Cognitive Psychology and Psychometric Theory

Baddeley, Alan

doi:10.1007/978-1-4684-1083-9_43

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…To show how much I support them, I note that elsewhere (Hunt 1980a), in a paper that Pylyshyn could not have known about, I have proposed a theory of cognition stated at the virtual machine level. For those wishing direct opposition to both Pylyshyn's (and my) views, I suggest Baddeley's (1980) critique of this proposal. You will find no frontal attack in the present paper.…”

Section: The Borders Of Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Computation and cognition: issues in the foundations of cognitive science

Pylyshyn¹

1980

Behav Brain Sci

1,087

188

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The computational view of mind rests on certain intuitions regarding the fundamental similarity between computation and cognition. We examine some of these intuitions and suggest that they derive from the fact that computers and human organisms are both physical systems whose behavior is correctly described as being governed by rules acting on symbolic representations. Some of the implications of this view are discussed. It is suggested that a fundamental hypothesis of this approach (the “proprietary vocabulary hypothesis”) is that there is a natural domain of human functioning (roughly what we intuitively associate with perceiving, reasoning, and acting) that can be addressed exclusively in terms of a formal symbolic or algorithmic vocabulary or level of analysis.Much of the paper elaborates various conditions that need to be met if a literal view of mental activity as computation is to serve as the basis for explanatory theories. The coherence of such a view depends on there being a principled distinction between functions whose explanation requires that we posit internal representations and those that we can appropriately describe as merely instantiating causal physical or biological laws. In this paper the distinction is empirically grounded in a methodological criterion called the “cognitive impenetrability condition.” Functions are said to be cognitively impenetrable if they cannot be influenced by such purely cognitive factors as goals, beliefs, inferences, tacit knowledge, and so on. Such a criterion makes it possible to empirically separate the fixed capacities of mind (called its “functional architecture”) from the particular representations and algorithms used on specific occasions. In order for computational theories to avoid being ad hoc, they must deal effectively with the “degrees of freedom” problem by constraining the extent to which they can be arbitrarily adjusted post hoc to fit some particular set of observations. This in turn requires that the fixed architectural function and the algorithms be independently validated. It is argued that the architectural assumptions implicit in many contemporary models run afoul of the cognitive impenetrability condition, since the required fixed functions are demonstrably sensitive to tacit knowledge and goals. The paper concludes with some tactical suggestions for the development of computational cognitive theories.

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Section: The Borders Of Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Computation and cognition: issues in the foundations of cognitive science

Pylyshyn¹

1980

Behav Brain Sci

1,087

188

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“…One reason for these seemingly divergent findings may be that the small samples characteristic of earlier, factor-analytic investigations simply constrained the number of factors which could be extracted, independent of their relative ' meaningfulness ' (cf. Bennett-Levy & Powell, 1980 , 1990), our working hypothesis is that these dimensions reflect application of the same processes, as are tapped by laboratory tasks, to situations in everyday life (Baddeley, 1981 ;Puckett, Reese, Cohen & Pollina, in press). The findings obtained in Study 2 provide limited support for that hypothesis, at least insofar as the available (social or verbal) knowledge base may be involved in such processing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dimensions of everyday memory in young adulthood

Pollina

Greene

Tunick

et al. 1992

British J of Psychology

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This paper reports the findings of two studies on everyday memory in young adulthood. In Study 1, 387 male and female college students (18-22 years old) completed the 25-item Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ; Broadbent, Cooper, Fitzgerald & Parkes, 1982). Principal components analysis yielded five internally consistent factors: distractibility; misdirected actions; spatial/kinaesthetic memory; interpersonal intelligence; and memory for names. Further, each of these dimensions was interpretable within an information-processing framework. Study 2 examined the relation of the five everyday memory dimensions obtained in Study 1 to measures of working memory and traditional intelligence in a separate sample of 32 college students. Findings obtained in Study 2 suggest that attentional processes may be important components of the everyday memory construct.

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“…Slow phonological coding retards the processing in working memory. The components of working memory are the articulatory loop, visual-spatial scratch pad, and a central executive unit (Baddeley, 1981). Inasmuch as the articulatory loop (and the visual-spatial scratch pad) is astrategic control unit (Reisberg, Rappaport, & O'Shaughnessy, 1984), slow phonological coding would impede efficient processing.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%