The Cognitive Revolution
•	Behaviorism
•	Information theory and cybernetics
•	Neuroscience
•	Computers
•	Language
•	“New Look”
•	Developmental
•	Reasoning and decision making
The response to behaviorism
•	Classic behaviorism had simply run out of steam
–	Could not predict some aspects of animal behavior
•	Curiosity
•	Seemingly goal directed behavior
–	Complex human behavior, and many work-arounds
•	Secondary reinforcement – but opening that door meant that interpretation had to be allowed
•	Intervening stimulus-response usually called implicit behaviors had to be allowed, but looked like mental events
•	The special challenge of language and Chomsky’s response to Skinner
–	Behaviorists who seemed to be more cognitive
•	Holt at Harvard
•	Tolman and his notions of goal direction
Rationalism alive and well
–	Gestalt Psychology
–	Social psychology
•	Phenomenological approach
–	Obviously important
–	The behavior of other people which must be interpreted through intentions and goals
•	Heavily influenced by Gestalt-type people
–	Lewin/Festinger
–	Asch
•	Barlett’s studies of social memory and schema theory
–	Piaget
•	Development in non-linear stages
•	Schema notions 
Pushes from the “hard” side of the discipline
•	Was more respectable coming from that side and had the imprimatur of science
•	Several approaches
–	Information theory
–	Cybernetics
–	Neuroscience
–	Computers
Information theory
•	Claude Shannon (electrical engineer professor at MIT) argued that all information could be taken out of context and reduced to a series of decisions – bits
•	Importance
–	Mathematical basis for thinking about content of information
–	Mechanism free
•	Applied equally well to machines and humans
•	Focused attention on efficiency of information processing
Cybernetics 
•	John von Neuman on integrating mathematics, logic and neurology
•	Norbert Weiner at MIT worked on servo-mechanisms (those that used feedback for correction)
–	Issues of control and communication as central to all science but especially humans
–	Machine analog for human thought (quite respectable)
–	But also introduced the notion of purpose or goal
Miller, Galanter, and Pribram
•	Plans and the Structure of Behavior
–	Explicitly goals and feedback
–	Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
•	Highly influential
Developments in neuroscience
•	Karl Lashley’s (1948) why the mind could not be a switchboard
•	Warren McCulloch’s (1943)  neuronal model
–	Neural activity could be modeled in terms of logic
–	 Reductionist program to its logical extreme
–	Complexities that transcended linear models
•	Donald Hebb’s (1948) book
–	Cell assemblies
–	But argued that higher order assemblies could be built from lower that were not entirely reduced to the latter
Computers
•	In some sense benefited from much of the above
•	Provided three kinds of advantages for psychology
–	Work on artificial intelligence – Simon and Newell
–	Computer programs as ways to send information through a kind of neural network
•	Again made the notion of purpose or goal respectable
•	Gave rise to multi-stage information processing models
–	Hardware vs. software
Work in language and linguistics
–	The Chomsky revolution
•	Showed that language could not be reduced to simple S-R connections
•	That, in fact, quite sophisticated and deep “programs” were necessary for learning, speaking, and understanding language
–	Language as the means of thought --- Vygotsky
–	Social uses of language in communication
The New Look in Psychology
•	Bruner and Harvard
–	James
–	Allport
•	The role of values in perception
•	Perceptual defense
–	Freudian overtones
–	But counter-explanations gave rise to interesting cognitive features
Developmental psychology
•	Piaget
–	Showing remarkable achievements by children which could not be reduced to S-R learning
–	But also showing that development was not linear but passed through various stages – not a new idea (Baldwin and others).
–	Schemas
•	Werner
Reasoning and Logic
•	Categorization and language
•	Actuarial vs. clinical decision making’
•	Statistics and rationality
•	Heuristics and informal reasoning
Relatively minor outside influences
•	Interest by physicists (Oppenheimer and others) in creating a unified science
•	Cognitive anthropology and cross-cultural linguistics (Whorf and others)
The importance of location and critical masses
•	The Harvard-MIT nexus
•	Fusion of physical, biological, and psychological sciences
•	The non-traditional departments of sciences at MIT
•	Harvard Society of Junior Fellows
•	The willingness of Harvard administrators to create institutes and centers for new approaches
•	Princeton Institute for Advanced Research
•	Carnegie-Mellon and AI
•	Stanford
•	Strong electrical engineering and computer science
•	Strong and involved medical school
•	A prescient series of psychology department chairs
•	Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences