100+Years+of+Psychology,+Machery

1. Introduction In psychology, theoretical change should lead to operational change. This means that if the theory of how a certain theoretical concept works or should be measured is changed, the methods of testing/proving that theory should reflect that change. The psychological study of concepts does not adhere to this. Throughout history, psychologists' theoretical understanding of concepts, as well as how to define what a concept is, have changed but their methodology rarely does. Almost all the researchers profiled in this article determine how the subjects learn a concept by introducing them to artificial symbols and teaching them to organize them arbitrarily. Subjects are said to understand the concept only when they are able to categorize all the symbols accordingly, regardless of the theory the researcher wishes to promote.

2. What is __the psychology__ of concepts? 2.1 Contemporary psychology of concepts In the modern __day__, theory of concepts focuses on: 'The Natural Kind Assumption' : believed that most concepts store the same type of information, are used in a similar way, and so on
 * 1) what type of knowledge is stored in concepts?
 * 2) how are concepts used by cognitive processes?
 * 3) how is our knowledge stored? images, words, etc?
 * 4) how do we acquire concepts?

2,2 Psychology concepts at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century At the end of the 19th century, __two__ experimental approaches to concepts emerge: these __two__ forms still heavily affect the modern __day__ study of theory of notions
 * 1) Ribot focuses on the content of consciousness while reading or hearing a __word__ at end of 19th (linguistic understanding)
 * 2) at beginning of 20th century, growing body of experimental research emerges on how we acquire concepts from encountering category members and how we __apply__ these concepts (concept __learning__)

this article focuses on the second __form__, concept __learning__ and categorization

3. The introspective psychology of concepts, 3.1 Fisher's Monograph Monograph from 1916 called 'The Process of Generalizing Abstraction; and its Product, the General Concept', thought to be first experimental work in concepts, and also the last experimental study of concepts in the tradition of introspective psychology Goals of monograph research:
 * 1) interested in what it is for subjects to consciously grasp a concept

3.2 The theoretical notion of concept
 * notion of concept is used by Fisher to refer to conscious mental content that is experienced when one grasps what characterizes a class of objects
 * some theorists propose that a concept of a given class is an experienced disposition to act in a given way when one encounters the members of this class (disposition to say dog when one sees them), others propose a concept of a given class as a conscious representation of it (an image or imageless mental representation)

3.3 Operationalization of the notion of concept
 * Fisher focuses on concept __learning__
 * categories of ten figures are created, all the figures __share__ a common part, which puts them in a category
 * a meaningless (artificial) name is given to each category [two types of artificial, category is artificial if it's made of parts that are abstract figures, etc which is the type Fisher uses, also artificial if it cross-cuts category distinctions made by people
 * subjects are presented with figures of a particular category and provide a category name, and are asked to introspect their inner life during the experiment
 * a week later, memories of the category figures are probed (presented with figures __again__ and asked to once __again__ name category)
 * process repeated every week //until no change is made to the definition//
 * subjects have "learned" the concept if no change is made

4. The functional psychology of concepts. 4.1 Hulls Monograph __Hull__ relies on behavioral data. Wants to characterize the measurable aspects of a general concept. How is the abstraction process affected by different encounters with the concept?

4.2 The theoretical notion of concept __Learning__ is unconscious. All your exposure to dogs and the word dog, eventually forms a subconscious meaning for the word/category "dog."

4.3 Operationalization of the notion of concept __learning__ Hull conducted an experiment with altered Chinese characters, similar to Fisher's (classical and artificial categories) Could the subjects __learn__ the concepts of what defined each of the twelve categories? A subject was thought to know a category only if they could categorize new __items__ presented during the experiment. It was performance based rather than based on what subjects' said about what they learned.

5. The behaviorist psychology of concept. 5.1 Smoke's monograph
 * 1932: 'An Objective Study of Concept Formation'
 * behaviorism was the dominant paradigm in American experimental psychology at the time
 * interesting because of its commitment to behaviorism and because it focuses mostly on the importance of negative instances in concept learning ('negative evidence'), an idea thought to have been first introduced by Smoke

5.2 The theoretical notion of concept
 * behaviorists define concepts as a disposition to associate category members with a given behavior, preferentially with a linguistic behavior (disposition to utter the name of the category when one encounters the members of this category)
 * acquiring a concept consists in learning the correct association between class and response, i.e. naming

5.3 Operationalization of the notion of concept __learning__
 * used ten classes of 16 meaningless visual stimuli
 * each class defined by specific definition satisfied by all and only its members, given meaningless name
 * a negative stimuli is also created, classes used are both artificial and classical
 * "Here is a series of 16 drawings, some are __blank__ and some are not. If it is, write yes, if not, write no. If you change your mind, stop and change your answer"
 * similar to Hull's operationalization: a subject has only learned the concept if and only if she correctly categorizes new items in this category without making any mistakes

6. The cognitive psychology of concepts. 6.1 Rosch and Mervis's article
 * 1975: 'Family Resemblances: Studies in the Internal Structure of Categories'
 * played crucial role in rejection of what is known as 'classical view of concepts,' which says that a concept consists of a definition, that is a set of necessary & jointly sufficient conditions of membership
 * contributed to formulation of prototype approach
 * contributed to establishing typicality phenomena (correlation between typicality and various properties of our categorization decisions)

6.2 The theoretical notion of concept
 * Unlike Smoke's behaviorist notion, in Rosch/Mervis' work concepts are thought of as bodies of knowledge, not as mere dispositions to have a given overt behavior in response to class, despite some similarities, this notion is not identical to Fisher & Moore's notion of concept because it doesn't have to be conscious

6.3 Operationalization of the notion of concept __learning__
 * want to establish that there is correlation between rate of learning, latencies of categorization decisions, and the typicality of category members
 * experiment 5 focuses on family resemblance (if item possesses few properties shared by other members of its category, but many properties possessed by few members of its category, it has a low degree of resemblance, and the contrary equals a high resemblance)

7. Discussion 7.1 The concept learning design All used similar experiments. Experiments were used to study concept learning (concept abstraction). Learning what belongs to a category. Used artificial categories as a control. Subjects don't have background knowledge about the category, therefore, they have to __start__ __learning__ a category/concept from the beginning. Included a learning phase. Included a testing phase.

7.2 The theoretical notions of concept and the operationalizations of concept learning Definitions of concepts: Excluding Fisher, most psychologists choose to prove their theory of concept by referring to subjects' performance- they know a concept only if they are able to categorize the symbols learned or new symbols according to the categories laid out by the researchers. According to operationalization theory, each of these psychologists should use a different methodology to prove their divergent theories.
 * Fisher and Moore: a concept is acquired consciously when a subject grasps what characterizes a class of objects
 * Hull: uses an introspective psychologist's approach, with added emphasis on how someone functionally grasps content
 * Smoke: concepts are not pieces of knowledge, but dispositions to act a certain way in response to similarities in stimuli (very different than the others)
 * Rosch, Merivs, etc: a concept is the information about a category that allows the subject to categorize objects in that category (what unites them). Not necessarily conscious.

8. Conclusion


 * Psychology of concepts does not appear for the first __time__ in the 1950's
 * Since the beginning of the twentieth century, psychologists of concepts have been using the similar experimental designs to study concept learning.
 * Operationalization change has been consistently violated.
 * Far __more__ work needs to be performed for a better picture.

Vocabulary

Operationalization: The process of defining a fuzzy concept so as to __make__ the concept measurable and to understand it in terms of empirical observations (Wikipedia). Principle of Operationalization Change: "Operationalization change should track theoretical change" (2).

Artificial: meaningless items

Classical: necessary and sufficient condition of membership

Cognitive psychology: studies mental processes including how people think, perceive, remember, and learn. Functional psychology: studies mental processes and behavior in terms of the environment.