Chapter 14: Minds, Machines, & cognitive psych

automata

(early robots that mimicked human actions. Beginning of the ideas of automation and robots)Machines capable of performing feats with precision and regularity

reductionism

(simple to complex): The doctrine that explains phenomena on one level in terms of phenomena on another level

determinism

(the present and the future are determined by the past): The doctrine that acts are determined by past events

Ulric Neisser

A psychologist whose integrative textbook, Cognitive Psychology, is regarded as the launching event for that new subdiscipline; he conducted research focusing on information processing, cognition, intelligence, and memory.

cognitive psychology

A subdiscipline of psychology focused on the study of the important mental processes that intervene between an activating stimulus and a final adaptive response. The field incorporates topics such as perception, attention, language development and use, memory, and problem solving—all of which are typically analyzed in terms of information processing. Cognitive Psychology: a "return" to the study of the mind

Boolean Algebra

A system integrating logical calculation with classical mathematics, which became the foundation of modern symbolic logic.

heuristic

A technique for problem solving that limits the search space by relying on best guesses and shortcuts.

turing test

A test suggested by Alan Turing to assess the "intelligence" of a machine according to its ability to perform some complex task requiring genuinely intelligent behavior, in a manner outwardly indistinguishable from that of a person

chinese room

A thought experiment proposed by philosopher John Searle that compares a native speaker of Chinese with a speaker who responds perfectly but "mechanically," with the aid of a complete book of rules. The latter, like a computer, would not demonstrate "strong" artificial intelligence.

general problem solver

An AI program designed by Newell and Simon, using heuristics intended to be capable of solving a broad range of types of problems.

Claude Shannon

An American electrical engineer who theorized that patterns of relay circuits in "off" or "on" positions could be used to represent information in binary code.

Noam Chomsky

An American linguist who proposed that an innate "universal grammar" is hard-wired in the human brain and whose views on language influenced George Miller.

John Searle

An American philosopher who created the Chinese room thought experiment to challenge the existence of strong artificial intelligence (AI), the idea that computers can have human-like intelligence.

George Miller

An American psychologist who founded the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard University with Bruner and who conducted research showing the capacity of short-term memory is approximately seven items. Magical number seven, plus or minus two—Miller's work documenting the capacity of short-term memory suggests that it is approximately seven items, plus or minus two, after which accuracy falls off markedly.

Jerome Bruner

An American psychologist who founded the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard University with Miller and demonstrated what became known as the "new look" in perception.

Charles Babbage

An English mathematician and inventor who helped reform English mathematics by introducing Leibnizean calculus and who designed the difference engine and the analytical engine

Alan Turing

An English mathematician whose invention of the Turing machine and conceptualization of the Turing Test profoundly influenced the development of the fields of computer science and artificial intelligence.

Harvard center cognitive studies

An independent institute founded by Bruner and Miller to pursue broad interdisciplinary projects.

"new look" in perception

An understanding of perception that emphasizes how a variety of nonobjective factors can systematically influence the process of perception; demonstrated in a famous series of studies by Bruner and others.

analytical engine

Babbage's planned, but never-finished, "universal machine," capable of performing virtually any type of calculation; the prototype for what today we call a programmable computer.

Serialist (Symbolic) Processing

Computer programming in which specified sequences of operations are performed on specified sets of symbols, both of which have been stored in specific memory locations.

Herbert Simon & Allen Newell

Computer scientists and developers of the early AI programs, Logic Theorist (LT) and General Problem Solver (GPS).

artificial intelligence

machines display artificial intelligence and process information similarly to the way people do Demonstrated by the Turing Test: persuading a subject that the computer with which he or she is communicating is really another person, not a machine Some objected: Chinese Room Problem No matter how many messages you receive and respond to, you still do not know Chinese

Ada Lovelace

Daughter of the poet Lord Byron and a gifted mathematician who promoted Babbage's analytical engine and foresaw many of its potential uses; she also introduced the Lovelace objection.

George Boole

English mathematician who invented Boolean algebra.

strong AI

In Searle's terms, the ability of computer intellgience to be indistinguishable in all respects from human intelligence

cognition

In general usage, the mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding. In technical terms, problems that were solvable by logical analysis or "knowable," in contrast to noncognitive problems that primarily involved emotional or moral judgments.

flashbulb memory

Neisser's term for a vividly recalled (although not necessarily accurate) image of exactly where one was and what one was doing when some particularly

impossibilist creativity

One of two forms of creativity identified by British psychologist Margarget Boden; involves changing the preset rules, and thus effecting a "transformation of conceptual space."

improbabalist creativity

One of two forms of creativity identified by British psychologist Margarget Boden; involves putting already familiar ideas or components together in new and useful or interesting combinations, according to rules that have already been established.

bit

The amount of information that can be conveyed by the open or closed status of a single binary switch (one or zero).

artificial intelligence

The capacity of a mechanical device to perform operations that replicate or imitate human thought processes and other intelligent behaviors.

mechanism

The doctrine that natural processes are mechanically determined and capable of explanation by the laws of physics and chemistry.

Sir Frederic Bartlett

A British psychologist who demonstrated how memory is not "objectively" reproductive, but rather is powerfully shaped by culturally and socially established predispositions he called schemata.

Blaise Pascal

A French mathematician, inventor, and philosopher who developed the Pascaline, one of the first mechanical calculators. He believed machines could reproduce rational, but not emotional, human processes.

difference engine

A calculating machine invented by Babbage that could compute sums and differences of complex sequences of squared numbers.

logic theorist

A computer program designed by Newell and Simon in 1956 that reproduced formal proofs for some of the basic theorems at the heart of symbolic logic.

connectionist processing

A computer programming strategy that detects patterns of activity that go on throughout the whole system, rather than symbols in specified locations. Also referred to as Parallel Distributed Processing.

symbolic logic

A concept introduced by Boole that holds that traditional mathematics may be thought of as just one of many possible forms of systematic symbol manipulation. This concept united the fields of mathematics and logic.

cognitive revolution

A dramatic turning of psychology's primary focus to cognitive matters

information theory

A field initiated by Shannon based on the idea that any communication of signal can be analyzed in terms of a fundamental unit called the bit.

means-end analysis

A heuristic technique to limited search options that was used by the GPS, in which the most desirable end state for a problem is regularly compared to its actual current state and the distance (difference) between the two is analyzed and measured.

Turing machine

A hypothetical "universal" computer proposed by Alan Turing that could perform any kind of calculation on any set of symbols capable of being manipulated in the Boolean sense, according to some set of formally specifiable and self-consistent rules.

TOTE unit

Proposed as a new central concept in the analysis of thinking and reasoning; TOTE stands for the sequence Test, Operate, Test, Exit. It was based on the idea that problem solving typically begins with a first test, comparing the present situation with the desired outcome, followed by an operation to reduce the difference, and then another test. If the new difference is zero then the program exits; if a difference still exists, another operation and test will follow; the process will continue until finally the condition for exit is met.

weak AI

Searle's notion that computer processes might resemble, and may serve as models for, certain aspects of human thinking, but without accompanying attributes of a human mind, such as intentionality and subjective consciousness.

binary switches

Simple switches that may be in either "on" or "off" states.

lovelace objection

The notion put forward by Ada Lovelace that the analytical engine could follow only predetermined and precisely defined rules and that it was not capable of genuine creativity; commonly expressed today as, "Computers can only do what they have been programmed to do."

cognitive focus

The process of knowing rather than merely responding to stimuli How the mind structures or organizes experiences Individual actively and creatively arranges the stimuli received from the environment Important factors: mental processes and events, not stimulus-response connection

binary arithmetic

The representation of all numbers by just ones and zeroes (

information-processing theory

uses computer science to provide models to help psychologists understand the processes of memory.