Showing papers on "Perceptual psychology published in 1995"

Motor development: A new synthesis.

Abstract: The study of the acquisition of motor skills, long moribund in developmental psychology, has seen a renaissance in the last decade. Inspired by contemporary work in movement science, perceptual psychology, neuroscience, and dynamic systems theory, multidisciplinary approaches are affording new insights into the processes by which infants and children learn to control their bodies. In particular, the new synthesis emphasizes the multicausal, fluid, contextual, and self-organizing nature of developmental change, the unity of perception, action, and cognition, and the role of exploration and selection in the emergence of new behavior. Studies are concerned less with how children perform and more with how the components cooperate to produce stability or engender change. Such process approaches make moot the traditional nature-nurture debates.

Culture and Cognitive Development: From Cross-Cultural Research to Creating Systems of Cultural Mediation

Abstract: The author's intellectual movement over the past two decades, from cross-cultural experimental psychology to the cultural psychology of mediation of human activities and cognitive processes, is described in this paper. Productive use of the concept of culture in psychology entails conceptualization of the future and the past in the present, and taking a process-based look at human activities. Cultural mediation in the case of reading is described. The emphasis on the emergent psychological processes as being culturally constituted leads to the need to explore novel paths in reconstructing psychology's methodology.

Cognitive computation

Abstract: Cognitive computation is discussed as a discipline that links together neurobiology, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence.

Gestalt psychology and the cognitive revolution

Abstract: Examines the role Gestalt Psychology has played in the years leading up to the cognitive revolution. The text discusses the historical relationships connecting behaviourism, Gestalt Psychology and the development of cognitive psychology, and outlines the principles of Gestalt Psychology.

Why cognitive science is not formalized folk psychology

Abstract: It is often assumed that cognitive science is built upon folk psychology, and that challenges to folk psychology are therefore challenges to cognitive science itself. We argue that, in practice, cognitive science and folk psychology treat entirely non-overlapping domains: cognitive science considers aspects of mental life which do not depend on general knowledge, whereas folk psychology considers aspects of mental life which do depend on general knowledge. We back up our argument on theoretical grounds, and also illustrate the separation between cognitive scientific and folk psychological phenomena in a number of cognitive domains. We consider the methodological and theoretical significance of our arguments for cognitive science research.

The contributions of applied cognitive psychology to the study of human-computer interaction

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter describes the contributions of applied cognitive psychology to the study of human-computer interaction. Since its rapid evolution in the 1960s, cognitive psychology has sought to improve scientific understanding of the fundamental properties of the human information processing mechanism. Its primary emphases have been upon developing and testing theories concerning the ways in which that mechanism constructs, manipulates, and acts upon mental representations. Individual theories cover perception, language understanding and production, memory, problem solving, consciousness, intention and the control of action and many more. These areas of concern are all potentially relevant to the ways in which users will behave in the course of interacting with a computer. Applied cognitive psychology attempts to bridge the gap between the properties of cognition as studied in the more abstract laboratory tasks and those phenomena that are characteristic of cognition in the tasks of everyday life.

The concept of representation in psychology

Abstract: An analysis is given of the status of the concept of representation in psychology, and the various ways it is used, including its explanatory status and its use as a causal agent.

Folk psychology and cognitive architecture

Abstract: It has recently been argued that the success of the connectionist program in cognitive science would threaten folk psychology. I articulate and defend a "minimalist" construal of folk psychology that comports well with empirical evidence on the folk understanding of belief and is compatible with even the most radical developments in cognitive science.

Implications of Cognitive Psychology for Authentic Assessment and Instruction

Abstract: A historical-narrative flow characterizes this chapter, partly because a story is easier to remember than an exposition, partly because that is the way my thinking has evolved. This summary highlights trends and may neglect some significant details.

Temporal factors in visual perception: a differential approach.

Abstract: The tradition in sensory and perceptual psychology is not to pay much attention to individual differences but to focus almost exclusively on normative or generic processes. Nevertheless, consistent...

Redefining cognitive psychology

Abstract: Posner & Raichle illustrate how neuroimaging blends profitably with neuropsychology and electrophysiology to advance cognitive theory. Recognizing that there are limitations to each of these techniques, we nonetheless argue that their confluence has fundamentally changed the way cognitive psychologists think about problems of the mind.

The relationship between skill learning and repetition priming

Abstract: Skill learning and repetition priming are considered by some to be supported by separate memory systems. The authors examined the relationship between skill learning and priming in 3 experiments using a digit entering task, in which participants were presented with unique and repeated 5-digit strings with controlled sequential structure. Both skill learning and priming were observed across a wide range of skill levels. Performance reflected the effects of learning at 3 different levels of stimulus structure, calling into question a binary dichotomy between item-specific priming and general skill learning. Two computational models were developed which demonstrated that previous dissociations between skill learning and priming can occur within a single memory system. The experimental and computational results are interpreted as suggesting that skill learning and priming should be viewed as 2 aspects of a single incremental learning mechanism.

Knowledge representation and reasoning: The view from cognitive psychology

Abstract: The knowledge engineering community has been working on the design of schemes for knowledge representation and reasoning for more than two decades. Much of this work, particularly work on the development of expert systems, explicitly or implicitly assumes that artificial knowledge-based systems emulate to some degree the natural knowledge representation and reasoning methods of human problem solvers and decision makers. Experimental psychologists and other cognitive scientists have been studying the properties of natural cognition for even longer, indeed for much of this century. Their findings indicate not only that some of our engineering assumptions about the nature of human expertise may be a little simplistic, and also that one needs to be very careful about those aspects of human knowledge and expertise one should attempt to emulate. This special issue of the Review presents papers by experimental psychologists who have worked extensively on expertise, decision making and reasoning under uncertainty, all topics that overlap strongly with the interests of expert systems and AI researchers and developers. Their reviews of work on these topics are instructive for those of us who are interested in the natural counterparts of the artificial mechanisms and techniques we use. The first paper, \"Cognitive expertise research and knowledge engineering\" by Fergus Bolger, provides an overview of psychological studies of expertise, drawing attention to weaknesses in our criteria for defining an \"expert\". He summarises our current understanding of the cognitive processes that underpin expertise and identifies some implications for knowledge engineers. In \"Bias in human judgement under uncertainty?\", Peter Ayton and Eva Pascoe focus on an aspect of expertise which is a major issue for expert systems designers; uncertain inference methods. They discuss important doubts about the competence of human judgement when compared with the behaviour prescribed by normative mathematical theory, and many subtleties of human understanding which are not well reflected in current knowledge technologies. Finally, in a related paper reviewing \"Human linguistic probability processing\", Tom Wallsten and David Budescu look at issues concerning the intuitive representation of uncertainty, and, in particular, how we use natural language concepts to reason with and communicate uncertainty about our beliefs and inferences. They close with some principles that summarize the cognitive processes that underly human uncertain reasoning and decision making. It is interesting to consider these principles in the context of the probabilities, certainty factors and non-monotonic logics which are the focii of AI research. Although one frequently comes across remarks in the AI and expert systems literature to the effect that \"expert systems emulate human expertise\", such claims are rarely examined in depth. The findings of psychologists described in these papers indicate both that their validity can be seriously questioned, and the desirability of a design strategy based on emulation is open to considerable debate.

On Integrating Cognitive and Motivational Explanations in Psychology

Abstract: It is a truism that a complete psychology of the person must involve an accounting of behavior, thought, and feeling. In more technical terms, a comprehensive psychology should describe how representational or cognitive processes interact with energy or motivational processes to produce behavior. But a balanced, integrative approach to the person seems absent from both basic research schools and applied practice fields. Academic schools tend to organize around either cognitive or motivational variables, while applied psychologists such as clinicians often blur the important distinctions between these types of variables. What promotes and inhibits theoretical integration in psychology?

On Perceptual Learning

Abstract: A fundamental concern in Psychology is the extent to which we learn to perceive our world and, further, the degree to which perception remains modif"Iable even in adulthood. Yet despite the significance of these concerns, perceptual learning has been somewhat sporadically studied, and often only at a phenomenal level. This thesis proposes a new theoretical framework for perceptual learning, and argues that a multiplicity of processes have been examined under this single term. The empirical work reported in this thesis examines a range of these different learning processes, and illustrates methods by which the process/processes underlying a particular phenomenon can be revealed. Extended replications of seminal studies on 'perceptual learning' demonstrate the non-perceptual learning nature of the processes reported in those studies. Further empirical work presents new evidence for the plasticity of human vision on fundamental dimensions of visual processing. These fmdings suggest that even adults I perceptual experience is modifiable as a result of changes at an early stage of visual processing. Final empirical work considers the types of learning that may occur in the more complex and naturalistic task of detecting features in X-rays, and this leads on to an examination of visual search learning. It is concluded that, given the varied nature of the learning processes identified, a unified theory of perceptual learning may be an unrealistic goal. Instead, a detailed understanding of the different mechanisms underlying each of the identified learning processes is likely to prove more useful. Finally, it is argued that all of the identified processes, previously regarded as perceptual learning, could underlie improvements on complex 'real-world' discrimination tasks. This is illustrated through the application of the theoretical framework, developed in this thesis, to mammographic ftlm reading. It is argued that by isolating and systematically targeting each of the learning processes involved in a task, more effective training programmes could be designed.

Why Cognitive Psychology Science Is Not Formalized Folk

Abstract: It is often assumed that cognitive science is built upon folk psychology, and that challenges to folk psychology are therefore challenges to cognitive science itself. We argue that, in practice, cognitive science and folk psychology treat entirely non-overlapping domains: cognitive science considers aspects of mental life which do not depend on general knowledge, whereas folk psychology considers aspects of mental life which do depend on general knowledge. We back up our argument on theoretical grounds, and also illustrate the separation between cognitive scientific and folk psychologi- cal phenomena in a number of cognitive domains. We consider the methodological and theoretical significance of our arguments for cognitive science research.