In the 1940s and 1950s, American behaviorism was in full swing. However, during this period, the thought of cognitive revolution was brewing, and Ulric Neisser's Cognitive Psychology published in 1967 marked the formation of this new trend of thought. However, before this, it is difficult to determine its starting point. More psychologists believe that 1956 has played an obvious role in the formation and development of cognitive psychology, because in this year, "American psychologists published a series of psychological academic research results based on the viewpoint of information processing" (Liang Ningjian, 2003, p. 13). The first is the study of george miller (1920-). 1956 published an article entitled "The Magic 7 2: Our Capacity Limit of Processing Information" (Miller, 1956). This paper brings memory research back to psychology and shows how to apply the concept of information theory to the expression of human information processing. Secondly, Jerome Bruner (19 15-) advocated the study of "the new face movement in perception". Bruner and his colleagues believe that the perceiver plays an active role in perception, rather than a passive recorder of perceptual data, and that the perceiver's personality and social background have a great influence on what he sees and hears. Thirdly, the research on psychophysics published by S.S.Stevens in 1956 shows the nonlinear relationship between people's perception of stimuli and the intensity of physical stimuli.
During the period of 1956, there are three most influential studies on cognitive psychology: Leon Festinger (19 19 ~ 1989), H.A. Simon and A. Newell's cognitive dissonance theory.
Noam Chomsky (1928-) began to publish his systematic linguistic research achievement "Three Models of Language Description" in 1956 (Chomsky, 1956). The phrase structure grammar proposed by Chomsky can produce all languages that Turing machine can recognize, and the language that Turing machine can recognize is the string that can stop Turing machine. Then Chomsky published his masterpiece Syntactic Structure in 1957, which marked the birth of "transformational generative grammar". Transformational generative grammar not only describes human language behavior, but also studies the cognitive system and universal grammar embodied in human brain, emphasizing the explanation of human language ability. Chomsky himself saw the significance of transformational generative grammar to cognitive science from the very beginning, and advocated that the study of linguistics should be combined with the study of neuroscience, psychology and biology to make contributions to exploring the mysteries of the human brain.
These studies turn the focus of attention to the inside of the human brain, but how does the inside of the human brain work? Turing clearly put forward the "Turing Machine" model, and the success of Simon and newell's "Logical Theory Machine" (LTM for short) in 1956 prepared the language and framework for what was later called information processing psychology. Simon and Newell believe that "logic theory machine" is not only a powerful proof of computer intelligence, but also a proof of human cognitive nature. The key feature of the system is that complex tasks are decomposed into sub-objectives, information processing is characterized as a series of program instructions, and heuristic methods are also used to assist decision-making (Newell &: Simon, 1956). Until 1967, the famous American psychologist Ulric Neisser published the book Cognitive Psychology, which was not only the first textbook named Cognitive Psychology, but also established the content scope of a new discipline. Under the framework of information processing theory, it makes a historical summary of the previous work in cognitive psychology, and its outstanding contribution is to develop indirect measurement methods such as revealing people's internal psychological activities by using reaction time. After his works were published in Ulric Neisser, the magazine Cognitive Psychology and the magazine Cognitive Science were published from 1970 and 1977 respectively. Whether or not 1956 is the starting point of cognitive psychology, psychologists all admit that Ulric Neisser's cognitive psychology from 1967 is the symbol of the formation of modern cognitive psychology.
Second, the philosophical origin of cognitive psychology
The philosophical origin of cognitive psychology is a complex problem, because in its development process, various philosophical thoughts struggle and blend with each other. But in a more general sense, the philosophical origins of cognitive psychology are empiricism, positivism, logical positivism and behaviorism. Of course, rationalism also plays a key role in correcting and denying behaviorism and reductionism.
Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, psychologists have increasingly shifted their research focus from explicit behavior to internal cognitive process to explore the role of internal cognitive mechanism in behavior regulation. Influenced by rationalism tradition, these psychologists believe that cognitive mechanism plays an important role in the process of knowledge acquisition, storage and use. The task of psychology is to discover the "cognitive mechanism" between stimulus and behavioral response, and to explore the characteristics and laws of cognitive mechanism. But cognitive psychology is still empirical. As one of the representatives of social constructivism, the British psychologist Hare (R) pointed out: "The background of this new cognitivism is the demise of behaviorism-but as a methodology, behaviorism still exists for a long time after its demise as a general theory." (Harry, 1999). It inherited behaviorism in many aspects, and "the empirical model was completely preserved" (Kevin, 1997). Cognitive psychology, which studies according to empirical orientation, is mainly "empiricism"
Third, the development and contradictory movement of modern psychology itself
Cognitive psychology is the natural result of the development of modern psychology and contradictory movement. Specifically, it is closely related to early experimental psychology, gestalt psychology, behavioral psychology and Piaget's genetic epistemology.
(A) the connection with early experimental psychology
Since Feng Te founded experimental psychology, cognitive research has shifted from philosophical perspective to psychological perspective. From the viewpoint of psychochemistry, Feng Te used the method of element decomposition to study cognition and other psychological phenomena. At the same time, from the standpoint of constructivism, he explored the ways and laws of various psychological elements forming various psychological complexes, and summarized them with the concept of apperception. "Modern cognitive psychology inherits and develops the research tradition of early experimental psychology. For example, the experiment of reaction is one of the main topics in modern cognitive psychology research. " (YeHaoSheng, 1998, p. 498) Therefore, it can be said that modern cognitive psychology is the return of experimental psychology to early experimental psychology after overthrowing behaviorism.
Early experimental psychology took the subjects' direct experience as the research object of psychology and advocated the method of experiment plus introspection. On the basis of criticism and reform, cognitive psychology inherited Feng Te's introspection method and put forward "oral report analysis method" or "thinking aloud method" (YeHaoSheng, 1998, pp. 498-499).
(B) Contact Gestalt Psychology
Gestalt psychology rose in the early 20th century. It is a psychological system that opposes factor analysis and emphasizes the whole organization. Gestalt psychology has done a lot of research on perception, thinking and other issues, "emphasizing the principles of gestalt organization and structure, thinking is a' reorganization' or' epiphany' of the whole problem situation".
Cognitive psychology emphasizes the integrity and internal psychological mechanism of research, the decoding, coding and integration of information, the interrelationship between internal psychological activities and the comprehensive research by means of simulation, which is in the same strain as Gestalt psychology. In addition, the research fields of cognitive psychology and gestalt psychology are close. Gestalt psychology focuses on the study of perception, thinking and learning. Information processing psychology mainly studies the process of receiving, coding and storing information, involving cognitive processes such as representation, attention, memory, problem solving and creative thinking. However, the organizing principle of Gestalt Psychology is mainly confined to the field of perception, which cannot solve people's complicated intentional activities and cognitive activities. Moreover, gestalt psychology emphasizes the integrity of the internal gestalt on the one hand, and the direct observation of experience on the other, so it is difficult to deeply analyze the mechanism between direct experience and internal psychological structure.
(3) contact behavior psychology
From the perspective of empirical psychology, behaviorism dominated in the first half of the 20th century and cognitive psychology dominated in the second half of the 20th century. However, the concept of intermediary in behaviorism in the first half has long shaken the theory of behaviorism and prepared for cognitive psychology, which was formed and developed in the struggle with behaviorism, but it is most closely related to behaviorism.
Behaviorism provides an effective experimental methodology system for cognitive psychology. In methodology, cognitive psychology deepens behaviorism. Information processing psychology, like behaviorism, keeps the discussion of psychological process as operable as possible in order to embody objectivity. Based on the stimulus-intermediate variable-response model, information processing psychology puts forward an input-internal information processing-output research model similar to computer operation.
Theoretically, the holistic behavior view of purpose-object means advocated by tolman, a new behaviorist, and the purpose behaviorism with comprehensive cognitive characteristics have had a certain influence on the rise of information processing psychology. Norman, a cognitive psychologist, put forward an information processing system with regulation system as its core, emphasizing the integration of behavior and cognition.
(4) Contact Piaget's genetic epistemology.
Piaget's genetic epistemology and information processing cognitive psychology belong to two different cognitive psychology models, but they both pay attention to the internal structure or mechanism of human cognition, and are allies of the "cognitive revolution".
Influenced by Kant, Piaget put forward the concept of "innate schema", which explains the mechanism of children's continuous development of cognitive structure through assimilation and adaptation. Post-war information processing psychology also fully embodies the thoughts of system theory, cybernetics and information theory. It is believed that human information processing is not a simple stimulus-response, but a process of selecting, accepting, coding, processing, storing, extracting and using information in the existing cognitive structure.
Piaget's genetic epistemology and information processing psychology both show the improvement of behaviorism methodology and show completely similar compatibility. Piaget used interactive s? R formula replaces the simple STR one-way activity mode, and further puts forward STATTR formula, which holds that stimulus is brought into assimilation structure to cause response. Information processing psychology puts forward the mode of input T internal information processing T output. It can be seen that these two schools have similarities on many theoretical issues. But Piaget is more influenced by biofunctionalism, and information processing psychology is more inspired by computer function analogy. They are two different development models of cognitive psychology.
In a word, the birth of information processing psychology first occurred in American psychology under the rule of behaviorism, but it was also influenced by many psychological theories from outside the United States.
Fourthly, the research of related disciplines and the influence of social demand.
Scientific and technological achievements in the first half of the 20th century provided technical possibilities for deeper and more complex cognitive research, while related disciplines and theoretical research also provided ideas or metaphors for cognitive research, and even expressed language, mainly including linguistics and computer science. In addition, the social demand at that time, especially the need to study human factors related to system theory, cybernetics and information theory, greatly promoted the occurrence and development of information processing psychology.
(A) the impact of psycholinguistics
In his book Speech Acts, Skinner explained the process of children's language acquisition completely from the viewpoint of behaviorism (Skinner, 1957). However, Skinner's view cannot be accepted by linguists. Chomsky published a detailed and severely worded critical comment, which dealt a great blow to Skinner's viewpoint (Chomsky, 1959).
Chomsky believes that human language packages contain many creative elements, and it is impossible for anyone to obtain all the contents of the language through learning, many of which are created and developed by himself in practice (Chomsky, 1959). Chomsky put forward the famous transformational generative grammar theory. In addition, he also believes that people's language ability is mainly innate, and it is precisely because of this that people can make their mother tongue's listening and speaking ability develop rapidly in the critical period of language (YeHaoSheng, 502, p.502). Chomsky's theory and criticism fully exposed the weakness of behaviorism and played a positive role in promoting the formation and development of information processing psychology.
(B) the impact of human factors and related theoretical research
Since the 1940s, the rapid development of science and technology has made people face the situation of information expansion, and the need of war has promoted the development of information theory, cybernetics, signal detection and other theories. How to improve people's ability to process information has become an urgent social demand.
The research of information theory began with C.E.Shannon, a British scientist. He regarded communication as the process of information transmission in a noisy channel, and he developed a set of mathematical theories about communication called information theory. According to this theory, not only electronic devices such as radar can be regarded as devices that send, convert and receive information, but also people can be regarded as information processors. Under the influence of this theory, Bloomwood Bent began to deal with psychological problems such as human perception, attention and information channel from the perspective of information processing. Obviously, this research belongs to cognitive psychology. His research set a precedent for the application of information theory in psychology.
(c) the impact of computer science or artificial intelligence research
Computer science not only provides technical tools and descriptive language for the formation of information processing theory, but also provides the basis of related computing theory. It can be said that computer science has played a decisive role in the formation and development of information processing psychology, especially Turing's work has had a great influence on how people analyze and study intelligence. The realization of artificial intelligence research has a minimum condition, that is, to understand the structure and function of human intelligence as much as possible. Therefore, in the process of developing artificial intelligence programs, they made a detailed study on how people solve problems. They used the "oral report analysis method" to record and analyze the oral report materials of chess masters, simple geometry solvers and cryptographic arithmetic solvers, put forward the theory of production problem solving, and developed and used the information processing language. With the development of computer science and artificial intelligence research, people compare the human brain with computers more and more, and a large number of terms in computer science have entered the field of psychological research. People can use the concepts of storage, buffering, information storage and information extraction to describe people's cognition, and people begin to learn from the research methods of machine intelligence to study people's intelligence. Since the late 1960s, cognitive psychology of information processing has gradually become the mainstream of psychological development.