Mackintosh lecture: Association and cognition: two processes, one system
McLaren, IPL; McAndrew, A; Angerer, K; et al.McLaren, R; Forrest, C; Bowditch, W; Monsell, S; Verbruggen, F
Date: 30 March 2018
Article
Journal
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Publisher DOI
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Abstract
This paper argues that the dual-process position can be a useful first approximation
when studying human mental life, but it cannot be the whole truth. Instead, we argue
that cognition is built on association, in that associative processes provide the
fundamental building blocks that enable propositional thought. One consequence ...
This paper argues that the dual-process position can be a useful first approximation
when studying human mental life, but it cannot be the whole truth. Instead, we argue
that cognition is built on association, in that associative processes provide the
fundamental building blocks that enable propositional thought. One consequence of
this position is to suggest that humans are able to learn associatively in a similar
fashion to a rat or a pigeon, but another is that we must typically suppress the
expression of basic associative learning in favour of rule-based computation. This
stance conceptualizes us as capable of symbolic computation, but acknowledges that,
given certain circumstances, we will learn associatively and, more importantly, be
seen to do so. We present three types of evidence that support this position: The first
is data on human Pavlovian conditioning that directly supports this view. The second
is data taken from task switching experiments that provides convergent evidence for
at least two modes of processing, one of which is automatic and carried out “in the
background”. And the last suggests that when the output of propositional processes is
uncertain, then the influence of associative processes on behaviour can manifest.
Psychology - old structure
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