|
Welcome to... |
|
To contact the web manager: |
|
E-mail Colin M. Burchfield, Ph.D. |
|
Cognitive Revolution Debate
|
|
With the advent of cognitive psychology, behavioral theory was, at least theoretically, supplanted. With a growing belief in psychology about the existence of intervening variables or mediator variables, cognitive psychology appeared to permit a true involvement on the part of human beings in determining their behaviors. That is, unlike behaviorism that conceived of humans as determined by the environment or past reinforcements, cognitive psychology appeared to present a conceptualization of human beings as agents in their own behaviors.
Was the “cognitive revolution,” however, really a revolution? The long and short of the answer is, “probably no.” Cognitive explanations have come to dominate not only the basic aspects of the discipline, such as learning and language, but also the more applied aspects of the discipline such as school psychology and clinical psychology/psychotherapy. This domination of the discipline means that explanations are now based less on observable behaviors and more on inclusion of the mind.
Although mainstream psychologists have been more willing to theorize about non-observables, they have maintained their Newtonian heritage and their models have been instrumental in preserving the Newtonian paradigm for modern use.
During Newton’s time, the universe was conceived of as operating like a great clock (he was, of course, a clock maker), flowing continuously and objectively along the line of time. Today, the analogy used by cognitive psychology is the modern digital computer - but the concept has remained fundamentally unchanged. While the new computer analogy places more emphasis on the software, it has not changed the characteristics of the machinery itself.
Time - one parsimonious way of summing this up is to point to their common temporal metaphysic. A Newtonian, linear approach to time, as Slife points out, remains a primary assumption in cognitive psychology. Events are conceived as taking place across time and cognitive processing of these events is itself subject to temporal constraints. Objective, linear time relations, wherein the past is the determining factor in present events, still organizes input from the environment.
Cognitive psychology does, on first blush, appear to represent more rationalistic theorizing than did behaviorism, given the representation of mind in its theorizing. However, when analyzed more closely, the cognitive turn is, in fact, just as empirical in its perspective as behaviorism was. Past input governs all cognitive systems. Even cognitive explanations that seem to emphasize present constructive or reconstructive aspects of cognition are often reducible to conventional linear, Newtonian, theorizing, just as behaviorism before it.
While cognitive psychology has liberalized behavioral method and theory to include the “software” of the mind, it still relies exclusively on mechanistic metaphors and preserves every characteristic of Newton’s temporal framework. Thus, the cognitive revolution was not, in fact, very revolutionary at all. |
|
Follow the above links (e.g., images) to purchase good books on thinking about critical issues/controversial issues in psychology. |
|
www.GivingPsychologyAway.net—The Ultimate Psychology Resource! |