The material basis of memory

Neuroscientist t Dr. Doping talks about memory molecules, material traces of memories and the mechanism of the learning process.How is long-term memory? What is the task of neurophysiology in the XXI century? What are the different hypothesis on the material bases of memory today? Is it possible to control the memory?

There are several reasonable hypotheses saying that every time the memory is generated. When we hear music and reproduce it from memory, every time we generate it. This memory is based on a very complex process, understand that - one of the problems of modern neurophysiology.

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Similarly, it was found that our memory is dependent on proteins. If we will teach something to the animal, human and block the synthesis of proteins, and check it turns out that he does not remember anything after two or three days. The new proteins must be synthesized to have been formed and the memory is preserved, that is, it depends on the protein synthesis. The problem is that while protein life - days, at most a week, only a few proteins live a little longer. 98% of all proteins in 3-4 days decomposed and replaced by new ones, there is a constant synthesis. That is, if somewhere deposited memory in the form of molecules coding, they all fall apart in a few days. And as we know, our memory is stored for years and decades. This contradiction is even served as the basis for a certain pessimism.

In 2006, there have been several articles about the molecule, which can in some approximation called memory molecule. This protein molecule in the nervous system in the most critical areas - in contact (called synapses) between nerve cells. Nerve cells receive and transmit information, the transmission of information within the nervous cells occurs electrically, and neighbors - chemical. At the point of contact where the electrical energy is converted into chemical, there is a system, which is at the head of the regulatory molecule that controls the transport, receptors, membrane, that is controlled by another protein. It turned out that if this system to destroy, block, there is nothing in its activity does not, in anything other than the memory, this system is not involved.

Studies of Thinking in Cognitive Psychology

Psychologist Dr. Doping talks about specificity of human thought, ways of solving syllogisms.

The study of thinking in cognitive psychology began in the logic of the informational approach: in fact, thinking, as well as other processes, was interpreted as a process of information processing and its transformation in the course of solving problems. And the very first studies were associated with the first attempt to construct a model of artificial intelligence. They occupy Herbert Simon and Allen Newell, said in fact, in 1956, of the first thinking model, which has proved a theorem in formal logic called "Logic theorist."

What principles were behind this study? If we say that a computer is similar to the brain, let them work differently, if the brain realizes the thinking and the computer implements specific programs and the two processes are similar to each other and lead to the same results, then, in fact, we have the right, We believed these researchers to consider the program, a crucial problem (eg, proving logical theorems), as a theory of thought or theory of human behavior in the course of solving problems. Therefore, Newell and Simon studied in parallel protocols solving the problem of the people and their protocols work computer programs, which, strictly speaking, there were two major aspects: it is the language of knowledge representation and transformation rules. It works in Newell and Simon appears important to further the idea of the psychology of thinking heuristics. Not just the algorithm as the exhaustive search of all possible solutions, and the rules or principles of the search space reduction, which leads to unwarranted finding results, but significantly reduce the number of samples. After the first successes, "The logic of theoretical," which really proved the theorem about the same as proving studied students, Newell and Simon have started a new ambitious goal - to build a universal solver of problems, expanding the scope of its models on the problem chess, Crypto-arithmetic task - task type "The wolf, goat and cabbage." But in the end, these developments was abandoned for lack of versatility. And in general, it became clear that perhaps the case in those tasks, which are computer programs, and the people who are chosen as subjects (usually were university students, meet the challenges of certain rules learned before them) and, perhaps, in fact, people did not think so, as it should from these studies.

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And in fact, from here start two opposite lines. On the one hand, developments in the field of artificial intelligence, where developers have not been very interesting, it seems there is what makes their computer, that really makes a person. And the bet was placed more on the performance of your computer, than the approach to human thinking. And on the other hand, radically alternative line tried to answer the question, and how did people think. When they began to deal in this area, we realized that a man thinks is fundamentally wrong, like a computer. Here, one of the first signs became a researcher Peter Ueycon, which is very interested in the problem, and why scientists, when looking for ways to test his theory, for some reason, looking for confirmation rather than refutation. Why put forward a hypothesis, we are selective with respect to the information that our hypothesis is confirmed, and blind to everything else.

Ueyson conducted a series of studies, which showed that the tendency to confirmation - one of the most persistent and powerful features of the human mind. For example, he played with his subjects in such a simple game. He told them: "I'll call you a series of three numbers and you guess the law, which in this series is," he said, "2, 4, 6", and people had to make their own versions of a number, following the same laws, to which he answered them, "yes" or "no." And then people started immediately confirm their hypothesis. For example, thinking that law - is to increase each time by 2, they said, "3, 5, 7", received the answer is "yes." Thinking that the law - it even numbers, increasing by 2, responded: "8, 10, 12," received the answer is "yes." This could go on indefinitely, because in fact Ueyson conceived law "any ascending series." And any number of immediately descending test could give a hint. But they fingered, fingered and fingered, not trying to test alternatives. Similar data has shown experiment with the famous goal with four cards, through which Ueyson mainly in psychology and known. The subjects were asked to look at the four cards on which were written the letters A and K, numbers 4 and 7, and check the rule: if on one side of the card vowel, then on the other side is an even number. We had to turn the minimum number of cards to test this rule. Research has shown that even in universities problem is solved by less than a quarter of people, but the problem is the same: the tendency to confirmation. I offer at your leisure to try to solve it.

Very similar findings in the study of syllogisms were obtained Ueysona colleague, Philip Johnson-Laird, author of the theory of mental models, which was interesting, and which, strictly speaking, people rely when deciding syllogisms, when making inferences based on assumptions. For example, we have such a premise: "Some Russian - idealists," "All the Bolsheviks are Russians." Can we correct conclusion that all the Bolsheviks - the idealists? It turns out that most of the subjects said: "Yes, of course." Why? Because it seems to be true. That is, in fact, when a person decides to syllogism, it relies more on the credibility of output than on logical rigor. Another important phenomenon that opened Johnson-Laird, was called "the effect of the atmosphere." It turned out that if the premises set forth in the affirmative, positive, people tend to make or confirm a positive conclusion, and if there is at least one negative statement, people tend to make a negative conclusion. For example, the output of our syllogism that some Bolsheviks are not idealists, most people will be rejected as invalid just because of negative assumptions we did not. And it's usually the likelihood and effect of the atmosphere, in fact, exhaustive, as it turned out, to explain the decision and the conclusions of syllogisms ordinary people.

But perhaps the most well-known study, the most striking and, in the end, awarded the Nobel Prize in economics, have been carried out by American researchers Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the 70-80 years of the twentieth century. It Kahneman in 2002 received the Nobel Prize in economics, Tversky did not live up to it. Nevertheless, they spent together, these studies have created the famous "prospect theory" that explains the mechanism of problem solving, reasoning and decision-making person. What did they find? They found that when a person makes some output, estimates the probability of an event or some selects one of several alternatives, it is a little bit based on the actual figures contained in this problem, but in a very high degree based on the method of delivery problems on the context, in which it is presented, and in addition, we identified a couple of heuristics that underlie the mistakes that people make, first of all, a way of presenting information and context. Tversky Kahneman formulated with the right frame within which to solve the problem, the choice is made. For example, if we say that the fare on the subway will rise from 30 to 35 rubles, we are very indignant, it will cause a storm of calls. If we say that again we consume daily lunch will rise from 300 to 305 rubles, that we almost do not notice, although the absolute difference, the absolute loss in both cases is the same. A method of presenting information can affect at least strongly. Tversky Kahneman conducted a famous study, conventionally referred to as "Asian epidemic disease", where subjects were given a fairly complex situation descriptions. If we ultimately simplify what was happening, then people say that we are waiting for the epidemic Asian disease, an estimated 600 people die, and one half of the subjects said: "This is a program that will save 200 people. Take the "People for the most part responded:" Take. " And another said: "This is a program, but 400 people still die. We take? "People tend to prefer a different program, with more intricate details, avoiding the loss of the subjective.

And in fact, much the same way they work heuristics are described with Tversky Kahneman - is the availability heuristic representativeness heuristic and associated with the way we search and use available information. Availability heuristic is that we are taking a decision, making the inference, making judgments about the likelihood, based on the information that we have at this point in time, and often are not looking for another. It is on this heuristic keeps the myth of divorces among the stars. Why? Because we can easily come up with an example. We are much more difficult to come up and find an example or examples of a sufficient number of divorces among ordinary people, but in fact they are no less frequent.

And as to the representativeness heuristic, it is that we, when we select the information to make a choice some or make some assessment, look, if our hypothesis is similar to the information that is available, whether it is representative . There Tversky Kahneman spent with another famous experiment, giving his description of the subjects girls named Linda, about which it was told that she studied at the University of philosophy, when studied, participated in demonstrations against nuclear weapons, fighting for animal rights and so on. And then asked to rate how likely Linda statement about: the fact that it a bank teller, or that it is a cashier and an active feminist. And the subjects were selected, of course, the second option for the most part. Why? Because Linda is representative of the feminists. Although actually belong to the same category, one group is always more likely than belonging to the two groups at the same time. This error disjunction - one of the brightest errors of human thought, which also studied the Tversky and Kahneman, then summarizing it in a unified theory that applied to the economy and brought Kahneman the Nobel Prize.

Thinking as a solution of problems

Psychologist Dr. Doping talks about the phenomenon of insight and approaches to solving problems.

Studies in the psychology of thinking starts at the end of the XIX century in the city of Würzburg, the corresponding school and was named the Würzburg school of psychology of thinking. Prior to this, psychologists believed that thinking is no different from the rest of the processes of perception, memory, and it is subject to the same laws of association, and we find a solution for the associations in our past experience. Vyurtsburzhtsy first try to understand the specifics of thinking, they even came up with this special method based on the received time in the psychology method of introspection, or peering inside. But it is very difficult to peer inside yourself, even solving simple mental tasks, such as for example understanding the meaning of the proverb. So they came up with to break up the monitoring process into small pieces and observe, for example, what happens in the moment when a proverb read that at a time when its meaning was understood that at the moment when we began to explain the meaning and so on.

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This introspection was called systematic experimental. But, in fact, tasks that used the Wurzburg psychologists were not thinking problems in the strict sense of the word. They somehow relied on past experience. And the most important discovery of psychology vyurtsburzhtsev was that they found that thinking, apparently, is not confined to the sensory images that are stored in our memory. It's not just the connection between the images themselves, but this is something different from them, and not reducible to them. In fact, the most important discovery was the discovery vyurtsburzhtsev ugly nature of thinking. As the thinking units have been providing thought as a focus on the search for a solution, as a consciousness, a rule, or the relationship between some elements, or of the intention to solve the mental problem. This sensuous ugly way of thinking was later picked up by a follower of the Würzburg school, who worked later, was not part of this school, but it belonged to the ideological. It was Otto Selz, a psychologist, later died at Auschwitz, who tried to understand how a person decides its tasks, analyzing the structure of the problem. What is the problem? We have something given - we know this, we need to find something - we do not know. And in order to find it, we need to use some sort of operation, or some method.

What is the unsolved problem? This is such an unfinished complex, including this initial, desired and the method of the desired location. And the main operation, which we use in solving problems - an operation to fill this complex. How can we fill? And Brawn is analyzing their experimental data - also on simple tasks like selecting a synonym to the word - several possible ways to compensate. Firstly, we can just find a solution to past experience - to take and move, if we have to solve such problems. This routine will be called actualization means. We just take out the money and immediately find the solution. When finished there is no solution, we can try to find in our past experience complex, similar to our unfinished, but already completed, in which there is required, and the method for its determination, try to abstract the method of past experience and transfer it to our urgent task.

And what if in our experience of the finished, completed the complex not? Then the abstraction can not be made from the past, but, for example, from the observation of some of the situation around us, which is similar to our unfinished complex. But to do that all the time we need to keep it in mind. Brawn suggests that this is what Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod. He needed something that would connect the earth and the sky, would make it possible to ground lightning, and one day he saw a kite, whose tail hanging down. It was completed complex, from which Benjamin Franklin abstracted method and got the solution of his task.

But it is not clear what to do with this creativity - poetic, artistic, and so on. Brawn in this situation uncomfortable, because every time for it replenishing complex - is to use past experience. As Vyurtsburzhtsy, he believes that thinking is based on past experience, and we are only the non-sensuous abstract the method that allows you to find a solution. He writes about a particular evaluative combined effects, goal-setting, which creates a work of art, a poem, and so on. But the combination of such effects, which is also already present in our previous experience. That is, the poet, to do one way or another based on past experience. And only in such a school of psychology of thinking as Gestalt psychology, psychology of integrity, the idea that thinking is based on past experience, to be fully crossed.

And the main theoretician here was also quite early died Karl Duncker, who believed that the solution to the problem can never be brought from the outside - from the past experience of observing what is happening around. It can only arise from an analysis of the conflict between the terms and conditions we solved the problem and not the other way. If we do not understand the conflict, the solution of the problem we will not grow out of it. In fact, the work Dunker continued study of thinking that in the years of World War I spent with monkeys Gestalt psychology, Wolfgang Köhler, who worked in a nursery on the island of Tenerife and asks the monkey to solve problems, ready-made solutions for which they did not. For example, to get suspended from the ceiling or a banana to get the bait outside of the cell to which the monkey does not reach. What then found Köhler? He saw that the monkeys scurrying around, jumping, suddenly freeze and properly solve the problem, realizing, apparently, the conflict between what they have and what they need. For example, a foot too short, the banana is too high, then you need to reduce this gap. Or an apple is too far away, the paw before it falls short - it is necessary to close the gap. That is, the need to restructure the situation, change its structure. This restructuring of the situation, which leads to an instantaneous change in the behavior of the animal and leads to the solution of the problem, Köhler outlined the word "insight". And in the same sense the word "insight" will go to the description of the solution of mental problems man.

What is its objective insight on the structure? It is on this question tried to answer Karl Duncker, using the so-called small creative tasks that usually had some practical way. A typical problem Dunker: metal ball falls on the metal surface and instantly rebounds. How to prove that at the time of contact with the surface of the ball is deformed? Dunker gives these tasks to their subjects and maintain a dialogue with them. Subjects ask clarifying questions, because the conditions are always a little underdetermined, and writes the experimenter, as a person asks, what it offers, and builds a family tree for solving the problem.

Discovering that the different ways to change the situation, different implementations correspond to the same functional solution to the same understanding of the conflict between the terms and conditions. For example, the ball falls too fast, and this is one interpretation of the conflict. Or the surface is too hard, it does not remain on the tracks - a different interpretation of the conflict. And then we can get a variety of implementation, for example, use some mild mediator. How did we come to this decision? Dunker assumes that all begins, in fact, with an understanding of the conflict, but not with the understanding of the fact of the conflict - we can understand that there is something does not fit, despair and throw the problem at all, just like a monkey could understand it jump not to the banana start to beat his chest and upset somewhere in the corner of the cage. Understanding the conflict involves a willingness to enter. And, in fact, getting into a situation, we can find this restructuring of the entire image, ie, a functional solution that can be implemented in one way or another.

Naturally, in the records of human reasoning, we have the first implementation, and from them we can understand what a functional solution there is. And there may be many implementations. The monkey can get the banana hanging from the ceiling, building a pyramid of boxes and can be used instead of the minister of boxes. The main thing is that the direction of thought was correct. Even Kohler analyzed smart errors when, for example, monkey correctly builds a pyramid of boxes, but at the bottom of the smallest places, but on top - a little more, and they break down. Also analyzed stupid mistakes, when a monkey looking at the other, building a pyramid from wall it holds, but to lure far, the conflict persists. What keeps thinking? Duncker suggests that thinking prevent static structure, that is, in fact, our past experience. If past experience is frozen for a solution to the problem, or how to say Gestalt psychologists operatively fixed, the problem we can not solve.

That is, if for some fixed value of the subject, it is very difficult to come to the fact that this item can be used in other functions. For example, Norman Mayer in certain studies thinking hung from the ceiling with two lines, put in the room table, put on the table, pliers and asked his subjects to tie the ends of the ropes, which man could not do: they do not hold for one another, as he held the first rope one hand, and the second - with the other hand. That is, he just could not catch them. When the experimenter advised to use a pair of pliers, a person could not quite understand how to use them. But if the experimenter accidentally touched his shoulder rope, and it began to sway, suggesting, in fact, the principle of solving the problem, people with no mention of pliers could figure bind them to a rope, shake, meanwhile, run, grab another rope and connect the ends of the rope together. That is, the functional fixation prevents us to solve problems, but if the principle of prompt decision, and tell when a person has not yet tired of the problem to solve, then most likely, it will be solved. Further experiments consisted mainly of thought in the study of the factors that influence the success of problem-solving. It can be non-specific factors, such as motivation, emotional state, personality traits of a person, and specific factors: a problem is formulated whether to give some tips, or, conversely, the false use of incorrect installation on the properties of the object, and so on.

Types of Thinking

Psychologist Dr. Doping talks about a special approach to the study of thought in psychology, the differences between the theoretical and practical thinking and existing classifications.

Thinking takes the top spot in a series of cognitive processes. And if in the sensations we are given certain properties of objects of the world, in the perception of images - integral objects, the thinking is we need to when these facilities is insufficient, it is necessary to establish communication, the relationship between them and highlight their essential properties. Accordingly, thinking and is defined as the cognitive activity, is the reflection of connections and relationships between the objects of reality and their material properties.

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And in fact, the person considers the thinking of its distinctive feature and, therefore, to its definition is added is usually something that is characteristic of the human mind - is not just a reflection of these relationships, relations, and reflected a generalized and indirect, that is associated with the release of some of the essential properties which allow you to combine objects into categories, distracted by some specific objects, and process, which is armed with specific characters, especially speech, allowing to carry out those or other mental operations. And, of course, thinking does not only psychology, but also many other areas of knowledge - philosophy, who asked the question of whether thinking general knowledge actually available, what the truth is, that even first - thinking or being, and the logic that tries learn the correct way of thinking, as it should be, pedagogy that seeks to shape the thinking and artificial intelligence that builds models that solve mental problems as well as solve their people. But that psychology is trying to study the laws of the thought process as they are inherent to the person trying to learn how to not, but as a man thinks in fact that he actually takes place in the head, to which he relies. And so in psychology adopted another operational definition of thinking, because it is difficult to study the generalized reflection of mediated communications, relationships and so on, psychology studies the thinking as the process of solving problems, that is, to achieve the goal set in certain circumstances where an immediate achievement of that goal.

And traditionally in psychology to distinguish between thinking man and the so-called intelligent behavior of animals, in fact, of course, intelligent behavior of animals is a source for the development of human thought. If we look at what is reasonable behavior, we see that it is always such a situation, where the animal can not directly reach their goal, for example, to get food, where it is currently needed. Here, for example, have an apple hanging from the ceiling, to which a monkey can not reach, or lying outside the cage a banana, which does not allow to get the length of the paw. The task then becomes a two-phase - the animal is forced to make or find a tool that will allow to reach a banana or an apple to bring down or build a pyramid hanging from the top of the bait from some boxes or maybe in other cases, to come up with a workaround or fix are any the obstacles. And suppose that the first phase - to find a tool to create a building and so on, gradually becoming independent, because when an animal decides to such a task, it comes up, in essence, how to solve it and then decides, and when we separate the preparatory phase and transform it into a separate unfolding domestically step for us and a source of future human thinking, in fact, when we try to influence the instruments on various subjects, we discover such properties of these objects that direct our perception are not available, that is what eyes do not see, ears do not hear, but what is essential to solving this problem. And as soon as we identify this hidden property and set up his attitude to the problem, we find ourselves in, in fact, the definition of thinking, and when we begin to use signs to fix the received knowledge, our mental activity becomes an Intermediary.

Naturally, the human mind is highly diverse, we can highlight some of the reasons for the classification of types of thinking. The most common reason - this is the form in which the task is presented, and a method of converting a material that is the task can either be given visually, immediately prior to contact, or described by words or verbal and convert the material we can either directly by our actions, either in terms of images mentally transforming what we see, either by using logical operations.

Accordingly, there are three kinds of thinking, which are also the three stages of development: thinking clearly, effectively, the one that is behind the decision of the puzzles in the form moving iron figures, thinking visually-shaped when we solve the problem in the mental plane, for example, pretends how to fit all the furniture in the room, without moving it, and thinking verbal and logical, verbal or logic associated with the use of speech and using certain logical operators to the problem that we are facing.

In addition, we can discern the thinking by the formation of the psyche, in which it takes place: on the one hand, thinking intuitively when we are not aware of all solutions to the problem, and as if once we know the solution, and on the other hand, analytical thinking, deployed in time, fully accessible to consciousness when we can follow all his steps. For intuitive thinking is usually a wealth of experience, which allows a person does not spend time on the unfolding of the thought process.

We can distinguish thinking theoretical and practical - is the classification of domestic researcher Boris Mikhailovich Teplova. The theoretical thinking associated with hypotheses, theories of construction, the development of strategies to address the identified problems. Practical thinking is related to the solution of concrete problems always in real time and always with immediate verification practices. A typical example - is, for example, thinking of the commander or director of the plant thinking - right now the right flank of the enemy attack, what to do? The commander thinks, decides and receives immediate feedback, whether he solved the problem correctly or not. He is strictly limited in time, because if you linger, the battle will be lost, while the theorist can afford to think as much as the task requires.

Finally, it is possible to distinguish between creative thinking and critical thinking. In fact, the debate continues about the creative thinking in psychology. On the one hand it is assumed that all thinking is necessary only if the problem is not solved and eventually get something new, like William James defined it, is the ability to navigate the new experimental data, then any creative thinking. And when there are classifications like creative thinking, and so-called reproductive, reproducing, always about the second question - is thinking or not? But if we highlight the thinking associated with generation of a new, and thinking associated with checking what we found with the definition of the scope of our solutions, such classification is possible.

In fact, for the distinction of creative and critical thinking is one of the well-known activating creative processes - so-called brainstorming, when people are divided into two groups, one of which generate creative solutions in some inventive task or a complex production problems or some other, while others check how the decisions that were invented during the creative phase, are suitable, as they can withstand logical verification, as far as they are applicable. Why is that? Because it turned out that for creative and critical thinking are characterized by very different obstacles in their way different things. Creative thinking interferes with, first of all, our internal censor and the so-called rigidity or pattern when we are trying to move already beaten paths, based on our experience, rather than to see some sort of attribute that is fundamentally different from that dictated by experience.

Psychologist Edward de Bono describes even a special so-called unconventional thinking and the ability to think about, select the attribute that is fundamentally contrary to past experience, but which is important for solving this problem. As an example, in the well-known legend about the beauty and the money-lender, which the moneylender proposed to draw lots, which depended on her fate and that of her father - she had to pull out one of the stones, black or white, and the night before the test to learn that the moneylender I put two black. What imposes past experience? Drag and watch what happens, act arbitrarily. What does it mean to see the attribute that is about? Bet he not pulled, and stayed. For example, remove the stone and drop, for example, over the river on the bridge. If the remaining ink, then drop the white and mean, respectively, a victory can be won.

Another thing, which essentially prevents creative thinking - a surplus of motivation.
When we really want to quickly find the best solution, we most likely will not work. The psychology of motivation has long described the law of optimum motivation and the more complex the task, the less should be our activation, our desire to do everything immediately and well. A critical thinking prevents, for example, our anxiety is related to the fact that if an idea is not enough valuable it is to think we are bad and our self-esteem will go down, and if we work in a team, we are afraid that they will criticize us and do not criticize others , afraid to give their ideas on another court. And thus, an effective thought process is when these two kinds of attention are separated in time, while in operation, for example, a scientist, naturally, we can find and, in fact, creative thinking, spawning a new and critical thinking, evaluation of the ideas that We were prepared.

In fact, if you look at the thinking of the scientist, we can identify it at least four steps after the psychologist Graham Wallace. It is, when analyzed, as scientists make discoveries, and poets and artists create their works, noted that it is always in the process can be divided into four stages: the preparation stage, which takes place in the mind, completely deployed when we collect the material; stage of ripening, when a scientist or an artist for a while forget about what he was doing, but, apparently, the process continues, just outside of consciousness; Finally, the stage of enlightenment, when the decision comes into consciousness; after which begins the routine step of checking how well that turned out. And we can see that these two kinds of thinking is actually borne by this single thought process.
In principle, there are other classification of thinking related to how it corresponds to reality or to what extent it corresponds to some of our feelings and emotions. In clinical psychology distinguish thinking is realistic and autistic thinking, though human love we can see the components of the autistic thinking all the time. But, in principle, in order to analyze and explore the thinking of these listed species, we are enough

The mechanisms of Perception

Psychologist Dr. Doping talks about Gestalt psychologists’ researches, the perception of the third dimension and the ordering of objects in space.

In fact, to answer to all these questions is very difficult, because the image in the minds of immediately given and ready to see how it turned out, he lined up pretty hard. We can put forward some hypotheses about the mechanisms of perception, and then try to mimic this mechanism, causing the observer the illusion. And if you managed to fool the visual system, if possible, for example, to get to see a three-dimensional flat image, the image having one value, get perceived as having a totally different meaning, then our hypothesis about the mechanism was probably correct.

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In fact, these studies have mostly started in the XX century, because of the XIX century, psychologists came to the problem is simple. They assumed that any image of perception - it is simply the sum of sensations caused by exposure to which by association adds some past experience. It was only at the beginning of the XX century the first Gestalt psychologists suggested that, apparently, the image as a whole to the sum of its parts can not be reduced. And they, or rather one of the founders of this trend, Max Wertheimer, has pushed this idea illusion that just Wertheimer and described - so-called "apparent motion". Gestalt psychology, which loved to use Greek letters to denote different phenomena described by them, called it the phi phenomenon. The situation is very simple: we show two glowing lights in two different places, then right, then left. It seems to us that the movement takes place in the visual field. In this particular frequency light that moves from one point to another, with the other - with pure motion. Where does it come from - is unclear, because it can not be the thrill of all intermediate positions. And, strictly speaking, it was then that Gestalt psychologists go with this slogan - the whole to the sum of its parts can not be reduced. And as it was then being built?

And they begin to build an explanation of perception and its mechanisms on the basis of the then fashionable field of physics, put forward the assumption that actually processes in our minds are isomorphic, and are similar in form to the processes in the brain, and is isomorphic to the effects of the surrounding world. And just as the physics of the field uses the term forces in the electromagnetic field, Gestalt psychologists began to operate with concepts of perceptual forces that bind are close to each other elements of the field and restrain their "cobbled together" into a single indivisible image. In fact, all our perceptions, according to Gestalt psychology - is a game of connecting and restraining forces. And any perception of the final image - the result of finding the balance between them. Either way this is an equilibrium configuration, and its formation are certain laws which Gestalt psychologists identified as the "laws of perceptual organization", just describing the allocation of figures in the background. These are laws, such as the proximity of the elements in the visual field, or isolation, which allows to take a holistic figure even distant from each other elements, or similar, or the same motion, the law of common fate, or good continuation, but it's all so Either way, the implementation of the general principle regarding the fact that perceptual organization will be as good as at the moment the conditions allow, lead to opposing forces. But most importantly, that the Gestalt psychologists have described - is the selection of the objects that we perceive, allocation figures in our perception, ie the division of the visual field to the objects and all that is behind them in space. But the unanswered question: how, in fact, these figures are arranged in space? How we perceive their movement or stillness when moving yourself? We understand that for the object is in front of us?

As for the perception of the third dimension, the first there were not psychologists, and artists who have learned to create the illusion of the perception of the third dimension on a flat picture. And then the psychologists, analyzing how these illusions, so we perceive a third dimension, describe those characteristics that, when added to the retinal image, is likely to set the perception of space, the perception of the third dimension. First of all, it is described in the XV century Alberti linear perspective, it is added to the relative size of objects and the size of the familiar. The most powerful feature - a sign of the overlap. If we represent the two objects on the plane, and one overlaps the other, it is clearly one that overlaps closer. If we neatly slotted into the far object and place the dipped away to be visible through the slot, we will still seem like a distant object closer look because of the angle of bend is not able. It is a strong indication of depth perception - a shadow. We always assume the light source from above, and depending on how the objects cast shadows on one another as a shadow on the allocated themselves, we perceive them as having a certain amount in a certain way and are located in the space. Finally, in painting as a sign of open aerial perspective, blurring objects at a distance, the more all enjoyed the romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich.

But in fact, any work of realistic painting - is the set of all these features. And they work, if we see a still image, closing one eye, something like in the pictures. And what will happen if we start to move? Add another attribute. Moving, we perceive objects that are closer to us, as moving in the opposite direction, and the items are more like moving in the same direction. We can implement it on a flat screen, it is very often done in video games: run the screen in opposite directions at different speeds, and the farther from the center of the screen, from the point at which we look, the more quickly, and it seems to us that screen becomes a plane, leaving deep. Opening the second eye, we find another sign, in the main stereo vision - a sign of disparity or discrepancy display points on the retinas of the right and left eye, from which we can also derive depth information.

How to fool the visual system? Show on the right and left eyes slightly different images, so-called stereograms shifted relative to each other on the interocular distance or even superimposed on each other, but painted in red and blue colors. Watch them we can through anaglyph red-blue glasses - obtained a three-dimensional image. If you gently to mix parts of such images are obtained Autostereogram that can be seen with both eyes, as much as possible to parallelize the eye axis and pushing the image away. And in fact, the same signs of distance and depth of the work to ensure the constancy of our perception, the perception of the immutability of the size depending on the distance, the immutability of the perception of speed depending on the distance, shape of the object at different angles.

If we, as in the experiments Holueya and Boring, authors nuclear contextual theory of constancy of perception, will gradually cut these symptoms - for example, first by allowing a person to look not two eyes but only one, and then removing the linear perspective - we eventually can come to an almost complete lack of constancy of perception, a person will be judged on the basis of size alone retinal print. In another theory of constancy, in the theory of invariant relations in perception, it is assumed that we maintain a constant ratio between the perceived remoteness, the perceived size of the object and the angle of view. But, one way or another, tied to the sign of the distance. In a famous experiment with playing cards people showed three cards of different sizes on the same distance. Naturally, no one would have thought that psychologists make a fool of, so let's estimate the distance to the cards that are proportional to the change in size: the larger the map, the closer it seemed. Naturally, here it plays a role, and our knowledge of the world of our experience, according to which all the playing cards are always the same size. And, strictly speaking, it is the experience is mainly in the illusions of perception, which are called the subject that we are behind the perception of certain objects in the environment. And the main law in our perception, in regard to the objects and values is that we always perceive in accordance with the logic of the possible. We see the world as it might look like according to our knowledge about the world.

The most famous experiment, perhaps there had modern and unfortunately already deceased perception psychologist Richard Gregory. Experiments were very simple: he took plaster masks and the masks began to rotate, and the man all the time, it seemed that the mask is turned to face him, even if on the one hand, it has been painted, and the other not. Why? Because a person can not be concave. And even if it is contrary to the impact of, for example, featured the distance and depth, we start to try on the final image, do it without conflict, in accordance with the logic of the possible. The Internet is now very common so-called "dragon illusion," which, being absolutely motionless, for us "follows" when we move around it. Why? Because of this dragon concave muzzle. When we try to use the monocular motor parallax, a sign of remoteness associated with the moving object, and our knowledge that the dragon can not be concave faces, although we had never seen real dragons, wins our knowledge about the world, winning it is the logic possible.

Similarly, it is running the famous illusion of Adalbert Ames, the so-called "Ames Room" absolutely curve, but built according to the laws of strict linear perspective, when placed in that people are the same height seems the dwarfs, the giants because of the fact that some are closer , on the other. The fact that our visual system can not perceive the room as having a non-square or rectangular shape, and if the room is rectangular, again in accordance with invariant ratios perception we adjust the size of these people. If to put the familiar people, the illusion crumbles instantly. If the wife in such a show room of her husband, she saw her husband having their normal growth, and the room like some obviously incorrect. And in fact, here it is confounding not only the perception of objectivity, but also the installation, that is, depending on the context of perception. When we look at a particular object, we always perceive it in the context, but the context usually corresponds uniquely to unambiguous interpretation of the same object. But if you make an object ambiguous, for example, show three different people to the same circle surrounded by numbers, letters, or other geometric shapes, the first will see the number "0", the second - the letter "o", and the third - round.

Basic Phenomena of Perception

Psychologist Dr. Doping talks about approaches to the study of the perception of reality, visual illusions and the definition of the concept of "perception" in psychology.

The perception in psychology is defined as an active process of construction of sense as a result of the impact of energy on the organs of feelings emitted or reflected by objects of the external world. In this definition, everything is important, because in fact the images we can also occur without any effects, they are images of perception. For example, memory images, or images of the imagination, which we are so actively build, but can not assume external influences, or dream images, even images of hallucinations, which we believe is absolutely real, but at the same time in the world around them do not correspond.

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As for the perception of the image, it is important that, on the one hand, it is always the result of some influence, the image corresponds to a particular object in the external world, on the other hand, we actively build. On the one hand, the image would be intrusive if it arises by itself, on the other hand, it is beyond doubt contributed to our experience, our knowledge. That is, in fact, the image on the dual nature, and we do not notice in everyday life: in front of us is a cup - we see a cup.

But this dual nature is very easy to prove if we use the so-called mixed, or dual, image, when at the same impact in the same image, we can see completely different. This ambiguity can be both spatial and content. A typical example of spatial ambiguity - the so-called Necker cube, which is painted in his time Swedish crystallographer Necker, and which we can see how the call to us one or the other edge, or bypassed internet dancer, which rotates in one direction or the other in fact absolutely no changing.

With all the ambiguity of the content exactly the same. This is the famous vase-profile Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin, it is no less well-known picture is already a hundred years ago, "The wife or mother-in-law?", Which introduced the Edwin Boring in 1930, which, looking at the same picture into use of psychologists, we see the flirtatious Turning girl, an ugly old woman, and can arbitrarily switch treatment at absolutely the same, constant impact on the senses.

That is, it turns out that the image is actually there are traces of this influence, psychologists call it sensual fabric, and there is some objective content or value, the source of which, in fact, is our experience, our knowledge. In this sense, we see not only what affects us, and what we know about the world. Accordingly, all the theory of perception, who will try to explain it, too, are divided into two classes. Firstly, it is a theory that tries to explain the process of constructing an image through the description of the impact, and such theories are called object-oriented, such as Gestalt psychology, or the famous ecological optics James Jerome Gibson, who is trying to describe the visual perception of the world through the description of the structure, acting on the senses.

And another group of theories attempting to explain it by analyzing the descriptions of our ideas about the world, which we use in the construction of the image, and such theories are called subject-oriented. Usually they are, in essence, put forward some hypotheses about how this knowledge about the world is arranged. For example, even Hermann von Helmholtz tried to explain the process of constructing the image of the unconscious inference with small parcel in the form of current exposure, a large parcel of our past experience and perception as a way inference, which is completely automatically. Jerome Bruner suggested that our perception - the process of categorization, which too comes quickly, not realizing, and we can expand it, only if you make it difficult perception of conditions, for example to blur the image, make it partially masked, and that's when people will look for signs of trying to understand what kind of thing. Richard Gregory tried to describe this process as an extension of object-hypotheses that of the image is in front of us. For example, it is very nicely analyzed the attempts of astronomers understand how still look the planet Saturn, on the basis of what was given at various times telescopes.

In fact, this duality of perception of the image is clearly visible in the phenomena, those phenomena that psychologists analyzed when studying perception. American psychologist Floyd Allport in the 50-ies identified six classes of phenomena, and we'll see that some of them are more of an object in nature, are more concerned with the impact, and some more subjective, more concerned with what is happening in the mind of the perceiver .

The first class of the phenomena of perception, that can analyze a psychologist - the so-called sensory quality, ie especially those experiences that makes us encounter with perceived object. We are bound to see what color it, he or shiny matte, rough or smooth as it sounds, if we on it click, and so on. Naturally, these individual sensations or sensory quality, the image can not be reduced, even though the very first psychologists in the XIX century attempted to describe the image of perception as the sum of the individual sensations that were isolated in a special way - through introspection, scrutinizing inward consciousness of separation to the smallest elements. However, when we look at the world around us, we certainly do not see the color, not the distribution of brightness and the integral objects that have a certain form.

Indeed, the perception of objects of a certain shape, a certain way localized in space, moving or still - is the second class of phenomena of perception, which is designated as Allport configurational phenomena, or configuration. Actually, the very first of these phenomena - this distinction between figure and ground. When we have something to watch and to listen to something, or even something feels always vary the perceived object or figure and the background against which the object is for us. We usually understand whether this object is flat, or he has a third measurement, and analysis of the distance and depth - it is just too refers to studies of configurational phenomena of perception. We understand it is moving or stationary, even if you are moving yourself, and even if the image of the object is shifted on our retina.

But in addition to the sensory qualities of the images and configurations in perception there is another interesting property, namely the property remain unchanged when changing the perception of the environment. This feature images maintain their characteristics unchanged when changing conditions of perception called constancy. For example, we see the open door as a rectangle, while its projection on the retina is a trapezoid. We see people who are at different distances as having the same height, although again projected onto the retina of one zone to another will. We see the white paper as white in the darkness and the light. And in psychology conducted many studies in order to understand why, so that we perceive things constant, plays a role here if the context in which they are presented, or may be, in the visual system stem some special calculations allow you to save it constancy.

But that's only three classes of phenomena, we still have three. Fourth grade - the so-called reference system, or subjective scale that allow us to compare the images and feelings with each other. This is true of even relatively simple sensations. We can say, was louder or quieter sound, we can say, brighter or less coverage, but we can compare the images and even images of complex objects, such as paintings, we can say that we like the most, this is less. Why? Must we have any subjective scale, allowing us to rank the items on a variety of properties.

Finally, the two main phenomena perceptions that only has inherent person - a phenomena objectivity and installation. Strictly speaking, the objectivity - is the dimension of the image that appears in humans due to the fact that each object has a certain value. We perceive no amount of sensory qualities, no configuration - we perceive objects: cups, watches, cars, telephones and so on. This is the first thing that comes to mind when we see this or that object. And the objectivity of our perception, which is not obvious at first glance, will have an effect if we distort the conditions of perception - put on, for example, a person such glasses, which will turn the world upside down, or change its depth, make concave convex objects. In this case, it turns out that our knowledge and experience will prevail over the influence. For example, we can never see the concave face, although easily see a number of concave convex plastic cup. That is an appeal in depth takes place only in accordance with the logic of the possible, except in accordance with our knowledge of how to actually look the objects of the world and how we can use them.

The latter class of phenomena of perception - installation phenomena related to our willingness to see the world, and not otherwise, to take such items and not other. Behind this willingness may be our condition, this includes the famous proverb "Fear has big eyes": we see frightening things larger in size than they really are. In the same way we perceive the desired object. As a long time in the famous study showed Jerome Bruner, children subjectively exaggerate the size of the coins, which they are asked to evaluate, while the size of the paper circles do not exaggerate. On the other hand, the installation can be determined by the context in which the object is presented: one and the same circle, we take for the letter "o" among letters, numbers among the numbers 0 and the circle among the other geometric shapes. Finally, the installation can stand our past experience, we are ready to accept things the way he imposes on us. The native, who arrived in London, sees the sign of the police to stop a welcome sign - in his experience no other interpretation.

And we see that these six classes of phenomena of perception - sensory quality, configuration, constancy, reference system, objectivity and installation - are ranked by the degree of contribution of the knowing subject in what will eventually be seen. And, accordingly, subject-oriented theory best explains the phenomenon of objectivity and installation, and object-oriented theory is more interested in configurations, constancy and sensory qualities.

Classification of sensations and receptors

Psychologist Dr. Doping talks about priority of behaviorism in the early XX century, artificial intelligence and cognitive hexagon. Why in American psychology beginning of the XX century was dominated by behaviorism? What role in the revival of interest in matters of knowledge played a study of artificial intelligence? As cognitive science has changed the psychological research?

Sensations in psychology is defined as a subjective reflection of the individual properties of objects of reality, such as color, or pitch, or taste. And express even a hypothesis that feeling as a reflection of the properties of objects that are directly not satisfy our needs, but the honking of something biologically significant, was the first form of mental. This hypothesis was put forward domestic psychologist Alexey Leontiev.

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But in fact in psychology and philosophy, the idea of that feeling comes first to our knowledge, constantly arise. In XVII-XVIII centuries dominated by a philosophical direction as sensationalism, which argued that the sensations in our knowledge based all - that John Locke with his idea of the child as pure boards, tabula rassa, where sensations are recorded, and then the mind learns direct their activity on these feelings, the French educator and Etienne Condillac, who described the thought experiment with the revival of a marble statue - he at first gave her only sense of smell and the smell of it made all the way up thinking and abstract concepts.

When psychology began to appear as a science, the feeling, in fact, became the first object of study in it, because psychologists have undertaken to study the mind and the first thing decided that they need to understand what consciousness is, that is to spread it on the cell or the smallest elements . And as such elements of the first scientific psychologist Wilhelm Wundt and were just feeling that he enriched the simplest emotional experiences or feelings.

But the disciple of Wundt, English psychologist Edward Bradford Titchener, set himself the task to describe all possible sensations using the so-called method of analytical introspection, that is scrutinizing inward and splitting of consciousness into the smallest elements, thus describing only what is in the mind, but It not what is outside, in the world. That is, seeing the mug, I had no right to say: "I see the cup" - I had the right to say: "I have a feeling blue, brilliant, and so on." When I spoke about the mug, it was called the stimulus mistake and thrown away by psychologists. Titchener described 44 thousand sensations in his laboratory which undergraduate and graduate students are doing just: hung from each other's feet, was lowered into the stomach probe, doing analytical introspection, such as kissing a lover, and so on. But of course, that this path was quite dead-end, because nothing but the addition of some new sensations.

And in order to move forward, psychologists took, of course, to build a classification, that is to make the move from phenomenology to the allocation of wealth grounds for classification. Reasons may vary. For example, the same founder of scientific psychology Wilhelm Wundt offered to share the feeling for the forms of energy that affect receptors. Energy is only light, mechanical and chemical. Accordingly, Wundt singled photoreceptor group of mechanoreceptors and chemoreceptors and the corresponding group of sensations.

But, apart from this structure (content) classification, we can also provide a functional classification, trying to answer the question, why the feeling needs and genetic classification, explores how they occur and what properties are at different stages of development. With regard to functional classifications, the most glaring example - is the classification of domestic physiologist Nikolai Alexandrovich Bernstein, who shared that feeling on the basis of what they do in the regulation of our conduct, our activity. On the one hand, a sense of the activity can start, something to signal that we felt a bitter taste - something spat; We felt the hot hand - pulled back his hand. Such sensitivity Bernstein designated as signal-launcher. But very often the feeling we do not need to run the activity, but in order to adjust it to adapt to the environment properties. For example, if we picked up a heavy object, then with sufficient force if we pull it up to lift to the desired height; If we twist a bicycle pedal, then correctly spinning our foot, so that we never have hooked and went with the required speed; if we take something from the table, or our hand goes there? And this sensitivity Bernstein designated as control-corrective or corrective. It is clear that it is primarily the feelings that occur in our muscles, they are not always understood, but contribute to the correct construction of the motion. Sometimes in this same role may be, for example, visual sensitivity, which regulates our relationship with the environment.

Finally, if we look at the development of the senses, try to build a genetic classification, the first and most brilliant attempt of this kind was done by the British physiologist Henry Head that for this purpose a specially cut on his arm nerve twig and watched as the sensitivity is reduced. At first he felt nothing after a while began to appear strange kind of sensitivity - it was very diffuse, vague, inaccurate. For example, he could not when he touched the finger tips of calipers to understand: he touched one or two needles, exactly where he touched, but he experienced vivid emotional experience, it was very emotionally colored. And gradually, the sensitivity has become more accurate, more local, and this emotional coloring has already been eliminated. That is, we could just feel that to us something touched, and we are not necessarily from this very pleasant or very unpleasant. Accordingly, Head suggested that all our sensations can be divided into ancient - it has designated as their protopathic - and the new, post-crisis or epicritic associated with greater precision and less pronounced subjective-emotional coloring. If we look at our usual modality, then, of course, vision and hearing will relate more to epicritic sensitivity and sense of smell and taste rather to ancient protopathic, because we can not always accurately locate the source of the smell, and can not always locate where we have in the mouth or that taste, but the emotional coloring - a nasty smell or taste - we are almost guaranteed. Touch here occupies an intermediate position, it is closer to a new sensitivity, but sometimes some ancient ingredients arise there.

And finally, the most famous and large classification of sensitivity, which includes all three possible bases: structural, functional, genetic - was again proposed as a physiologist (note that psychologists are actively rely precisely on the physiological classification) Charles Sherrington, who proposed to allocate sensitivity types, on the one hand, on the ground where it is localized receptors, on the other hand, on the basis of what this sensitivity need. And it turned out that these species allocated to them can actually be built and how the steps of the evolution of sensitivity. First of all Sherrington suggested to distinguish the sensitivity of so-called grave, which include receptors that are hidden in tissues such as muscle and signal us about the position in which the muscles are in what position is our body and so on, and, on the other hand , the surface sensitivity - receptors is located on the outer and inner surfaces of the body. Accordingly, if we are talking about the inner surfaces - this is mainly the gastrointestinal tract, - that the inner surface sensitivity Sherrington designates as interoception and the external surface sensitivity as a exteroception, and finally a deep sensitivity it will be called proprioception, or their own sensitivity - is the position of the body, its individual components, and so on. That is, he gets the three major species sensitivity, sensation: proprioception, and interoception exteroception. In the latter group, it will still distinguish between the so-called contact receptors, when necessary direct impact of the object on the senses, to the feeling has arisen, and the sensitivity of a distant, or remote, when the object can be located anywhere (a typical example - the vision: I see you , but you are not directly working on the retina of my eye, and an example of the opposite - the taste, which is the impact of a must).

When Sherrington puzzled by the question "whether there will be these kinds of sensitivity vary by function?", He sees that they are actually needed for the different. Proprioception is needed in order for us to understand the position in which we currently are, and could begin to move, that is, it gives us information about the structure of our body or the body schema. Interoception allows you to maintain a state of homeostasis, ie a balance with the environment, gives us a signal that we do not have enough of some nutrients that it is necessary for our body to continue to exist, so-and-so, and so on. Finally, exteroception, external sensitivity ensures our interaction with the environment, the behavior of our environment in our reaction designed and so forth. And if we look at the evolution of, first of all, of course, the body, in order to survive, you need to understand that the balance of his disorder, that is, need information about the achieved or not achieved a state of homeostasis, ie interoception. Then the body should be able to start moving in the direction of the source of sustenance - it needs proprioception and exteroception will last and will adjust its movement, its interaction with the environment.

But in fact in psychology and remained introspective, subjective sensations of research strategy. Oswald Kulpe, one of the disciples of Wundt, was trying to describe the properties of individual sensations, allocated a certain quality, a certain intensity of feeling: there are weaker, stronger, - a certain length of time: they can be long, such as toothache, or very brief as a needle prick - and a certain spatial coverage (you, of course, the difference when I put on you the whole palm or a finger). But the whole area of psychological research has grown because of the analysis of the intensity of sensations. Ever since the middle of the XIX century to the present time, psychologists are asking: "And as the intensity of the feeling of force related to the intensity of the stimulus acting" These researchers are trying to establish a quantitative relationship, derive the mathematical laws of the association between exposure and feeling, so this area has been called psychophysics. And actually psychophysics deals alignment quantitative laws depending on the intensity of the emotion of the impact force.

The cognitive revolution in psychology

Psychologist Dr. Doping talks about priority of behaviorism in the early XX century, artificial intelligence and cognitive hexagon. Why in American psychology beginning of the XX century was dominated by behaviorism? What role in the revival of interest in matters of knowledge played a study of artificial intelligence? As cognitive science has changed the psychological research?

The cognitive revolution IS a series of events that relate to the middle of the XX century, when science arose abruptly surge of interest in human cognitive processes, their peculiarities. In fact, the surge affected not only psychology, but also a whole range of related sciences. Therefore, the emergence of cognitive psychology, cognitive science as an interdisciplinary research involving and linguistics, and neuroscience - the science of the brain, and computer science - artificial intelligence, and anthropology, analyzing cognitive universals and particular knowledge of different cultures, and the philosophy of mind - that's all it begins to interest researchers in the 50-ies of XX century. For improving cognitive process one can buy nootropics: Phenylpiracetam, Picamilon, Pantogam, Noopept, Semax, as well as Cytamine Cerebramin.

The cognitive revolution in psychology, as such, was actually a counter-revolution. Why? Because psychology as a science, when it appeared, it began with an analysis of human cognition. Already in the middle of the XIX century there psychophysics, measured the association between exposure and feeling psychophysical formulate mathematical laws. At the end of the XIX century, the founder of experimental psychology Wilhelm Wundt studied the structure of consciousness, I measured the amount of attention. At the same time were the experimental studies of memory. But it so happened that in the early XX century in the American psychology to the fore the study of the behavior, or the direction, which was called behaviorism. Why? For his supporters, primarily psychologist John Watson, he declared that in fact a scientific study of the subjective experience of what is happening in the mind of a person, it is impossible.

What methods psychology work? Researchers peered inside and give a report about what they have going on in my head. The behaviorists say, it is impossible to study what is outwardly observable, not reproducible in any other laboratory, not fixed with the help of devices, so let's study the behavior - the behavior of a set of external reactions externally observable reactions to external stimuli same. And with the 10-ies of the XX century, behaviorism dominated psychology as a scientific discipline - in the US, we note psychology. While in the 30s the situation began to wobble a little bit, because the data appeared that even describe the behavior on the basis of only the external influences and external reactions impossible.

There was a trend called neo-behaviorism, which developed the notion that even when we describe the movement of the mouse in a maze, we must admit the existence of a mouse some purpose (why it generally carries out and repeats the activity) and at second, a general presentation this labyrinth of his unit - the so-called cognitive maps. In particular, Edward Chace Tolman formulated the idea of the intermediate variables - to what he attributed goals and cognitive maps - like a black box between the external action and external reaction, from which, in fact, subsequently sprouted cognitive psychology.

Meanwhile in Europe, the study of knowledge continued, although there were relatively isolated. In England, Frederick Charles Bartlett studied the features of human memory, introduced subsequently essential for cognitive psychology, the concept of knowledge as a circuit pack, way of organizing our experience, from which we reconstruct received, heard, learned information. In Switzerland, Jean Piaget conducted research on human intelligence and levels of development. In Russia, Alexander Luria built a concept of systemic organization of the dynamic localization of higher mental functions, in fact, analyzing how knowledge is represented in the brain and brain function provided.

But America in general was to study the behavior of the rails, developed in line with behaviorism, but at the same time resolutely began to develop computer science. An idea of the universal Turing machine, imported from England to the United States, there were ideas about the general architecture of the computer John von Neumann, Claude Shannon formulated his theory of communication, Wiener laid the foundations of cybernetics as the science of managing artificial living systems.

An idea that you can build a computer that would think like a man.

And then everyone realized that in fact no one understands how a person thinks. As a result, science, pushed by these requests, appealed to the research of knowledge - here, in fact, a cognitive revolution and accomplished.

In cognitive science there is even your own birthday - those considered September 11, 1956, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology held the second day of the symposium on the problems of information processing. The first day was a lot of interesting things, but it was the second day of the three reports have been made that, in fact, laid the foundation for the study of knowledge from the position information approach.

The first speaker was the linguist Noam Chomsky has a report "Three model description language", in which he contrasted the model probability, stochastic structure model of its own, for the first time takes into account the human, what is happening in his head, as an important component of speech bith and process of speech understanding. The second speaker psychologist George Miller with an outstanding reputation for denials and the number of the report "The seven plus or minus two, or about some limitations of our ability to process information." Miller presented a model of working memory, short-term memory. The model was cell. Interestingly, it was based on the computer metaphor: Miller presented a short-term memory as a set of cells, which can be written to the structural units of information, and, if necessary supplemented by some new, will have to erase some old. The third report, which made a political scientist and mathematician Herbert Simon and Allen Newell programmer, was presented the first model in the world of artificial intelligence called "Logic theorists." Strictly speaking, it was the first attempt to describe human thinking in the language of a computer program, and at the same time it was a working model that proved the theorem of the logic of Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, and a theorem proved even better authors.

But, interestingly, this model was constructed using data on how to solve the problem like a man, that is with the protocols of real human judgments. And what do we see here? First, we see that people from different areas of knowledge involved in various problems, begin to work on some single and common theme: how a person perceives the world. Secondly, we see that it is interested in all internal processes rather than external action, the external reactions. And third, we see that most of the arguments are based on the computer metaphor, that is, the comparison of the mind and human knowledge with the computer operation. Strictly speaking, this is where the cognitive study and begin.

In the same 1956, the first Symposium on Artificial Intelligence. In the same year came a series of seminal works. For example, a well-known work on the formation of concepts, written by Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner, who is also established in the first Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies in 1960. But it will have to take some time to display the first magazine devoted to cognitive research and cognitive science, and was created by the Society of Cognitive Science. It took about 15 years before this company was founded. It created it was very funny: the representatives of the western and eastern coast of America - on one, respectively, Boston, with his Harvard and MIT, at the other University of California, San Diego, California Technology - could not agree on who's in charge. Gathered in Dallas, Texas in the airport, we signed the papers on the basis of society, but the conference is held in California.

Just a year later began a large-scale funding for Cognitive Studies Foundation Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This is 1981, when the first university program, the first research centers, and since cognitive science began to develop as rapidly and intensively, how intensively it is developing now. It was in the late 70's there was the famous cognitive hexagon, which included experimental psychology cognitive processes that dominated the early stages of the development of cognitive science, neuroscience, which is completely dominated by now, linguistics, computer science, cultural anthropology, and philosophy of mind.

All these subjects are interlinked with each other, and cognitive studies began was not within them, where they were held in the past, and at the joints between them.

For example, in the field of psycholinguistics, and neuropsychology, philosophy and computer science, philosophy of artificial intelligence. Around the same time appeared the first Nobel Prize for cognitive research. Herbert Simon, creator of the first model of artificial intelligence, it was the first in 1978, however, with the description of the decision-making in organizations. At approximately the same area in 2002, received the Nobel Prize now psychologist Daniel Kahneman for the description of the basic mistakes and pitfalls of human thinking in making economic decisions.

Cognitive science, which has been made a powerful infusion of funds in the 80s, is now about to learn to earn a living, but the most important thing is that more and more interdisciplinary become research and more and more difficult to distinguish between the individual areas. If the experimental psychology, cognitive processes of cognitive psychology can be said in the '50s,' 60s and even the 70s, but now to talk about it it is already difficult, because it is always psychology with elements of computer simulation and attempts to understand those brain mechanisms that are relevant for cognitive processes.

We do not notice how much we do not notice

Psychologist Dr. Doping talks about the cognitive sciences, the great illusion of consciousness, and short-term memory.

- What is cognitive science in general?

- The word "cognitive" means only "related to knowledge", ie the acquisition, storage, conversion, using knowledge, and how living systems, and artificial. Accordingly, cognitive psychology studies how to acquire and use knowledge of a person. And this knowledge we need very many places. For example, as soon as the computer scientists were able to program the computer to force it to do something, they immediately asked the question: how to get it to solve the problems that people decide?

Naturally, immediately arose the next question: how, in fact, the man solves these problems? Psychologists attempt to describe human knowledge, should take into account that it is provided by the brain. This raises many questions. As knowledge is represented in the brain? As our perception, memory, thinking ensured brain structures? Psychologists refer to these issues to the physiologists.

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Linguists, which describe the regularities of language, you need to understand how people use language, he understands the language addressed to him saying how he builds them. And linguists have to go to the psychology and physiology.

And psychologists and physiologists, and programmers, and linguists are interested in the question of how the knowledge about the brain that we have can be used to explain the mechanisms of our knowledge, our subjective experience. Here come to the aid of the philosophers, who are trying to establish the possibility of transition from talking about physical systems (material) to talk about the spiritual system associated with human consciousness, that is, our subjective experiences and perceptions about themselves. And these ultimate questions - whether on the basis of knowledge of the brain to understand the human mind, is it possible to construct a synthetic system that will have a subjective experience, and so on - these are questions to the philosophers.

What we learn about the human knowledge, thinking, memory - are universal laws, or they depend on the culture to which belongs to this or that person? It's all rush to the anthropologists, who are able to carry out cross-cultural research, study representatives from both developed and primitive cultures, and comparing what they learn about, understand, that knowledge is universal, and that is determined by culture. That is cognitive research - an attempt to understand the patterns of human knowledge and use them in the construction of artificial systems forces immediately sets of Sciences.

- So there is a great company of various scholars, united by the theme of cognitive?

- Most united those questions to which they are trying to answer. Initially there were six disciplines: experimental knowledge of psychology, physiology, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, dealing with the problem of artificial intelligence, and cultural anthropology (in the West it is sometimes called cognitive anthropology). Now disciplines is becoming more. In particular, actively develops cognitive economy, which deals with problems of economic decision-making: why people make decisions unfavorable, why is wrong when making decisions, or in logical reasoning.

The first cognitive psychologist who became a Nobel laureate in economics - is Daniel Kahneman, who was involved in errors in economic decision-making, together with his colleague Amos Tversky, who, unfortunately, did not live up to Nobel Prize.

There are now and cognitive geography, which deals with the peculiarities of subjective ideas about areas of all sizes. There are cognitive aesthetics dealing with the laws of perception of beauty, both psychological mechanisms, and brain. That is a lot of subjects, but they are all grouped around a single issue: how do we get knowledge about the world, how we use it, and so on.

• -For how long have interest in such knowledge originated in academic circles?

- As an interdisciplinary it originated in the mid 50-ies of XX century. At that time psychology, at least in America, it is mainly engaged in the study of behavior. There reigned direction called "behaviorism", which was convinced that the psyche - is biased, so no need to study it, and we can study only what is observed externally, ie behavior. As the fundamental direction of behaviorism to the 50 th year came to nothing. Largely because people have realized: to explain the behavior we need to understand what is going on in my head.

We began intensive development of computer science and computer practice. Humanity construct a computer and realized that it is possible to force to solve the problems that solves people and can organize its interaction with the person in a natural language. But then it became clear that psychology is not well understood how a person solves the problem, but linguistics did not find a clear answer to the question of how we understand and produce speech.

In September 1956, MIT hosted the famous to the cognitive symposium on information processing. The second day of the symposium is considered the birthday of cognitive science itself. They made the psychologist George Miller, who proposed a model of the human working memory: a memory in which we hold the information in a short time, and the information that we need now. For example, a phone number where we need to make a call before we write it. There linguist Noam Chomsky spoke with his tongue model. There were political scientist Herbert Simon and Allen Newell programmer, who presented the participants of the symposium, the first working model of artificial intelligence called "Logic theorist" who knew how to prove theorems of formal logic. One theory has proved even more elegant than the famous Bertrand Russell, from whose book undertook these theorems, but an article from the "logic theorist" in the number of co-authors in the "wrapped" scientific journal.

So, at this symposium all understand that they are doing the same problems and are ready to work on together. Harvard Just four years later came the first Center for Cognitive Studies. For the 80 th year in the United States began large-scale funding for Cognitive Studies, began to appear the first master's programs, the first graduate. And cognitive science as a field of interdisciplinary research at the interface between psychology and neuroscience, between linguistics and computer science has become quite actively developed. By the early 2000s, it has come down to us.

- We have it now also actively blooms?

- It's in there pretty funny mode, because in general, our scientists only recently tasted "interdisciplinarity", made several attempts to organize joint projects with each other to agree. The first conference, which was called "Russian Conference on Cognitive Science," was held in 2004. In 2014, respectively, will be the sixth. It continues to take place every two years. And people, in general, find each other and instigate collaborations.

Recently there was a big center at the Kurchatov Institute, Laboratory for Cognitive Studies appear in different places. The first MA in cognitive science has been created in the Russian State Humanitarian University on the psychological faculty, this year offers a Master at the Higher School of Economics. I would say that some of the studies that can be called cognitive in the Western sense of the word, we have also carried out in full.

- What does the cognitive psychologist?

- He has been the experimental study of human knowledge, that is, the processes that allow us to obtain information from the outside world - is primarily a sensation and perception (visual, auditory, tactile, and so on). Processes that allow this information to select and hold - are processes of attention, and the processes associated with its storage and subsequent use - is memory. Processes that are related to its transformation, with new information that is not available to us directly - this thinking processes. And the fact that due to the mental transformation of images, the construction of which we have never seen or heard - it is a process of imagination, which is closely associated with the work. That is, in the six (sensation, perception, thinking, memory, attention and imagination), the first three trials give us knowledge of the world, and the second three-process, in fact, define the psychological arrow of time - psychological past (experience), the present (true processes information) and the future (anticipation, the construction of which is not). Such a classification of cognitive processes proposed in due time psychologist Lev Vekker. All this and more speech, which, among other things, helps us to control the operation of all our cognitive system, and has an area of activity of a cognitive psychologist.

- Does it have some practical value?

- Sure it does. And cognitive psychology and cognitive science is widely applicable in practice, which is why in America at the time they started so well funded. For example, to learn how to learn, we need to understand how knowledge is best absorbed. In order to restore the perception, memory or attention of the person with local brain lesions, we must understand how the system is organized. In order to be effective advertising, so that information is easy to read from the site, we need to understand how to organize our perception and attention, how do we choose the information that is necessary, that prevents us from where we look first of all, when we get to the site or hold in our hands leaflet, which we probably will not see. If we place the company's advertisements in places where, according to a study from the registration of eye movements, no look, a penny the price of such advertising. And this is cognitive psychology.

- What are the cognitive psychologists know about visual attention right now?

- Because this subject for cognitive research - one of the most fundamental, we know quite a lot. Speaking of things that are directly related to the practice, we know little about the mechanisms that are behind the errors of our visual attention. Why do we often do not notice what is happening right before our eyes, why is it so difficult to find the changes in the visual scene, to the point that we can not notice the change of our communication partner. Why did not we notice some repetition, whether in image, text and so on. All these phenomena conventionally called "inattention blindness phenomenon." As soon as the possibility of a broadcast over the Internet in just a few years, we learned about the famous study of Chicago psychologist Daniel Simons and his colleagues Christopher Chabrier with an invisible gorilla. They were very bright experiments that actually reproduce the experiments of 30 years ago another famous cognitivist Ulric Neisser. Two players on the team throws the ball to each other. Man instructing to monitor, count the number of gears in one of the teams, he honestly said, has 14 assists, sometimes wrong. And absolutely do not notice how across the room held a man in a gorilla suit stops in the middle of the room, beats his chest and moves on. Somehow, it is outside of our attention, though, it would seem very bright stimuli, perhaps even vital importance - still not the safest gorilla animal.

- Why we do not notice?

- The matter limitations of our attention, in that it is tied to the specific tasks that we solve. Roughly speaking, we collect the information for which we have in mind at the moment activated anticipating schema corresponding to the task. This explanation is also requested to Neisser. Here we follow the command of the players in white shirts that convey balls. And in the transmission scheme of balls between them, we absorb information and information outside of this scheme we lose, but sometimes it turns out to be very important. To improve attention we need to drink Cytamine Cerebramin brain bioregulator or Semax and Noopept.

Another striking phenomenon is the same - the so-called "blind to the change" when we do not notice the appearance, disappearance, discoloration or any other characteristics of one of the objects in the visual scene. The main thing that at the moment of changing the presentation of the scene something interrupted as the cyclical film is broken, because, for example, if we face the red ball immediately becomes white, we even in the peripheral retina has motion detectors that make this change, we note . However, if the ball turns white at the moment when we blink, we can not help but notice that he changed color.

The same Daniel Simons spent wonderful experiments in the university campus, modeled the film breakdown in a real environment. To the person on campus on the road approaching the other person with the card and ask how to get there and then. The naive subject began to explain to him, and then sneaking in between the builders of the door - that's you tear film. This is one of the pillars of the door has changed places with the experimenter and the subject went on to explain the road, not noticing the change of interlocutor. We decided that this is not significant, because everyone is looking at the map, and the situation changed: the assistant experimenter asked to take his picture on the background of the university sights. Should a person directly in the frame, the test aiming the camera at him, bear the door, people are reversed, the subjects do not notice it.

Q: I do not look back and do not look at it? Important question. That is, either we did not choose the place in space, and our focus is not to the point where there is a change, or we do not notice what the object has changed. Psychologists helped a bit to answer this question physiologists using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Knowing which areas of the brain associated with spatial redirection of attention, and what with the processing of information about specific objects and their identification, the researchers were able to show that these two situations (when we do not notice the change and when we notice them) in the brain differ activation zone related to the processing of spatial information, of which it is considered that it is carried out not realized. It turns a small paradox. Unconscious processes spatial redirect attention are vital in order to observe and understand the changes. In any case, what kind of answer we got.

And the question is actually very important, because it also has great practical significance. It is this blindness to changes - a blind driver, who does not notice a pedestrian or cyclist, came at a time when the glass hit the mud spray from oncoming truck, or perhaps when the driver blinked or looked, because when we looked , we can not in a short period of time of about half a second to gather visual information, so the mechanism is arranged. And they themselves do not notice, because the information that was available before the flashing is held in the buffer in our visual system. If we learn to control the driver's attention and create some artificial system of attracting attention to the objects that the camcorder can record, because she has no attention to restrictions, it will be very great.

- Now we have a huge number of sources of information that pours from all sides, including social networks, the Internet, radio, television. What happens to our attention in this regard?

- We do not notice how much we do not notice - I have formulated since. Of course, we gain some new skills by working with the information, but we lose a lot. Recently I had the opportunity to sit in a panel of experts at a lecture by an American psychologist, after which we conducted an experiment - we have people to solve puzzles. One man to solve puzzles in a dialogue with the other person, and the third test to solve puzzles in a dialogue with the computer. Objectives were like "What? Where? When?". And I was quite shocked to see what in the past 20 years engaged in science. The young lady, found on the Internet response to a question, he did not notice the corny. He was on the screen, we have all seen it. It just did not look where he was, because I quickly thumbed through page, scroll down and answer the question, could not, while two people are engaged in a dialogue with each other, the question could be answered. In fact, the loss in the dialogue with the computer there was simply due to the fact that a person has lost, did not notice on the screen the information you need. And very often we do not notice that it had lost. We think that we can see more than it actually is. In recent years, studies in cognitive philosophers, psychologists and physiologists have even coined the term "grand illusion of consciousness." It seems that in the minds of everyone there, but in fact very little - something that we currently pay attention. And what we do not pay, sometimes irretrievably lost.

- What are the prospects have cognitive research in cognitive psychology?

- The area is moving forward by leaps and bounds. This is due not only to the natural movement of science, but also with the fantastic development of techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, the impact on the brain using magnetic fields, methods associated with decoding and reencoding of brain activity. Neuroscience gradually absorbs all other areas of cognitive science, ranging from psychology and linguistics and ending with even philosophy. But prospects, including the application, it opens up stunning. This communication with patients in a vegetative state, that is unconscious. This is an opportunity for people deprived of their ability to move and control the external devices, just thinking about what they want to make a motion, introducing this motion, to implement it, for example, typing on a screen placed in front of them. These perspectives are, of course, very tempting and make the scientists more and more immersed in this area.

If we look at a normal adult, we can see that the world, in general, it is given not so much to feel. We do not see red, brilliant, bright, and so on - we are seeing things. We see tables, chairs, cups, home, car and so on. That is, in fact, for us, the feeling is not leading the process. A leading process becomes a process for us, which gives us a holistic images of objects of the world. Actually, the image - this is the second form of reflection that gives us knowledge of the world, and the process of constructing the image will be referred to in psychology as a process of perception. That is the perception and define - as a process of building an image as a result of the impact on the senses of physical energy that is reflected or emitted by objects of the external world.

Thus, we see that, in fact, we have two axes for the organization of human cognitive processes. On the one hand, it is the axis of concrete or abstract reflection of the surrounding world. Sensation and perception give us specific information. Thinking allows you to extract the abstract, categorize objects, form concepts, summarize. And on the other hand, it is the psychological arrow of time, which will be organized along the memory, attention and imagination. And obviously, all these processes are somehow interact with each other. That is difficult to study memory without attention, it is difficult to study without attention to the analysis of perception, thinking without memory. Therefore, modern cognitive psychology seeks to analyze not only the specific processes, but also ideas about the structure of the knowledge of the general, that is, as our cognitive architecture, which gives us knowledge of the world might look like.

Cognitive processes of human

Psychologist Dr. Doping talks about a unified theory of mental processes, the problem of qualia and psychological time. What cognitive processes directly emit psychologists? How can thinking? What is the axis of psychological time?

I will use the typology proposed by St. Petersburg once, then American psychologist Lev Markovich Vekker. He has developed a unified theory of mental processes, it I will not describe, but its scheme of allocation of these processes seems to me very easy, and fill it I will try myself. What he proposed? He proposed to distinguish between two groups of processes: the first, in fact, give us information about the world at different levels, the latter somehow organize the information it receives, the knowledge obtained along the axis of psychological time, asking our psychological past, present, psychological, psychological future. The first processes Vekker represents a proper informative. The latter, in fact, permeate all our knowledge, so they can be designated as a cross-cutting.

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If we look at a normal adult, we can see that the world, in general, it is given not so much to feel. We do not see red, brilliant, bright, and so on - we are seeing things. We see tables, chairs, cups, home, car and so on. That is, in fact, for us, the feeling is not leading the process. A leading process becomes a process for us, which gives us a holistic images of objects of the world. Actually, the image - this is the second form of reflection that gives us knowledge of the world, and the process of constructing the image will be referred to in psychology as a process of perception. That is the perception and define - as a process of building an image as a result of the impact on the senses of physical energy that is reflected or emitted by objects of the external world.

Thus, we see that, in fact, we have two axes for the organization of human cognitive processes. On the one hand, it is the axis of concrete or abstract reflection of the surrounding world. Sensation and perception give us specific information. Thinking allows you to extract the abstract, categorize objects, form concepts, summarize. And on the other hand, it is the psychological arrow of time, which will be organized along the memory, attention and imagination. And obviously, all these processes are somehow interact with each other. That is difficult to study memory without attention, it is difficult to study without attention to the analysis of perception, thinking without memory. Therefore, modern cognitive psychology seeks to analyze not only the specific processes, but also ideas about the structure of the knowledge of the general, that is, as our cognitive architecture, which gives us knowledge of the world might look like.