major forces that caused psychology to reject the study of mental processes was a Watson wanted to restrict psychology to behavioral data, such as Donders’s reaction times,
negative reaction to Wundt’s technique of analytic introspection. and rejected the idea of going beyond those data to draw conclusions about unobservable
mental events. Watson eliminated the mind as a topic for investigation by proclaiming that
“psychology . . . need no longer delude itself into thinking that it is making mental states
TABLE 1.1 the object of observation” (p. 163). Watson’s goal was to replace the mind as a topic of
Early Pioneers in Cognitive Psychology study in psychology with the study of directly observable behavior. As behaviorism became
the dominant force in American psychology, psychologists’ attention shifted from asking
Person Procedure Results and Conclusions Contribution
“What does behavior tell us about the mind?” to “What is the relation between stimuli in
Donders Simple reaction time Choice reaction time takes First cognitive the environment and behavior?”
(1868) versus choice reaction 1/10 seconds longer; psychology Watson’s most famous experiment was the “Little Albert” experiment, in which Wat-
time therefore, it takes 1/10 experiment
son and Rosalie Rayner (1920) subjected Albert, a 9-month-old-boy, to a loud noise every
second to make a decision
time a rat (which Albert had originally liked) came close to the child. After a few pairings
Wundt Analytic introspection No reliable results Established the first of the noise with the rat, Albert reacted to the rat by crawling away as rapidly as possible.
(1879) laboratory of scientific Watson’s ideas are associated with classical conditioning—how pairing one stimulus
psychology
(such as the loud noise presented to Albert) with another, previously neutral stimulus (such
Ebbinghaus Savings method to Forgetting occurs rapidly Quantitative as the rat) causes changes in the response to the neutral stimulus. Watson’s inspiration for
(1885) measure forgetting in the first 1 to 2 days after measurement of mental his experiment was Ivan Pavlov’s research, begun in the 1890s, that demonstrated classical
original learning processes
conditioning in dogs. In these experiments (Figure 1.5), Pavlov’s pairing of food (which
James No experiments; Descriptions of a wide range First psychology made the dog salivate) with a bell (the initially neutral stimulus) caused the dog to salivate
(1890) reported observations of of experiences textbook; some of his to the sound of the bell (Pavlov, 1927).
his own experience observations are still Watson used classical conditioning to argue that behavior can be analyzed without
valid today
any reference to the mind. For Watson, what was going on inside Albert’s head (or inside

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 Abandoning the Study of the Mind 11 12 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Pavlov’s dog’s head!), either physiologically or men-

C C C
tally, was irrelevant. He cared only about how pairing
one stimulus with another affected behavior.

Skinner’s Operant Conditioning

D B D B D B
In the midst of behaviorism’s dominance of Amer-
ican psychology, B. F. Skinner, who received his
PhD from Harvard in 1931, provided another Food Food
tool for studying the relationship between stim-
ulus and response, which ensured that this ap- A A A
proach would dominate psychology for decades to (a) Explore maze (b) Turn right for food (c) Turn left for food
come. Skinner introduced operant conditioning,
which focused on how behavior is strengthened ➤ Figure 1.5 In Pavlov’s famous experiment, he paired ringing a bell with ➤ Figure 1.7 Maze used by Tolman. (a) The rat initially explores the maze. (b) The rat learns
by the presentation of positive reinforcers, such as presentation of food. Initially, presentation of the food caused the dog to turn right to obtain food at B when it starts at A. (c) When placed at C, the rat turns left
food or social approval (or withdrawal of negative to salivate, but after a number of pairings of bell and food, the bell alone to reach the food at B. In this experiment, precautions are taken to prevent the rat from
caused salivation. This principle of learning by pairing, which came to
reinforcers, such as a shock or social rejection). knowing where the food is based on cues such as smell.
be called classical conditioning, was the basis of Watson’s “Little Albert”
For example, Skinner showed that reinforcing experiment.
a rat with food for pressing a bar maintained or
increased the rat’s rate of bar pressing. Like Watson, Skinner was not interested in what In one of his experiments, Tolman (1938) placed a rat in a maze like the one in
was happening in the mind, but focused solely on determining how behavior was con- Figure 1.7. Initially, the rat explored the maze, running up and down each of the alleys
trolled by stimuli (Skinner, 1938). (Figure 1.7a). After this initial period of exploration, the rat was placed at point A and
The idea that behavior can be understood by studying stimulus–response relation- food was placed at point B, and the rat quickly learned to turn right at the intersection to
ships influenced an entire generation of psychologists and dominated psychology in the obtain the food. This is exactly what the behaviorists would predict, because turning right
United States from the 1940s through the 1960s. Psychologists applied the techniques was rewarded with food (Figure 1.7b). However, when Tolman (after taking precautions
of classical and operant conditioning to classroom teaching, treating psychological dis- to be sure the rat couldn’t determine the location of the food based on smell) placed the rat
orders, and testing the effects of drugs on animals. Figure 1.6 is a time line showing the at point C, something interesting happened. The rat turned left at the intersection to reach
initial studies of the mind and the rise of behaviorism. But even as behaviorism was dom- the food at point B (Figure 1.7c). Tolman’s explanation of this result was that when the rat
inating psychology, events were occurring that were to lead to the rebirth of the study of initially experienced the maze it was developing a cognitive map—a conception within the
the mind. rat’s mind of the maze’s layout (Tolman, 1948). Thus, even though the rat had previously
been rewarded for turning right, its mental map indicated that when starting from the new
Setting the Stage for the Reemergence of the Mind in Psychology location it needed to turn left to reach the food. Tolman’s use of the word cognitive, and the
idea that something other than stimulus–response connections might be occurring in the
Although behaviorism dominated American psychology for many decades, some re- rat’s mind, placed Tolman outside of mainstream behaviorism.
searchers were not toeing the strict behaviorist line. One of these researchers was Edward Other researchers were aware of Tolman’s work, but for most American psychologists
Chace Tolman. Tolman, who from 1918 to 1954 was at the University of California at in the 1940s, the use of the term cognitive was difficult to accept because it violated the
Berkeley, called himself a behaviorist because his focus was on measuring behavior. But in behaviorists’ idea that internal processes, such as thinking or maps in the head, were not
reality, he was one of the early cognitive psychologists, because he used behavior to infer acceptable topics to study. It wasn’t until about a decade after Tolman introduced the idea
mental processes. of cognitive maps that developments occurred that led to a resurgence of the mind in psy-
chology. Ironically, one of these developments was the publication, in 1957, of a book by
B. F. Skinner titled Verbal Behavior.
In his book, Skinner argued that children learn language through operant condition-
1868 1879 1885 1890 1913 1938 ing. According to this idea, children imitate speech that they hear, and repeat correct speech
because it is rewarded. But in 1959, Noam Chomsky, a linguist from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, published a scathing review of Skinner’s book, in which he pointed
out that children say many sentences that have never been rewarded by parents (“I hate you,
Donders: Wundt: Ebbinghaus: James: Watson: Skinner: Mommy,” for example), and that during the normal course of language development, they
Reaction time Scientific Forgetting Principles of Behaviorism Operant
psychology curve Psychology conditioning go through a stage in which they use incorrect grammar, such as “the boy hitted the ball,”
laboratory even though this incorrect grammar may never have been reinforced.
Chomsky saw language development as being determined not by imitation or rein-
➤ Figure 1.6 Time line showing early experiments studying the mind in the 1800s and the forcement, but by an inborn biological program that holds across cultures. Chomsky’s
rise of behaviorism in the 1900s. idea that language is a product of the way the mind is constructed, rather than a result of

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 The Rebirth of the Study of the Mind 13 14 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

reinforcement, led psychologists to reconsider the idea that language and other complex Introduction of the Digital Computer
behaviors, such as problem solving and reasoning, can be explained by operant conditioning.
Instead, they began to realize that to understand complex cognitive behaviors, it is necessary The first digital computers, developed in the late 1940s, were huge machines that took up
not only to measure observable behavior but also to consider what this behavior tells us entire buildings, but in 1954 IBM introduced a computer that was available to the general
about how the mind works. public. These computers were still extremely large compared to the laptops of today, but they
found their way into university research laboratories, where they were used both to analyze
data and, most important for our purposes, to suggest a new way of thinking about the mind.
The Rebirth of the Study of the Mind Flow Diagrams for Computers One of the characteristics of computers that captured
The decade of the 1950s is generally recognized as the beginning of the cognitive the attention of psychologists in the 1950s was that they processed information in stages, as
revolution—a shift in psychology from the behaviorist’s focus on stimulus–response illustrated in Figure 1.8a. In this diagram, information is first received by an “input proces-
relationships to an approach whose main thrust was to understand the operation of the sor.” It is then stored in a “memory unit” before it is processed by an “arithmetic unit,” which
mind. Even before Chomsky’s critique of Skinner’s book, other events were happening that then creates the computer’s output. Using this stage approach as their inspiration, some
signaled a shift away from focusing only on behavior and toward studying how the mind psychologists proposed the information-processing approach to studying the mind—an
operates. But before we describe the events that began the cognitive revolution, let’s con- approach that traces sequences of mental operations involved in cognition. According to
sider the following question: What is a revolution—and specifically a scientific revolution? the information-processing approach, the operation of the mind can be described as occur-
One answer to this question can be found in philosopher Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) book ring in a number of stages. Applying this stage approach to the mind led psychologists to ask
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. new questions and to frame their answers to these questions in new ways. One of the first
experiments influenced by this new way of thinking about the mind involved studying how
Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts well people are able to focus their attention on some information when other information
is being presented at the same time.
Kuhn defined a scientific revolution as a shift from one paradigm to another, where a
paradigm is a system of ideas that dominate science at a particular time (Dyson, 2012). Flow Diagrams for the Mind Beginning in the 1950s, a number of researchers became
A scientific revolution, therefore, involves a paradigm shift. interested in describing how well the mind can deal with incoming information. One ques-
An example of a paradigm shift in science is the shift that occurred in physics in tion they were interested in answering followed from William James’s idea that when we
the beginning of the 20th century, with the introduction of the theory of relativity and decide to attend to one thing, we must withdraw from other things. Taking this idea as a
quantum theory. Before the 20th century, classical physics, founded by Isaac Newton starting point, British psychologist Colin Cherry (1953) presented participants with two
(1642–1727), had made great progress in describing things like how objects are affected auditory messages, one to the left ear and one to the right ear, and told them to focus their
by forces (Newton’s laws of motion) and the nature of electrical fields (Maxwell’s laws, attention on one of the messages (the attended message) and to ignore the other one (the
which described electromagnetism). The principles of classical physics did not, however, unattended message). For example, the participant might be told to attend to the left-ear
adequately describe subatomic phenomena and the relation between time and motion. message that began “As Susan drove down the road in her new car . . .” while simultaneously
For example, classical physics conceived of the flow of time as an absolute constant, which receiving, but not attending to, the right-ear message “Cognitive psychology, which is the
was the same for everyone. But in 1905, Albert Einstein, a young clerk in the Bern, Swit- study of mental processes . . .”
zerland, patent office, published his theory of relativity, which proposed that the mea- The result of this experiment, which we will describe in detail when we discuss
surement of space and time are affected by an observer’s motion, so clocks run slower attention in Chapter 4, was that when people focused on the attended message, they
when approaching the speed of light. He also proposed that there is an equivalence of could hear the sounds of the unattended message but
mass and energy, as expressed in his famous equation E = mc2 (energy equals mass times were unaware of the contents of that message. This result
the speed of light squared). Einstein’s relativity theory, along with the newly introduced led another British psychologist, Donald Broadbent
Input Input Memory Arithmetic
quantum theory, which explained the behavior of subatomic particles, marked the begin- processor unit unit Output (1958), to propose the first flow diagram of the mind
ning of modern physics. (Figure 1.8b). This diagram represents what Broadbent
Just as the paradigm shift from classical physics to modern physics provided a new way (a) believed happens in a person’s mind when directing at-
of looking at the physical world, the paradigm shift from behaviorism to the cognitive ap- tention to one stimulus in the environment. Applied
proach provided a new way to look at behavior. During the reign of behaviorism, behavior to Cherry’s attention experiment, “input” would be the
was considered an end in itself. Psychology was dominated by experiments studying how sounds of both the attended and unattended messages;
Input Filter Detector To memory
behavior is affected by rewards and punishments. Some valuable discoveries resulted from the “filter” lets through the attended message and filters
this research, including psychological therapies called “behavioral therapies,” which are still out the unattended message; and the “detector” records
(b)
in use today. But the behaviorist paradigm did not allow any consideration of the mind’s the information that gets through the filter.
role in creating behavior, so in the 1950s the new cognitive paradigm began to emerge. Applied to your experience when talking to a friend
➤ Figure 1.8 (a) Flow diagram for an early computer. (b) Flow diagram
We can’t mark the beginning of this new paradigm by the publication of a single paper, at a noisy party, the filter lets in your friend’s conversation
for Broadbent’s filter model of attention. This diagram shows many
like Einstein’s (1905) proposal of relativity theory, but rather we can note a series of events, messages entering a “filter,” which selects the message to which the
and filters out all the other conversations and noise. Thus,
which added together culminated in a new way of studying psychology. One of these person is attending for further processing by a detector and then although you might be aware that there are other people
events was the introduction of a new technology that suggested a new way of describing the transfer to short-term memory. We will describe this diagram more talking, you are not aware of detailed information such as
operation of the mind. That new technology was the digital computer. fully in Chapter 4. what the other people are talking about.

Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
 The Rebirth of the Study of the Mind 15 16 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Broadbent’s flow diagram provided a way to analyze the operation of the mind in terms of
a sequence of processing stages and proposed a model that could be tested by further experi- Skinner: Chomsky:
Verbal “A Review of B. F.
ments. You will see many more flow diagrams like this throughout this book because they have Behavior Skinner’s Verbal
become one of the standard ways of depicting the operation of the mind. But the British psy- Behavior”
chologists Cherry and Broadbent weren’t the only researchers finding new ways of studying
1948 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1967
the mind. At about the same time in the United States, researchers organized two conferences
that, taking their cue from computers, conceived of the mind as a processor of information.

Conferences on Artificial Intelligence and Information Theory Tolman: Cherry: First Dartmouth Broadbent: Neisser:
Cognitive Attention commercially and MIT Flow First cognitive
In the early 1950s, John McCarthy, a young professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College, had map experiment available conferences diagram psychology
an idea. Would it be possible, McCarthy wondered, to program computers to mimic the opera- digital book
computer
tion of the human mind? Rather than simply asking the question, McCarthy decided to organize
a conference at Dartmouth in the summer of 1956 to provide a forum for researchers to discuss
ways that computers could be programmed to carry out intelligent behavior. The title of the con- ➤ Figure 1.9 Time line showing events associated with the decline of the influence of
behaviorism (above the line) and events that led to the development of the information-
ference, Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, was the first use of the term artificial
processing approach to cognitive psychology (below the line).
intelligence. McCarthy defined the artificial intelligence approach as “making a machine behave
in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were so behaving” (McCarthy et al., 1955).
Researchers from a number of different disciplines—psychologists, mathematicians,
computer scientists, linguists, and experts in information theory—attended the conference, worth noting that the shift from Skinner’s behaviorism to the cognitive approach, which
which spanned 10 weeks. A number of people attended most of the conference, others was indeed revolutionary, occurred over a period of time. The scientists attending the con-
dropped in and out, but perhaps the two most important participants—Herb Simon and ferences in 1956 had no idea that these conferences would, years later, be seen as historic
Alan Newell from the Carnegie Institute of Technology—were hardly there at all (Boden, events in the birth of a new way of thinking about the mind or that scientific historians
2006). The reason they weren’t there is that they were busy back in Pittsburgh trying to cre- would someday call 1956 “the birthday of cognitive science” (Bechtel et al., 1998; Miller,
ate the artificial intelligence machine that McCarthy had envisioned. Simon and Newell’s 2003; Neisser, 1988). In fact, even years after these meetings, a textbook on the history
goal was to create a computer program that could create proofs for problems in logic— of psychology made no mention of the cognitive approach (Misiak & Sexton, 1966),
something that up until then had only been achieved by humans. and it wasn’t until 1967 that Ulrich Neisser published a textbook with the title Cognitive
Newell and Simon succeeded in creating the program, which they called the logic Psychology (Neisser, 1967). Figure 1.9 shows a time line of some of the events that led to the
theorist, in time to demonstrate it at the conference. What they demonstrated was rev- establishment of the field of cognitive psychology.
olutionary because the logic theorist program was able to create proofs of mathematical Neisser’s textbook, which coined the term cognitive psychology and emphasized the
theorems that involve principles of logic. This program, although primitive compared to information-processing approach to studying the mind, is, in a sense, the grandfather of
modern artificial intelligence programs, was a real “thinking machine” because it did more the book you are now reading. As often happens, each successive generation creates new
than simply process numbers—it used humanlike reasoning processes to solve problems. ways of approaching problems, and cognitive psychology has been no exception. Since the
Shortly after the Dartmouth conference, in September of the same year, another pivotal 1956 conferences and the 1967 textbook, many experiments have been carried out, new
conference was held, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Symposium on Information theories proposed, and new techniques developed; as a result, cognitive psychology, and the
Theory. This conference provided another opportunity for Newell and Simon to demon- information-processing approach to studying the mind, has become one of the dominant
strate their logic theorist program, and the attendees also heard George Miller, a Harvard approaches in psychology.
psychologist, present a version of a paper “The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two,”
which had just been published (Miller, 1956). In that paper, Miller presented the idea that
there are limits to a human’s ability to process information—that the capacity of the human
The Evolution of Cognitive Psychology
mind is limited to about seven items (for example, the length of a telephone number). We have been describing the events in the 1950s and 1960s as the cognitive revolution. But
As we will see when we discuss this idea in Chapter 5, there are ways to increase our it is important to realize that although the revolution made it acceptable to study the mind,
ability to take in and remember information (for example, we have little trouble adding the field of cognitive psychology continued to evolve in the decades that followed. One way
an area code to the seven digits of many telephone numbers). Nonetheless, Miller’s basic to appreciate how cognitive psychology has evolved from the 1950s and 1960s until today
principle that there are limits to the amount of information we can take in and remember is to look at the contents of Neisser’s (1967) book.
was an important idea, which, you might notice, was similar to the point being made by
Broadbent’s filter model at about the same time. What Neisser Wrote
We can appreciate where cognitive psychology was in the 1960s by looking at the first
The Cognitive “Revolution” Took a While cognitive psychology textbook, Ulrich Neisser’s (1967) Cognitive Psychology. The purpose
The events we have described—Cherry’s experiment, Broadbent’s filter model, and the two of this book, as Neisser states in Chapter 1, is “to provide a useful and current assessment of
conferences in 1956—represented the beginning of a shift in psychology from behaviorism the existing state of the art” (p. 9). Given this purpose, it is instructive to consider the book’s
to the study of the mind. Although we have called this shift the cognitive revolution, it is Table of Contents.

Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203 Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
 Perception

see the lights of a château. By the time you reach it and take shelter, all is dark outside, and
from your curtained room inside you have no idea what lies outside the walls. Morning

Perception comes, the curtains are thrown back, you see. . . .

These imaginary experiences, and their resolution, illustrate the essential problems of
perception and its relation to cognition. This chapter is a discussion of what perception is and
how it works. We specifically address six questions:
1. What is perception and why is it a difficult ability to understand?
2. What general principles help us to understand perception?
Learning Objectives 3. How do we put together parts to recognize objects and events?
1. What It Means to Perceive A CLOSER LOOK: Visual Feature Detectors 4. How do we recognize objects and events?
2. How It Works: The Case of Visual Perception in the Brain 5. How does our knowledge affect our perception?
2.1. The Structure of the Visual System 4.2.3. Recognition-by-Components 6. Finally, how do our brains put together the many and varied cues we use to perceive?
2.2. Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processing Model
2.3. Learning to See 4.2.4. Configural Models
3. Building from the Bottom Up: From Features DEBATE: A Set of Blocks or Cat’s Cradle:
to Objects Modular or Distributed Representations? 1. WHAT IT MEANS TO PERCEIVE
3.1. Processing Features, the Building 5. Interpreting from the Top Down: What You
Know Guides What You See The “sculptor” of the mysterious statue was the French philosopher Etienne Bonnot
Blocks of Perception
5.1. Using Context de Condillac (1715–1780), who created it in his Treatise on Sensations (1754a). The
3.1.1. Spots and Edges
statue, he imagined, had in working order what we would call the “mental hard-
3.1.2. Throwing Away Information 5.1.1. Context Effects for Feature
and Group Processing ware” and “software” of a normal human being, but no senses. Condillac believed
3.1.3. Neural Processing of Features that such a being would have no mental life, that no ideas were possible in the ab-
5.1.2. Context Effects for Object
3.2. Putting It Together: What Counts, sence of sensation.
Recognition
What Doesn’t Pursuing his thought experiment, he imagined opening up the nose of the statue so
5.2. Models of Top-Down Processing
3.2.1. Grouping Principles that it could now smell. “If we offer the statue a rose,” wrote Condillac, “it will be, in
5.2.1. Network Feedback Models
3.2.2. Filling in the Gaps its relation to us, a statue which smells a rose; but, in relationship to itself, it will be
5.2.2. Bayesian Approaches
3.2.3. The Binding Problem merely the scent of the flower.” That is, Condillac thought that if the statue had only
6. In Models and Brains: The Interactive Nature a single sensation, then that sensation would be the whole content of its mind.
4. Achieving Visual Recognition: Have I Seen
of Perception
You Before? Even if we adopt a position less absolute than Condillac’s, we can agree that the
6.1. Refining Recognition mental life of an organism without senses would be unimaginably different from the
4.1. A Brain That Cannot Recognize
6.2. Resolving Ambiguity mental life we experience. Sensation and perception provide the raw material for
4.2. Models of Recognition
6.3. Seeing the “What” and the “Where” cognition, certainly, but this assessment underplays their role. Our perceptions are
4.2.1. Template-Matching Models
4.2.2. Feature-Matching Models
Revisit and Reflect not a simple registration of sensory stimuli. Sophisticated cognitive processes begin to
work on this material almost immediately, producing the brain’s interpretation of the
external world as incoming stimuli are analyzed, and existing knowledge guides these
dynamic processes.
The second and third parts of your dream are illustrations that make clear why

T ake a dream. You are walking through the woods. In a clearing you come upon a marble
statue of a human figure. There is an inscription on the pedestal: “Behold one possessed of
perception is much more than the straightforward registration of sensory stimuli. In
your second dream experience, the menacing shape in the forest seems familiar but
only faintly so. This is because the images appear outside their original context of
mind without idea, form without sensation.” You continue walking. Evening comes on, and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “In the night,” says Theseus, Duke of
the woods are full of sounds and shadows. Suddenly, to your right, you see a hulking form. Athens, “imagining some fear, how easy is a bush supposed a bear.” Shakespeare
You leap back, ready to run—is this a bear? No, there is no danger; the “bear” is only a bush. understood that sensory stimuli typically are ambiguous, open to multiple interpre-
The night grows darker. The path is rising now, and at the top of a dimly outlined hill, you can tations; this is the first problem of perception.

From Chapter 2 of Cognitive Psychology: Mind and Brain, First Edition. Edward E. Smith/
Stephen M. Kosslyn. Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

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 Perception Perception

FIGURE 1 Illusion: what do you see?

The figure has eight white circles, and in each circle there are three black lines. There are no lines
between the circles; there is no cube. Most people, however, see a cube, either floating in front of a
black sheet with white circles, or behind a black sheet with eight holes. What you perceive is more
than just what you sense of the image properties.

What do you see in Figure 1? Probably a cube. Does it seem to be floating in

front of a black background with white dots on it? Or, rather, to be lying behind a
black sheet with holes punched into it? As to the cube itself, is the surface that seems
closest to you angled up and to the left or angled down and to the right? Why see a
cube at all? The image, of course, is actually flat on the page. You might swear that you
can see the lines of the cube crossing the black region, but they are not present in the FIGURE 2 What’s in the picture?
image. There are only eight carefully positioned white dots, each containing a carefully Is there more than one dog present? How do you know? You probably moved your eyes to fixate on
positioned set of three line segments. Nonetheless we see the cube, even though the im- the different objects in the scene until you spotted the dogs.
age doesn’t have all the properties of a real cube, even one drawn on a two- (Georges Seurat, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”. 1884–86. Oil on Canvas. 6‘91/2” !
dimensional surface, but only a sparse subset of those properties. We fill in the missing 10’11/4” (2.07 ! 3.08 m). Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection. Photograph © 2005, The Art Institute of
pieces and perceive more than is actually there. So the first problem is that sensory in- Chicago. All rights reserved.)
put does not contain enough information to explain our perception. When you looked
at and interpreted Figure 1, for example, you had to infer an object from mere hints. know whether there is a dog until you have searched for it. Moving your eyes over
In the last part of your dream, you get out of bed, walk to the window, and throw the image, you pause at different parts of it and fixate your gaze, bringing the center
open the heavy curtains. In an instant, you are exposed to a panorama of mountains, of the retina, the region with sharpest vision, over the area you wish to examine.
fields, houses, towns. What do you perceive? Condillac thought you would see only There’s a dog! Even though we can see over a large region at one time, we can see
a patchwork of colored regions, an experience full of sensations but without the or- relatively fine detail only in a small region—at the point of fixation. Searching is one
ganization that makes perception (1754b). In fact, we know that you could under- way to deal with the excess of input.
stand the gist of the scene after it had been exposed to your visual sense for only a Much information, for example information about the precise differences in the
small fraction of a second: studies have shown that you can look at pictures on a com- intensity of light at each point in space, is thrown away at the very start of the jour-
puter screen at a rate of eight per second, monitor that stream, and find, for example, ney from sensation to understanding. One of the dogs on Grand Jatte, however, is
the picnic scene in the series (Potter & Levy, 1969) or even the scene in a series that not small. You certainly can see it without moving your eyes from the center of the
does not contain an animal (Intraub, 1980). Still, Condillac was right in noting a image. But it is very likely that you could not determine whether there is a dog in the
problem: this second problem is that the world presents us with too much sensory painting until you selected that portion of it for further consideration. Our ability to
input to include into our coherent perceptions at any single given moment. engage in selective attention allows us to choose part of the current sensory input for
Figure 2 is a scene of a beautiful summer afternoon in a park with lots going further processing at the expense of other aspects of that input.
on. The image is not difficult, but it has many elements: although you can see and The two problems of perception in relation to the sensory world, then, are “not
understand it, you cannot fully process it in one rapid step. Quick—is there a dog in enough” and “too much.” In both cases, cognitive mechanisms are necessary to
it? Because it is impossible to process everything in the image at one go, you may not provide the means to interpret and understand the material our senses bring to us.

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 Perception Perception

Comprehension Check:
1. Why is perception important for cognition?
¸ HC

ER
2. What are the two main problems that make perception difficult?
36 46 TF TH

2. HOW IT WORKS: THE CASE OF VISUAL PERCEPTION

AITd AITv
The goal of perception is to take in information about the world and make sense of STPa
it. Condillac’s statue tells us that our mental life depends on meeting this goal. The-
seus’s bear reminds us that the information available to us may be ambiguous and STPp
7b 7a FEF CITd CITv
therefore insufficient for the determinative interpretation that only cognitive
processes and background knowledge can make. The view from Condillac’s château
reveals that there is too much information for us to process and we need to select.
VIP LIP MSTd MSTI FST PITd PITv
An analogous action of selection needs to be made right now: all our senses are
vitally important and no sense acts in isolation from the others. For example, con-
sider the interplay of vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch in your most recent
dining experience. Sadly, all that richness cannot be adequately captured in a single DP VOT
chapter, so, sacrificing breadth for a modicum of depth, we will select vision to dis-
cuss and we will further select a restricted set of examples within the visual domain.
Vision, like hearing, is a distance sense, evolved to sense objects without direct
MDP MIP PO MT V4t V4
contact. It can tell us what is out there and where it is. If we think of humans and
other creatures as organisms that must interact with the world, we see that our
senses also provide something further: a nudge toward action. What is out there,
where is it, what can I do about it? (Oh, look, a lovely low-hanging apple—I’ll pick
it!) Visual perception takes in information about the properties and locations of PIP V3A
objects so that we can make sense of and interact with our surroundings.

2.1. The Structure of the Visual System

V3 VP
The main visual pathways in the brain can be thought of as an intricate wiring pattern
that links a hierarchy of brain areas (Figure 3). Starting at the bottom, the pattern of
M V2 P-B P-I
light intensity, edges, and other features in the visual scene forms an image on the retina,
the layer of cells that respond to light, called photoreceptors, and nerve cells at the back
of each eye. There light is converted into electrochemical signals, which are transmitted M V1 P-B P-I Primary visual cortex (V1)
to the brain via the optic nerves (one from each eye); each optic nerve is a bundle of the M P Lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN)
long axon fibers of the ganglion cells in the retina. The axons make contact with the
neurons of the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) in the thalamus, a structure lying under M P Retinal ganglion cells
the surface of the brain. From there, axons of LGN neurons send signals up to the pri-
mary visual cortex (which is also called V1 for “visual area 1,” or “striate cortex” be- FIGURE 3 Structural and functional complexity
cause when stained it has the appearance of a stripe across it that can be seen with a A “wiring diagram” of the visual system, showing connections among brain areas. Note that there are
microscope). Output from the striate cortex feeds a host of visual areas (V2, V3, V4, two types of retinal ganglion cells (magnocellular, abbreviated M, and parvocellular, abbreviated P);
and others) as well as areas that are not exclusively visual in function. these cells project axons to different portions of areas V1 and V2.)
Beyond the primary visual cortex, two main pathways can be identified. A (Felleman, D. J. & Van Essen, D. C. (1991). Distributed hierarchical processing in the primate cerebral cortex. Cere-
dorsal pathway reaches up into the parietal lobes and is important in processing in- bral Cortex, 1, 1—47 (Fig. 4 on p. 30). Reprinted with permission of Oxford University Press.)
formation about where items are located and how they might be acted on, guiding

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 Perception Perception

movements such as grasping. A ventral pathway reaches down into the temporal
lobes; this pathway processes information that leads to the recognition and identifi-
cation of objects. This two-pathways story is valid, but as Figure 3 shows, it is a
great simplification of an extremely complicated network.

2.2. Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processing

(a) Bottom-up processing is sufficient. (b) Top-down processing is needed.
The daunting complexity of the visual system is functional as well as structural, as is
shown in Figure 3. The pathways and their many ramifications are not one-way FIGURE 5 Displays for visual search tasks
streets. Most visual areas that send output to another area also receive input from that
Each display has one item that is the target. In (a), the target is obvious: bottom-up processing of the
area; that is, they have reciprocal connections—for example, LGN provides input to V1 attributes of each object tells you that one is very different from the rest. In (b), bottom-up processing
and V1 provides other input to LGN. This dynamic arrangement reflects an important doesn’t help, because all the items differ. Top-down guidance of your attention to the target occurs
principle of visual perception: visual perception—in fact, all perception—is the product after you are told that the target is a black, horizontal line.
of bottom-up and top-down processes. Bottom-up processes are driven by sensory in-
formation from the physical world. Top-down processes actively seek and extract sen-
sory information and are driven by our knowledge, beliefs, expectations, and goals. up processing quickly identifies the white star as the stand-out. But bottom-up pro-
Almost every act of perception involves both bottom-up and top-down processing. cessing isn’t enough to guide you to the target in Figure 5b. There you see a num-
One way to experience the distinction consciously is to slow part of the top- ber of items that differ in various ways—in shape, color, orientation. To find the
down contribution. Look at Figure 4. There is certainly something there to be target you need information—“the target is the horizontal black bar”—and thus
seen: bottom-up processes show you lines and define regions. But if you play with top-down processing. Now you have the means to search for the target.
the image mentally and consider what the regions might signify, you can feel a top- Both of these examples demonstrate that perceptions (this is a bear, this is a tar-
down contribution at work. The image could be . . . a bear climbing up the other side get) are interpretations of what we see, representations produced by the interaction
of a tree! Whether or not you came up with this solution yourself, your appreciation of bottom-up and top-down processing.
of it depends on top-down knowledge: your knowledge of what a tree and a bear’s
paws look like, your knowledge of how bears climb trees. This kind of knowledge 2.3. Learning to See
not only organizes what you see, but also can even modulate the processes that cre-
ated the representations of the lines and regions. Our interpretations of the world around us are determined by the interaction of two
Another example that points to the distinction between bottom-up and top- things: (1) the biological structure of our brains and (2) experience, which modifies
down processing and the relationship between them can be seen in visual search that structure. The visual system in newborn infants is nearly fully developed at birth,
tasks. If you’re told to find the target in Figure 5a, you have no problem. Bottom- and most of the major structural changes are complete in the first year of life (Hutten-
locher, 1993, 2002). Babies open their eyes almost immediately after birth and soon
they begin to look around, moving their eyes to investigate their surroundings and to
fixate on objects of interest. Typically fixations last about half a second, so babies have
on the order of 10 million glimpses of the world in their first year of life. That’s an
enormous amount of information. A baby may see a parent’s face, the surrounding
crib, a nursing bottle many thousand times, often from different viewpoints, at differ-
ent times of day, and in different contexts. As the lingering memory of each occurrence
combines with each new instance, the cascade of information somehow accumulates
to form lasting mental representations of the people, places, and things in the environ-
ment. These representations form the basis for the subsequent recognition of objects.
Research on the development of visual perception in newborn animals has shown
FIGURE 4 What’s this? that the characteristics of the infant’s environment at particular times strongly influence
The picture has two vertical lines and four ovals—yet you can see more. See the text for details. some of the capabilities of the adult. The early stages of life include biologically deter-
(From Droodles—The Classic Collection by Roger Price. Copyright © 2000 by Tallfellow Press, Inc. Reprinted with mined critical periods, periods during which the animal must develop particular
permission. [Link].) responses. If exposure to the natural environment is limited during the critical period

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for a particular response, the animal will fail to develop that ability properly, even with
normal exposure during adulthood. For example, a kitten reared with a patch over one
eye for 6 months may grow into a cat with two normal eyes, but with impairments in
the perception of depth that depends on integrating information from both eyes (Wiesel
& Hubel, 1963). In such a cat, a greater area of visual cortex is devoted to analyzing in-
put from the unpatched eye than the patched eye. Interestingly, a kitten with patches
over both eyes during the same period will not have deficits in the perception of depth
as an adult and will have more balanced cortical organization (Wiesel & Hubel, 1965).
Different aspects of sensory processing have different critical periods.
In addition, different sources and different modalities of sensory input seem to
compete for representation in cortex (Le Vay et al., 1980). If one channel, such as in-
put from one eye, is more active than another, cortical resources are redeployed in that
direction and, once assigned in infancy, such resources are not easily modified in adult-
hood. Competition for neural representation has been demonstrated throughout the
brain and for many different abilities: there is competition between auditory and visual
perception (Cynader, 1979; Gyllensten et al., 1966); competition to register sensation
from different fingers (Jenkins et al., 1990; Merzenich & Kaas, 1982); and competition
between different languages in bilingual people (Neville & Bavelier, 1998).
Because it is known that experience alters the course of visual development, pro-
grams have been developed for stimulating the fetus with lights and sounds not nor-
mally present in the womb in an attempt to speed or enhance development. Normal
prenatal stimulation, such as the sound of the mother’s voice, can lead to better per-
ception in infants. However, our knowledge in this area is far from complete, and it
is possible that abnormal stimulation can lead to impoverished rather than superior
development. Indeed, some studies have shown that some prenatal stimulation can
impair normal perceptual development later in life (Lickliter, 2000). Although we
know that our environment shapes the brain structures that support our capacity for
normal cognition, we do not yet know how to control that process.

Comprehension Check:
1. In what ways is the brain structured like a hierarchy? In what ways is it not?
¸
2. What is the difference between bottom-up and top-down processing?
3. How does visual experience influence what we see?

3. BUILDING FROM THE BOTTOM UP: FROM FEATURES

TO OBJECTS
Condillac’s statue had all the machinery for cognition but no sensory input, so its
brain never used its tremendous capability for representation and processing of the
physical world. The brain’s ingenious techniques for combining perceived features,
so that we can understand the complexity surrounding us by resolving it into objects
familiar and unfamiliar, lay idle and useless. If the statue’s eyes were open to the

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