1: General Area of Behaviorism versus Cognitivism
What are the (four) main principles assumed by the cognitive approach?
Cognitivism, Representationalism, Computationalism, Darwinian Doctrine
What is Cognitivism?
("mentalism"): Inner mental states explain behavior
What are the two behaviorist assumptions about learning?
(1) all learning is the result of reinforcement, (2) conditioning depends upon processes of association and reinforcement
Why is Cognitive Science a multi-disciplinary science?
1. CogSci concerns a range of objects beyond the older boundaries of psych (not just human minds, but various animals, insects, superorganisms, social groups, computers, robots, and logical systems) 2. Researchers may have a broader range of interest than those in traditional scientific disciplines: descriptive (how people in fact think) versus normative (how people should think). Consider the area of ''Alien AI''
Give some sample expansions of Interdisciplinary cognitive science.
1. Psych developed out of philosophy; philosophy still provides many basic concepts (logic, rationality) 2. Influence of computational model 3. Advent of evolutionary psychology
How does the Indian parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant relate to cognitive science?
Cognitive scientists, like the blind men, must aim for the *bigger picture*: the mind is at once a rational agent, a linguistic system, a computer, an evolved organ, a member of a group, etc.
Tolman's Spatial Orientation experiments
Cross maze, Sunburst
Theoretical approaches to cognitive science
Formal logic, rules, concepts, analogies, images, connectionism, theoretical neuroscience, bayesian, deep learning
Tolman Hypothesis-Testing Experiment
Krech's discrimination box: when tasked with sets of two doors, correct rules randomized, rats employ a single rule at a time: a "hypothesis" (e.g. all left doors, then all right)
What is latent learning?
Learning (a cognitive map) in the absence of conditioning
Major fields of cognitive science (Sloan Report, 1978)
Philosophy, Psychology, AI, Neuro, Anthropology, Linguistics
Explain Tolman's T-alley Maze Experiment and why it is evidence against behaviorism
Rats allowed to wander a large T-alley maze WITHOUT REWARD discovered food much quicker than control. Rats must have learned a "mental map" of their environment
Explain Tolman's Sunburst Maze Experiment and why it is evidence against behaviorism
Rats trained to run through a single-path maze to food most often picked the quickest path to the same food location when placed in new sunburst maze; suggests rats learned spatial map of environment rather than sequence of movements (second-most-often was "inverse" direction: mental map reflection?)
Tolman's Latent Learning experiment
T-alley maze (Y-alley maze is simpler)
What is behaviorism?
a mental state = a set of external stimuli and responses plus the association between them
What is operant conditioning in behaviorism? (action/reward)
a type of conditioning in which an ACTION/BEHAVIOR (e.g. pushing a lever) is reinforced by a REWARD/CONSEQUENCE (e.g. food).
Difference between classical and operant conditioning
associating unconditioned response w/ conditional stimulus versus reinforcing an action/behavior with a reward
Only methods of learning in behaviorism
classical and operant conditioning
Evidence against behaviorism (Tolman)
cross maze, T-alley maze, sunburst maze
Lashley's hypothesis show that behaviorist learning
does not properly explain many complex behaviors
Tolman: in the course of learning, something like a _____ ___ of the environment gets established in the rat's brain
field map
What is the Darwinian Doctrine?
human mental programs evolved by natural selection
What is Computationalism?
inner representational states are computational in nature
A few ways in which rat learning was shown different from behaviorist approaches
internal representations, self-initiated
How do children provide evidence against behaviorism
kids show significant generative language capacity with very little reinforcement
Tolman: the rat's brain is not a telephone exchange, it is a ________
map control room
Tolman describes rat learning as ___ and ____
map-like, self-initiated
What is the Classical Paradigm of Computationalism?
mind = mental program or software brain = engineering or hardware cognition = bio or artificial engineering system running a mental program
Lashley's hypothesis of subconscious information processing
much of what we do is under the control of planning and information-processing mechanisms that operate below the threshold of awareness
behaviorism cares only about _________ phenomena and _________ behaviors
observable, measurable
Tolman: the rat's nervous system is ________ as to which environmental stimuli it will "let in" at any given time
selective
What is classical conditioning in behaviorism?
strengthening the ASSOCIATION between a neutral CONDITIONED STIMULUS (bell ringing?) and a non-neutral UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS (e.g. food): leads organism to produce unconditioned RESPONSE to conditioned stimulus alone
What is Representationalism?
the function of mental states is to represent things
What is Classical/Pavlovian Conditioning in Behaviorism? (Book)
the process of creating an association between a reflex response and an initially neutral stimulus by pairing the neutral stimulus (e.g. a bell) with a stimulus (e.g. food) which naturally elicits the response (e.g. salivation)
What is the central hypothesis of cognitive science?
thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures.
Explain Tolman's Cross Maze Experiment and why it is evidence against behaviorism
two groups of rats started randomly N/S; one group must learn SPATIAL LOCATION of food, other must learn TURN BEHAVIOR. Rats learned spatial encoding much faster than sequence of movements. Suggests animals develop cognitive maps
Lashley's hypothesis of task analysis
we can understand a complex task (and the cognitive system performing it) by breaking it down into a hierarchy of more basic sub-tasks (and associated sub-systems
Tolman: relevant stimuli are _________
worked into a tentative, cognitive-like map of the environment