Cognitive revolution

For the emergence of cognitively modern behavior in humans, see Behavioral modernity.

The cognitive revolution was an intellectual movement that began in the 1950s as an interdisciplinary study of the mind and its processes, from which emerged a new field known as cognitive science.[1] The preexisting relevant fields were psychology, linguistics, computer science, anthropology, neuroscience, and philosophy.[2] The approaches used were developed within the then-nascent fields of artificial intelligence, computer science, and neuroscience. In the 1960s, the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies[3] and the Center for Human Information Processing at the University of California, San Diego were influential in developing the academic study of cognitive science.[4] By the early 1970s, the cognitive movement had surpassed behaviorism as a psychological paradigm.[5][6][7] Furthermore, by the early 1980s the cognitive approach had become the dominant line of research inquiry across most branches in the field of psychology.

A key goal of early cognitive psychology was to apply the scientific method to the study of human cognition.[1] Some of the main ideas and developments from the cognitive revolution were the use of the scientific method in cognitive science research, the necessity of mental systems to process sensory input, the innateness of these systems, and the modularity of the mind.[8][1][9] Important publications in triggering the cognitive revolution include psychologist George Miller's 1956 article "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two"[10] (one of the most frequently cited papers in psychology),[11] linguist Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures (1957)[12] and "Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior" (1959),[13][14] and foundational works in the field of artificial intelligence by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert Simon, such as the 1958 article "Elements of a Theory of Human Problem Solving".[10] Ulric Neisser's 1967 book Cognitive Psychology was also a landmark contribution.[15]

  1. ^ a b c Thagard, Paul (2014). "Cognitive Science". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference :3 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Pinker, Steven (12 October 2011). "The Cognitive Revolution". Harvard Gazette. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
  4. ^ "George Mandler - In Memoriam". Department of Psychology, UC San Diego. Regents of the University of California. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
  5. ^ Friesen, Norm (2010). "Mind and Machine: Ethical and Epistemological Implications for Research" (PDF). AI & Society. 25 (1): 83–92. doi:10.1007/s00146-009-0264-8. S2CID 27570009. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-08-04. Retrieved 2019-07-06.
  6. ^ Thagard, P. (2002). "Cognitive Science". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  7. ^ Waldrop M.M. (2002). The Dream Machine: JCR Licklider and the revolution that made computing personal. New York: Penguin Books. pp. 139, 140.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference :4 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference :5 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ a b Thagard, Paul (2014). "Cognitive Science". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
  11. ^ Gorenflo, Daniel W.; McConnell, James V. (26 August 2016). "The Most Frequently Cited Journal Articles and Authors in Introductory Psychology Textbooks". Teaching of Psychology. 18 (1): 8–12. doi:10.1207/s15328023top1801_2. S2CID 145217739.
  12. ^ "Noam Chomsky". 2015-10-16. Archived from the original on 2015-10-16. Retrieved 2019-07-25.
  13. ^ "A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior".
  14. ^ Graham, George (2019). "Behaviorism". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
  15. ^ Neisser, U (1967) Cognitive Psychology Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York.