Chapter 19-History of Psych

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

A branch of computer science that investigates the extent to which machines can stimulate or duplicate the intelligent behavior of living organisms.

Neural Network

A system of input, hidden, and output units that is capable of learning if the mathematical weights among the units are systematically modified either according to Hebb's rule or by back-propagation.

Turing Test

A test to determine whether a machine can think. Questions are submited to both a human and a machine. If the machine's answers are indistinguishable from those of the human, it is concluded that the machine can think.

Jerome Bruner

Along with Miller and Bartlett, one of the first cognitive psychologists. Among his contributions were the popularization of Piaget and Vygotsky.

Cognitive Science

An interdisciplinary approach to studying the mind and mental processes that combines aspects of cognitive psychology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, and computer science.

George Miller

Did pioneering research on information processing in the 1950s and 1960s that significantly enhanced the popularity of cognitive psychology.

Ulric Neisser

Noted cognitive psychologist. Authorized two classic textbooks and advocated for cognitive research that was both applied and ecologically valid.

Information Processing Psychology

The approach to studying cognition that follows in the traditions of faculty psychology and methodological (mediational) behaviorism and typically employs the computer as a model for human information processing.

Jean Piaget

Focused on cognitive development, and how schemata evolve during maturation and through experience. Posited a well-known stage theory of intellectual development in children from birth to adolescence.

Alan Turin

Is considered the father of artificial intelligence in computer science and psychology. Among his contributions was the Turing test.

Connectionism

The most recent type of AI that utilizes artificial systems of neurons called neuron networks. As contrasted with GOFAI, which employed the sequential processing of information according to specified rules, it employs the brain as a model. That is, the processing of information within a neural network is distributed throughout the entire network. Like the brain, neural networks are capable of learning; this is not true of GOFAI.

Noam Chomsky

Trained as a linguist, he wrote a review of Skinner's work on language, showed the limits of a behavioral explanation and beginning the "cognitive revolution." Much of modern psycholinguistics centers around his theory of language.