Review of Some of Bruce Whittlesea’s Work

Although, I’m not going to be quoting or referencing in this article as much as I will putting forward others’ ideas as my own; I will say that much of this posting comes from reading four articles from Whittlesea et. al. ranging from 1987-1994.

The debates and experiments designed to test hypotheses about the semantics of the use of the word “memory” have gone so far down the road of specificity of retrieval that it doesn’t even make sense anymore. Cognitive scientists want to have some sort of taxonomy of tasks and results, which are very difficult to explain in ordinary language, and sometimes impossible to link to a benefit to everyday life. When I read about his five different constraints he was putting in, and then added about three other variables (1), I just wondered how much further we had to go with these experiments. Do we need to come up with a new Journal of Nanopsychology?

A lot of the tasks in these experiments fall under the usual criticism of not being normal enough. Another criticism I have is that there is only one reference to real world application, and it does feel really hypocritical to say that. Not in the sense that I wonder if my research has no application to society, but I really don’t like to hear people make that criticism. It seems that that person is being naïve and lazy for not understanding the article properly from the scientist’s point of view. However, the only time I remember the authors mentioning real world application of their conclusion is that dermatologists will make fewer misdiagnoses, if they are aware that their performance will be negatively affected due to similarity of the target to cases previously seen in the same time frame. This effect can be found up to two weeks after training.

On a more specific note, I didn’t like his explanation of Type II-0, which he calls a puzzling anomalous data point (II-0 = I-1). In experiment 1 those stimuli did not follow the I-1 > II-0 = II-2 > III-1 pattern, and he explained that II-0 was experienced in integral and analytic training. Subjects in the class-label cue condition, accessing analytical knowledge on most stimuli, recognized the familiar string of letters and classified them, reference “holistically-coded representation” of the trading items. Ready for the more complex hypothesis? Not only was the typicality of each letter of each training stimulus encoded for its category, but also was the analytic information in relation to each other letter of the stimulus. Participants are experiencing the fruits of analysis embedded within the code of a particular item in the task. This is the weakest part of his paper, and although there is no apparent alternative, his explanation seems off the mark.

Comments: rbecker58@msn.com

Footnotes
(1) Factors affecting the decision of the participant to use analytic knowledge or whole object knowledge to each task: 1. Exp. 1) Task focus: Individual Events vs. experience of the categories. 2. Exp. 2) Physical arrangement of the stimuli. 3. Exp. 3) Sequence of items and category labels. 4. Exp. 4) Processing available by concomitant tasks. 5. Exp. 5) Familiarity of the cues offered. Other constraints: Demands for speed and accuracy of performance, previous specific experience dealing with similar members in only one way, and complexity/simplicity of the structure of the domain.

Here are some notes from 2/27/03, the day Fred Rogers died of stomach cancer at 74.
msn entertainment news section.

Rogers did much of the puppet work and voices himself. He also studied early childhood development at the University of Pittsburgh and consulted with an expert there over the years.
Reminds me of Amy Needham’s sticky mittens experiments.

Rogers said in a 1995 interview. "I always thought I was a neighbor who just came in for a visit."

I hate my neighbors. If I had Fred Rogers for a neighbor, he wouldn’t put a bucket on his side of our shared driveway.

Negri said Rogers refused to accept shoddy ad-libbing by guests who may have thought they could slack off during a kid's show.
Wow! What a hard ass.

Rogers taught children how to share, deal with anger and even why they shouldn't fear the bathtub by assuring them they'll never go down the drain.

I was more afraid of getting flushed down the toilet.

Rogers came out of broadcasting retirement last year to record public service announcements for the Public Broadcasting Service telling parents how to help their children deal with the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. "If they see the tragedy replayed on television, they might think it's happening at that moment," he said.
Give the kids a little credit Fred.

His ratings peaked in 1985-86, where 10.7 million viewer tuned, in but dropped to 3.6 million by the 1999-2000 episode. It is reported that he was ordained in 1963 to continue to do good works for the benefit of children. Shortly afterward he started his puppet show which five years later broadcast to a few cities around Latrobe like Boston and Washington. Later that show developed into Mister Rogers’s Neighborhood on a network that became PBS. It is his inoffensive message on being polite and helping others that gave him staying power through a politically incorrect-ometer charged 90s, which would have undermined a minister speaking about God. Being ten years old when the shows popularity peaked, I appreciate being able to watch his rise in popularity as a child. I’m glad that I didn’t grow up watching Barney or Teletubbies. That experience of growing up watching Fred Rogers and Jim Henson’s creations, ranks right up there with being alive at a time when Michael Jordan is playing basketball, or Jerry Rice is playing football.

Comments/Concerns: rbecker58@msn.com

Lucky to be a college graduate for five years and not a job offer in my field since. It is actually somewhat satisfying to see myself as a struggling cognitive scientist. Too unnecessarily rebellious as an undergraduate, I ended up with a 2.64 GPA from a suitcase-state-university, no job prospects, and no graduate program placement. A few well-respected people in the field know me now though and there are projects that I am welcome to work on if I choose. However, most people won't pay you for your time, or may even ask that you to register for the lab as credit, which will cost you some money. These are not the kind of difficulties that bother me though.
Our minds demonstrate discrimination of stimuli on various tasks, recall and recognition abilities, and response measures for novel sensory experiences which create words like attention, memory, and learning in any person's vocabulary. Ever since I was in high school, wanted to make a substantial contribution, actually to go as far as to start a Kuhnian-type revolution in the field of psychology. That it may be possible to describe, predict, and alter our thoughts and unlock unknown potential of our minds is what I believe life is all about for me, because that is the core of the problem of alleviating suffering. So through this vehicle of psychology I believe it is possible to at least to a small degree help people lead happier and more satifying lives with less suffering.
The worst part of this situation is the justification people with uneducated opinions receive from learning about what I do with my time now that I have my degree. I have heard a lot of people bash cognitive science. They say things like, "What would a person ever do with a worthless degree like psychology?" and "Those psychologists on TV don't know anything." Actually, people who get on TV or write self-help/relationship-help are pretty worthless and I could even argue harmful to the discipline, but if they can help someone think about their situation in a way that they may not have before and it changes a maladaptive behavior in their life then I guess that's better than nothing. Anyway, when people say things like that it bothers me to think that my impoverished state and relatively less tangible skills may lead parents of young adults, who want to become cognitive scientists or clinical psychologists, to discourage them. It would also be nice just to change a few opinions to have a better idea of what psychology is really about besides relating it to Dr. Phil, which I don't even consider a psychologist.
No hang-in-there's or pity please, because I am passionate about my beliefs and stubborn enough to see this road less travelled through and my main point about writing this is to respond to (and hopefully persuade people to change) their views about the field of psychology.