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Applied History of Psychology/Research on Attention

The study of attention is a major part of contemporary cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Attention plays a critical role in essentially all aspects of perception, cognition, and action, influencing the choices we make. The study of attention has been of interest to the field of psychology since its earliest days. However, many ideas about attention can be traced to philosophers in the 18th and 19th centuries, preceding the foundation of the field of psychology.

The topic of attention was originally discussed by philosophers. Among the issues considered was the role of attention on conscious awareness and thought, and whether attention was directed voluntarily or involuntarily toward objects or events. The characterization of attention provided by each philosopher reflected that individual's larger metaphysical views of the nature of things and how we come to know the world. For instance, Joan Luis Vives (1492–1540) recognized the role of attention in forming memories. Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) introduced the concept of apperception, which refers to an act that is necessary for an individual to become conscious of a perceptual event. He noted that without apperception, information does not enter conscious awareness. Leibniz said, "Attention is a determination of the soul to know something in preference to other things". In summary, many philosophers gave attention a central role in perception and thinking. They introduced several important issues, such as the extent to which attention is directed automatically or intentionally. These topics continue to be examined and evaluated in contemporary research. Although they conducted little experimental research themselves, their conceptual analysis of attention laid the foundation for the scientific study of attention in ensuing years.

The philosophical analyses of attention led to some predictions that could be tested experimentally. In addition, in the mid-1800s psychophysical methods were being developed that allowed measurement of the relation between physical stimulus properties and the psychological perceptions of them. Wilhelm Wundt, who established the first laboratory devoted to psychological research in 1879, was responsible for introducing the study of attention to the field. In addition, the relation between attention and perception was one of the first topics to be studied in experimental psychology. Wundt held that attention was an inner activity that caused ideas to be present to differing degrees in consciousness. He distinguished between perception, which was the entry into the field of attention, and apperception, which was responsible for entry into the inner focus. He assumed that the focus of attention could narrow or widen. This view that has also enjoyed popularity in recent years. At the end of the 19th century, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) argued that attention is essential for visual perception. Using himself as a subject and pages of briefly visible printed letters as stimuli, he found that attention could be directed in advance of the stimulus presentation to a particular region of the page, even though the eyes were kept fixed at a central point. He also found that attention was limited: The letters in by far the largest part of the visual field, even in the vicinity of the fixation point, were not automatically perceived.

William James' (1890/1950) views on attention are probably the most well known of the early psychologists. In his famous Principles of Psychology (1890), James asserted that "the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will." His definition of attention is also widely quoted. According to James (1890), “It is taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state."

Moreover, according to James, the immediate effects of attention are to make us perceive, conceive, distinguish and remember, better than we otherwise could –both more successive things and each thing more clearly. It also shortens “reaction time”. James’s definition also mentions clearness, which Titchener (1908/1973) viewed as the central aspect of attention. Pillsbury (1908/1973) agreed with Titchener, indicating, “the essence of attention as a conscious process is an increase in the clearness on one idea or a group of ideas at the expense of others”. Researchers at the beginning of the 20th century debated how this increased clearness is obtained.

In summary, around 1860, the philosophical approach dominated the study of psychology in general and attention especially. During the period from 1980 to 1909, the study of attention was transformed, as was the field of psychology as a whole, to one of scientific inquiry with emphasis on experimental investigations. However, given that behaviourism came to dominate psychology in the next period, at least in the United States, the study of attentional mechanisms was largely delayed until the middle of the 20th century.

Although one often reads that research on attention essentially ceased during the period of 1910-1949, attention research never disappeared completely. However, there was an increase in interest in the topic with the advent of contemporary cognitive psychology. Lovie (1983) compiled tables showing the numbers of papers on attention listed in Psychological Abstracts and its predecessor, Psychological Index, in five-year intervals from 1910 to 1960, showing that studies on the topic were conducted during these time periods. Among the important works on attention was that of Jersild (1927) who published a classic monograph, “Mental Set and Shift”. Another significant contribution during this era was the discovery of the psychological refractory period effect by Telford (1931). He noted that numerous studies showed that stimulation of neurons was followed by a refractory phase during which the neurons were less sensitive to stimulation. Stroop (1935/1992) also published what is certainly one of the most widely cited studies in the field of psychology, in which he demonstrated that stimulus information that is irrelevant to the task can have a major impact on performance (see below for John Ridley Stroop and the impact of the Stroop Color-Word Task on research on attention). Paschal (1941), Gibson (1940) and Mowrer, Rayman and Bliss (1940) also conducted research on attention such as that on preparatory set or mental set. In sum, although the proportion of psychological research devoted to the topic of attention was much less during this time period than during preceding decades, many important discoveries were made, which have influenced contemporary research on the topic.

The period from 1950 to 1974 saw a revival of interest in the characterization of human information processing. Research on attention in this period was characterized by an interplay between technical applications and theory. Mackworth (1950) reported experiments on the maintenance of vigilance that exemplified this interaction and set the stage for extensive research on the topic over the remainder of the 20th century. This research originated in concerns about the performance of radar operators in World War II detecting infrequently occurring signals. Cherry (1953) conducted one of the seminal works in attention during this period, studying the problem of selective attention, or, as he called it, “the cocktail party phenomenon”. He used a procedure called dichotic listening in which he presented different messages to each ear through headphones. Broadbent (1958) developed the first complete model of attention, called Filter Theory (see below). Treisman (1960) reformulated Filter Theory into what is now called the Filter-Attenuation Theory (see below).

In the early 1970s, there was a shift from studying attention mainly with auditory tasks to studying it mainly with visual tasks. A view that regards attention as a limited-capacity resource that can be directed toward various processes became popular. Kahneman’s (1973) model is the most well known of these unitary capacity or resource theories. According to this model, attention is a single resource that can be divided among different tasks in different amounts. The basic idea behind these models is that multiple tasks should produce interference when they compete for the limited capacity resources. Also, in this time period, the first controlled experiments that used psychophysiological techniques to study attention were conducted on humans. These experiments used methods that allow brain activity relating to the processing of a stimulus, called event related potentials, to be measured using electrodes placed on the scalp. In sum, the research during this period yielded considerable information about the mechanisms of attention. The most important development was the introduction of detailed information processing models of attention.

Research on attention blossomed during the last quarter of the 20th century. Multiple resources models have emerged from many studies showing that it is easier to perform two tasks together when the tasks use different stimulus or response modalities than when they use the same modalities. Treisman and Gelade (1980) also developed a highly influential variant of the Spotlight Theory called the Feature Integration Theory to explain the results from visual search studies, in which subjects are to detect whether a target is present among distracters (see below). Priming studies have also been popular during the most recent period of attention research. In such studies, a prime stimulus precedes the imperative stimulus to which the subject is to respond; the prime can be the same as or different from some aspect of the imperative stimulus.

In addition, a major focus has been on gathering neuropsychological evidence pertaining to the brain mechanisms that underlie attention. Cognitive neuroscience, of which studies of attention are a major part, has made great strides due to the continued development of neuroimaging technologies. The converging evidence provided by neuropsychological and behavioral data promises to advance the study of attention significantly in the first half of the 21st century. Finally, significant advances have also been made toward expanding the theories and methods of attention to address a range of applied problems. Two major areas can be identified. The first one concerns ergonomics in its broadest sense, ranging from human-machine interactions to improvement of work environments such as mental workload and situation awareness. The second major area of application is clinical neuropsychology, which has benefited substantially from adopting cognitive models and experimental methods to describe and investigate cognitive deficits in neurological patients. There is also work being one on the clinical application of attentional strategies (e.g., mindfulness training) in the treatment of a wide range of psychological disorders (see section on mindfulness).

Timeline
 * Pre-1880s: Franciscus Donders uses mental chronometry (the study of the temporal sequencing of information processing in the brain) to study attention with reaction time experiments. Wundt develops a research program to justify experimental psychology as a separate discipline; he uses introspection as a method of gathering information into psychological processes.
 * 1880s-1890s: At the Leipzig institute, using well-defined, quantitative, and easily reproducible experimental methodology, Wundt conducts studies on: sensation and perception, reaction times, attention and feeling, and association.
 * 1894: Helmholtz defines what is now known as ‘covert attention’ during a visual perception task. Scientific study of covert attention did not re-surface until the 1950s.
 * 1900-mid 1950s: Due to the popularity of behaviorism in psychology (emphasizing the association between a stimulus and a response, but without identifying the cognitive operations that lead to that response), research on attention is neglected.
 * 1924: Electroencephalography (EEG) is invented, which will become important in later neurological studies of attention.
 * 1935: John Ridley Stroop, in his article entitled Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions, discovers the Stroop effect (slower reaction times and an increase in mistakes when a word is printed in a color differing from the color expressed by the word's semantic meaning)
 * 1946: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is invented, which will become important in later neurological studies of attention.
 * 1950s: Research psychologists (including Donald Broadbent) renew their interest in attention in a shift from positivism to realism in psychology, deemed as the cognitive revolution (admitted that unobservable cognitive processes can be studied scientifically).
 * 1952: Broadbent begins to publish his research findings from dichotic listening experiments on speaking and listening simultaneously, listening to synchronous messages, and failures of attention in selective listening.
 * 1953: Colin Cherry first describes the Cocktail Party Effect (the ability to focus our listening attention on a single talker talker among a mixture of conversations and background noises, and to pay attention to a stimulus that grabs our attention suddenly, such as our names).
 * 1957: Broadbent develops his mechanical model of attention.
 * 1958: Broadbent becomes clinical director of the Applied Psychology Unit at Cambridge. His book, Perception and Communication, is published, which describes his filter model of attention (an early selection model). This model was highly influential but was criticized for being too “inflexible”.
 * 1960s: Advent of information processing as the dominant perspective in cognitive psychology. Stroop’s work was rediscovered.
 * 1964: Use of Stroop Color-Word task as a measure of attentional and linguistic processes rose quickly
 * 1969:Treisman proposed her Attenuation Theory, which addresses how unattended information may get through to consciousness (not explained by Broadbent’s original model).
 * 1971: Broadbent’s second book on the topic of attention, Decision and Stress, is published, using his filter model as a starting point in his new theory, and taking into account findings from Cherry, Treisman, and others.
 * 1975: Broadbent wins a Distinguished Scientific Contribution award from the APA for being the first person to systematically study humans as an information-processing system and using a structure that could be investigated by experiment.
 * 1980: Treisman and Gelade publish their seminal paper which was the basis for Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory.
 * 1988: Treisman interprets the pop-out effect as evidence for a pre-attentive mechanism in perception. (Pre-attentive processes are based on perceptual analyses that simply signals the presence of a difference in the visual scene, rather than on the action of focused attention.)
 * 1993: Following Broadbent’s death, numerous tributes and obituaries are published in his honour, and to recognize that his elaboration of the idea of the human organism as an information-processing system lead to a systematic study of attention.

John Ridley Stroop and The Stroop Effect
For over half a century, the Stroop effect has been one of the most well known standard demonstrations in undergraduate psychology courses and laboratories. In this cognitive task, participants asked to name the color of the ink in which an incompatible color word is printed (e.g., to say “red” aloud in response to the stimulus word GREEN printed in red ink) take longer than when asked to name the color in a control condition (e.g., to say "red" to the stimulus XXXXX printed in red ink). This effect, now known as the Stroop effect, was first reported in the classic article “Studies of Interference in Serial Verbal Reactions” published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 1935. Since then, this phenomena has become one of the most well known in the history of psychology. However, less is known about the man behind this landmark cognitive task. In this paper, a biography of John Ridley Stroop, the creator of the Stroop Color-Word task and discoverer of the Stroop Effect, will be outlined.

John Ridley Stroop was born near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on March 21, 1897. His middle name derived from a preacher whom his parents admired, and Stroop was known by that name both personally and professionally all through his life (MacLeod, 1992). Stroop was the second youngest of six children. As an infant, Stroop was not expected to live, which led his parents to shelter him during his childhood. Unlike the other the family members, he was not required to do heavy physical work on the family farm (MacLeod, 1991a).

Stroop's initial schooling was at Kitrell County School, where he graduated at the top of his elementary school class. He continued his education in nearby Nashville at David Lipscomb High School, graduating in 1919. In 1921, he obtained a diploma from David Lipscomb Junior College, where he was selected to be Valedictorian. On December 23, 1921, during his second year in college at the age of 24, Stroop married Zelma Dunn, great niece of Mr. David Lipscomb. Over the next seven years, they had three sons. To be able to support his growing family, Stroop taught at David Lipscomb College and worked as a janitor and as a librarian while in graduate school (MacLeod, 1992).

Stroop’s university years were spent at George Peabody College (now part of Vanderbilt University) in Nashville. There, he received his BS in 1924, his MA in 1925, and his PhD in 1933. His doctoral degree was in Experimental Psychology with a minor in Educational Psychology and an elective in Education. Stroop’s dissertation research was carried out under the supervision of Dr. Joseph Peterson, a former president of the American Psychological Association, at the Jesup Psychological Laboratory. Stroop developed these color-word tasks partly because the naming-reading comparison was of interest to Dr. Peterson in his individual differences research (MacLeod, 1991a). However, his real interest was on interference between conflicting processes. His research followed studies being conducted at the time on interference or inhibition but using materials that were similar in nature to those employed in color naming-word reading studies (Stroop, 1935). For instance, Stroop referred in his article to studies on color-word naming that were conducted by John James McKeen Cattell (1886), who at the instigation of his doctoral supervisor, Wilhelm Wundt, investigated differences in reaction times to naming objects, the properties of those objects, as well as the corresponding words. Catell reported that reading words took less time than naming the objects or properties, the latter including color (Macleod, 1991b). However, it was not until Stroop's research that anyone thought to combine the word and object/property dimensions, creating the now famous situation of response conflict (MacLeod, 1991). Stroop’s PhD dissertation went to become his classic paper, which over the years became one of the most cited articles in the history of the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Stroop teaching career began well in advanced to the completion of his doctoral degree. He was principal at a Mississippi Consolidated School in 1921-1922. Then, he returned to David Lipscomb College. There, he began as an instructor in Mathematics and English (1922–1923), and then switched to Modern Languages (1924–1928). Between 1928 and 1932, he was Professor of Psychology and Education, serving as Dean of the Faculty for the 1928-1929 academic year. After completing his PhD, Stroop conducted research for the Tennessee Educational Commission (1933–1934), then serving briefly as a special instructor in Psychology and Education at Tennessee Polytechnic Institute. He returned to David Lipscomb College, where he taught for almost his entire 40-year career.

After completing his PhD, Stroop had planned to continue his line of research. However, when Dr. Peterson died in 1935, Stroop never again conducted research in psychology. As Macleod (1992) noted, it was probably this event more than any other that led Stroop to discontinue his psychological research. His wife also wrote in her biographical sketch of him: "His major professor at Peabody, Dr. Joseph Peterson, invited him to collaborate with him on a research project furthering the study of [Stroop] 's doctorate thesis. Dr. Peterson's unexpected death prevented such from happening. This was probably the changing of his work as he became more involved in teaching the Bible and writing in that field." (in MacLeod, 1991a). Stroop published just four papers in psychology throughout his career. One concerned with group versus individual judgments (1932), and the other three related to color-word processing including his classic paper (1935), a critique of work on the color-word issue (1935), and a test of a possible explanation of the Stroop effect (1938). Stroop remained in psychology and chaired his department from 1948 until 1964; however, he never again conducted research in the field. Instead of psychology, Stroop devoted his attention to his religion for the rest of his life.

Stroop was a Christian who preached every Sunday in and around Nashville, often taking a train out into the country and being paid with a chicken or a bag of potatoes. He also kept a card file indicating for each Sunday where he had spoken and what his topic had been (MacLeod, 1991a). Moreover, Stroop taught bible classes in college in addition to teaching psychology. He was known to colleagues and students as both Dr. Stroop and Brother Stroop. Stroop’s major contributions were in the area of biblical studies. He wrote seven books based on his biblical teachings, beginning with Why Do People Not See the Bible Alike? published in 1949 and ending with Restoration Ideas on Church Organization published in 1966. His major work was a trilogy entitled God’s Plan and me, which was published in 1950s. He received awards for these books, which were popular as textbooks in Christian schools. The bible then rather than psychology was Stroop’s life work. John Ridley Stroop retired in 1967. He spent 1967-1968 as Dean of Ohio Valley College in Parkersburg, Virginia, after which he took up the position of Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies at David Lipscomb College (MacLeod, 1991a). He died on September 1, 1973 at the age of 76.

Stroop’s article has become one of the most cited articles in the history of experimental psychology. It has more than 700 studies seeking to explain some nuance of the Stroop effect along with thousands of others directly or indirectly influenced by this article (MacLeod, 1992). However, at the time of its publication, it had relatively little impact because it was published at the height of Behaviourism in America (MacLeod, 1991). For the next thirty years after its publication, almost no experimental investigations of the Stroop effect occurred. For instance, between 1935 and 1964, only 16 articles are cited that directly examined the Stroop effect. In 1960s, with the advent of information processing as the dominant perspective in cognitive psychology, Stroop's work was rediscovered. Since then, the annual number of studies rose quickly, until by 1969 the number of articles settled in at just over 20 annually, where it appears to have remained (MacLeod, 1992).

The discovery of the Stroop Effect and the development of this Color-Word task has had a lasting impact on cognitive psychology. As MacLeod (1991a) has noted, “There are few phenomena in psychology so robust that they appear in virtually every introductory text and are known by researchers in almost every sub-area of the discipline. The Stroop effect is one of these rare phenomena…. John Ridley Stroop was a pioneer, instrumental in providing one of the tools most valued by cognitive psychologists. A half century later, the task that bears his name continues to be a challenging puzzle for experimental psychologists to solve. (MacLeod, 1991a)” This landmark cognitive task has been widely used to index attentional and linguistic processes. Understanding the Stroop effect may ultimately lead us to a fuller comprehension of how attention works and of the place of attention in a more general theory of cognition.

Donald Broadbent and Dichotic Listening
Donald E. Broadbent has been praised for his outstanding contributions to the field of psychology since the 1950s, most notably in the area of attention. In fact, despite the undeniable role that attention plays in almost all psychological processes, research in this area was neglected by psychologists for the first half of the twentieth century (Massaro, 1996). During that time, behaviourists ignored the role of attention in human behaviour. Behaviourism was characterized by a stimulus-response approach, emphasizing the association between a stimulus and a response, but without identifying the cognitive operations that lead to that response (Reed, 2000). Subsequently, in the mid-1950s, a growing number of psychologists became interested in the information-processing approach as opposed to the stimulus-response approach. It was Broadbent’s elaboration of the idea of the human organism as an information-processing system that lead to a systematic study of attention, and more generally, to the interrelation of scientific theory and practical application in the study of psychology.

Broadbent was born May 6, 1926, in Birmingham, England (American Psychological Association, 1976). He was originally interested in the natural sciences, and thus, when he joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1944, he began his study of aeronautical engineering. As he spent time in the RAF he observed that human difficulties often arose from psychological, as opposed to physical, causes (Craik & Baddeley, 1995). More specifically, he noted that communication difficulties, such as problems listening to a specific stream of auditory information when presented with numerous streams, were frequently caused by inefficient processes of attention, perception, or memory, rather than by failures of hearing or technical equipment (Craik, 2000). Upon this observation, Broadbent’s interests changed from the subject of engineering to that of psychology.

At that time, however, the field of psychology was virtually unheard of in his home country of England. It was not until Broadbent travelled across the Atlantic to the United States for flying training that he discovered that psychology was being widely studied in North America (APA, 1976). After some time working in the personnel selection branch of the RAF, he began to study experimental psychology at Cambridge. Fortunately for Broadbent, and for scores of future psychologists, the psychology department at Cambridge was an especially suitable place for him due to its natural sciences orientation and its emphasis on practical application (Craik & Baddeley, 1995). Headed by Sir Frederic Bartlett, the department was enthusiastic to apply the cybernetic ideas of the late K .J. W. Craik, with the aim of understanding human behaviour in terms of control systems, to practical problems and psychological theory in general (APA, 1976). By sheer accident, but with fortunate advantage to the field of psychology, Broadbent’s interests in experimental psychology and practical application allowed him to find his place in the Applied Psychology Unit at Cambridge.

It was during his 25 years, from 1958 to 1974, as director of the Applied Psychology Unit that Broadbent was able to study and define models related to his interests in the effects of environmental stressors on cognitive performance, problems related to the detection and understanding of speech, and problems of selective listening and attention (Craik & Baddeley, 1995). Up to that time, most research had shown that noise did not influence performance on psychological tasks. Broadbent wondered, however, if noise would adversely influence performance on untraditional psychological tests (APA, 1976). For instance, he discovered that noise did have an effect on the vigilance tasks invented by N. H. Mackworth, however, these tasks were deliberately long and repetitive, making them tedious to study.

During that time, Broadbent also looked at the problems caused by communicating with gunnery and air control systems, in which many channels of speech communication were delivered at one time. In contrast to the vigilance studies, he found that this problem allowed for short and quick experiments, which contributed favourably to his study of attention and noise (APA, 1976). His work on communication systems indicated that most people spend their lives surrounded by many different types of stimuli, however, they cannot respond or describe the majority of them.

Not only were Broadbent’s contributions to experimental psychology noteworthy for attention research, they also contributed to belief in the need for societal relevance in research (Craik, 2000). It is perhaps through his background in natural sciences and engineering, and his subsequent practical work with the RAF on noise and communication, that Broadbent developed a particular admiration for applied psychological work. In addition, he had an informal speaking style when presenting lectures and essays, as well as used commonplace analogies to represent complicated ideas, which allowed society as a whole to consume his theories. For instance, when initially stated, his mechanical model of attention consisted of a Y-tube, in which two separate channels of ping-pong balls merge in a central channel protected by a filter that allows only one ball to enter (Massaro, 1996). Such an analogy clearly illustrated the limitations of human attention when attempting to attend to two auditory channels at the same time. As stated by Craik and Baddeley, “[Broadbent’s] psychology was intended for society and its problems, not merely for the dwellers in ivory towers” (1995, pp. 303).

After his death in 1993, numerous tributes and biographical acknowledgements were written in Broadbent’s honour. Above all, he is remembered for the unmistakable image that he projected of himself, as “the man, the scholar, the scientist, the philosopher of science, and of his commitments to empirical psychology, to explicit models or theories, and to the application of psychological knowledge to real-word problems” (Massaro, 1996, pp. 141). It is with this clear image in mind that a new generation of psychologists set forth, using Broadbent’s principles of experimental psychology as tools for practical application and research in the area of attention, and more broadly, all psychological processes that influence humankind.

Dichotic Listening Experiments
In 1952, Broadbent published his first report in a series of experiments that involved a dichotic listening paradigm. In that report, he was concerned with a person’s ability to answer one of two messages that were delivered at the same time, but one of which was irrelevant.

The participants were required to answer a series of Yes-No questions about a visual display over a radio-telephone. For example, the participant would be asked “S-1 from G.D.O. Is there a heart on Position 1?” Over,” to which the participant should answer “G.D.O. from S-1. Yes, over.” Participants in groups I, II, III, and IV heard two successive series of messages, in which two voices (G.D.O and Turret) spoke simultaneously during some of the messages. Only one of the voices was addressing S-1, and the other addressed S-2, S-3, S-4, S-5, or S-6. Participants were assigned to the following five groups:
 * Group I: instructed to answer the message for S-1 and ignore the other on both runs
 * Group II: instructed on one run to only answer the message from G.D.O. and on the second run was provided with a visual cue before the pairs of messages began for the name of the voice to be answered
 * Group III: were given the same directions as Group I on one run, and on the other run had the experimenter indicate the correct voice verbally after the two messages had reached the “over” stage
 * Group IV: had the correct voice indicated in all cases, but in one run it was before the messages began (like in Group II) and in the other run it was after the messages had finished (like in Group III)
 * Group V: under the same conditions as Group I, heard the same recordings as Groups I, II, III and IV, but then also heard a two new recordings. One recording had a voice that addressed S-1 and a voice that addressed T-2, T-3, T-4, T-5, or T-6 (thus the simultaneous messages were more distinct than for the other groups). The other recording had this same differentiation of messages, but also had both voices repeat the call-sign portion of the message (i.e., “S-1 from G.D.O., S-1 from G.D.O.)

For groups I and II, it is important to note that the overall proportion of failures to answer the correct message correctly was 52%. Results from Groups III and IV indicated that delaying knowledge of the correct voice until the message is completed makes that knowledge almost useless. More specifically, Broadbent (1952) stated:

 * “The present case is an instance of selection in perception (attention). Since the visual cue to the correct voice is useless when it arrives towards the ends of the message, it is clear that process of discarding part of the information contained in the mixed voices has already taken place…It seems possible that one of the two voices is selected for response without reference to its correctness, and that the other is ignored…If one of the two voices is selected (attended to) in the resulting mixture there is no guarantee that it will be the correct one, and both call signs cannot be perceived at once any more than both messages can be received and stored till a visual cue indicates the one to be answered”. (p. 55)

In 1954, Broadbent used the same procedure as discussed above with slight modifications. In that case, he found information that indicated the positive impact that spatial separation of the messages has on paying attention to and understanding the correct message. The dichotic listening paradigm has been utilized in numerous other publications, both by Broadbent and by other psychologists working in the field of cognition. For example, Cherry (1953) investigated how we can recognize what one person is saying when others are speaking at the same time, which be described as the “cocktail party problem” (p. 976). In his experiment, subjects listened to simultaneous messages and were instructed to repeat one of the messages word by word or phrase by phrase.

Information-Processing and The Filter Model of Attention
Cognitive psychology is often called human information processing, which reflects the approach taken by many cognitive psychologists in studying cognition. The stage approach, with the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information in a number of separate stages, was influenced by the computer metaphor and the way people enter, store, and retrieve data from a computer (Reed, 2000). The stages in an information-processing model are:
 * Sensory Store: brief storage for information in its original sensory form
 * Filter: part of attention in which some perceptual information is blocked out and not recognized, while othere information is attended to and recognized
 * Pattern Recognition: stage in which a stimulus is recognized
 * Selection: stage that determines what information a person will try to remember
 * Short-Term Memory: memory with limited capacity, that lasts for about 20–30 seconds without attending to its content
 * Long-Term Memory: memory that has no capacity limit and lasts from minutes to a lifetime

Using an information-processing approach, Broadbent collected data on attention (Reed, 2000). He used a dichotic listening paradigm (see above section), asking participants to listen simultaneously to messages played in each ear, and based on the difficulty that participants had in listening to the simultaneous messages, proposed that a listener can attend to only one message at a time (Broadbent, 1952; Broadbent, 1954). More specifically, he asked enlisted men in England's Royal Army to listen to three pairs of digits. One digit from each pair was presented to one ear at the same time that the other digit from the pair was presented to the other ear. The subjects were asked to recall the digits in whatever order they chose, and almost all of the correct reports involved recalling all of the digits presented to one ear, followed by all the digits presented to the other ear. A second group of participants were asked to recall the digits in the order they were presented (i.e., as pairs). Performance was worse than when they were able to recall all digits from one ear and then the other.

To account for these findings, Broadbent hypothesized that the mechanism of attention was controlled by two components: a selective device or filter located early in the nervous system, and a temporary buffer store that precedes the filter (Broadbent, 1958). He proposed that the filter was tuned to one channel or the other, in an all-or-nothing manner. Broadbent’s filter model, described in his book Perception and Communication (1958), was one of the first information-processing models to be examined by psychologists.

Shortly after, it was discovered that if the unattended message became highly meaningful (for example, hearing one’s name as in Cherry's Cocktail Party Effect, as mentioned above), then attention would switch automatically to the new message. This result led to the paradox that the content of the message is understood before it is selected, indicating that Broadbent needed to revise his theory (Craik & Baddeley, 1995). Broadbent did not shy away from this task. In fact, he saw all scientific theories as temporary statements, a method of integrating current evidence in a coherent manner. According to Craik and Baddeley, (1995), although Broadbent always presented his current theories firmly and persuasively, he never took the position of obstinately defending an outmoded theory. When he published his second book on the topic, Decision and Stress (1971), he used his filter model as the starting point, to which he applied modifications and added concepts “to accommodate new findings that the model itself had stimulated” (Massaro, 1996, pp. 141). Despite its inconsistencies with emerging findings, the filter model remains the first and most influential information-processing model of human cognition.

Anne Treisman and Feature Integration Theory
Anne Treisman is one of the most influential cognitive psychologists in the world today. For over four decades, she has been has using innovative research methods to define fundamental issues in the area of attention and perception. Best known for her Feature Integration Theory (1980, 1986), Treisman’s hypotheses about the mechanisms involved in information processing have formed a starting point for many theorists in this area of research.

Anne Treisman (née Taylor) was born on September 2, 1935 in Wakefield, Yorkshire, England (Anon, 1991). Through the war years, Treisman lived with her family in a village near Rochester, Kent, where her father, Percy Taylor, worked as chief education officer. Forced by the English educational system to choose only three subjects to study throughout secondary school, Treisman’s studies focused on the language arts, a choice which would shape much of her post-secondary pursuits (Anon, 1991).

It was at Cambridge University that Treisman first discovered the pleasures of intellectual exchange. Studying modern languages, she obtained a first class BA with distinction, which earned her a research scholarship (Anon, 1991; Treisman, 2006). However, faced with the prospect of research on a relatively unknown author, Treisman decided to use her scholarship to obtain a second BA in psychology instead. Under the supervision of Richard Gregory, Treisman completed this second degree in one extra year (Anon, 1991). Gregory’s influence on Treisman was profound; in this year, she was introduced to various methods of exploring the mind through experiments in perception, igniting in her the enthusiasm for research that she maintains to this day (Anon, 1991).

In 1957, Treisman began working toward her DPh at Oxford University, under the supervision of Carolus Oldfield (Anon, 1991). She conducted research on aphasia and considered pursing a career in clinical psychology. However, Treisman soon realized that she lacked the appropriate training to effectively help patients and, unwilling to simply use her patients as subjects in graduate research, Treisman’s clinical career aspirations faded. Around the same time, information theory was shifting psychologists’ view of the mind from the traditional behaviourist view of the mind as a switchboard to that of an active processor of information (Goldstein, 2005). Donald Broadbent and Colin Cherry had recently published groundbreaking papers introducing selective listening (also known as the “cocktail party problem”), which launched the cognitive revolution (Broadbent, 1954; Cherry, 1953). Broadbent’s Filter Model of selective attention (1958), also referred to as an early selection model, proposed that unattended information is filtered out early in the process of auditory perception, that is, before incoming information is analyzed to determine its meaning. While this theory was tremendously influential, and could account for much of the cocktail party problem, it has been criticized for being too “inflexible” (e.g., this theory could not explain why unattended information occasionally gets through to consciousness). Guided by Donald Broadbent's book Perception and Communication (1958), Treisman began using a two-channel tape recorder (that she had been using to test aphasics) to conduct research on auditory attention in the normal population (Anon, 1991). After three years of research, she married Michel Treisman, another Oxford graduate student. Two years later, in 1962, she completed her thesis on selective attention and speech perception that earned her the DPh degree (Treisman, 2006).

Treisman spent the next four years working in the Medical Research Council Psycholinguistics Research Unit, conducting more research in selective listening (Anon, 1991). In 1964, Treisman proposed an influential theory that addressed some of the “inflexibility” of Broadbent’s Filter model. This was Treisman’s Attenuation Theory, whereby processing of unattended information is attenuated or reduced, rather than completely filtered out, accounting for the fact that unattended information sometimes reached consciousness. Further, her model proposed that information processing occurs in a hierarchical manner, with processing of physical characteristics occurring at an early stage (e.g., pitch, or tone of voice) and semantic processing at a later point (Treisman, 1964, 1969).

In 1969, while Treisman worked as a visiting scientist in the psychology department at Bell Telephone Laboratories, she published an influential paper in Psychological Review that was central to the development of selective attention as a scientific field of study. This paper articulated many of the fundamental issues that continue to guide studies of attention to this day. While at Bell, Treisman’s research interests began to expand (Anon, 1991). Although she remained intrigued by the role of attention on auditory perception, she was now also fascinated by the way this construct modulates perception in the visual modality.

In the following years, Treisman returned to Oxford, where she accepted a position as University lecturer in the Psychology Department and was appointed a Fellow of St. Anne’s College (Treisman, 2006). Here, she began to explore the notion that attention is involved in integrating separate features to form visual perceptual representations of objects. Using a stopwatch and her children as research participants, she found that the search for a red ‘X’ among red ‘Os’ and blue ‘Xs’ was slow and laborious compared to the search for either shape or colour alone (Gazzaniga et al., 2002). These findings were corroborated by results from testing adult participants in the laboratory and provided the basis of a new research program, where Treisman conducted experiments exploring the relationships between feature integration, attention and object perception (Triesman & Gelade, 1980).

In 1976, Treisman’s marriage to Michel Treisman ended. She remarried in 1978, to Daniel Kahneman, a fellow psychologist who would go on to win the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002. Shortly thereafter, Treisman and Kahneman accepted positions at the University of British Columbia, Canada. In 1980, Treisman and Gelade published a seminal paper proposing her enormously influential Feature Integration Theory (FIT). Treisman’s research demonstrated that during the early stages of object perception, early vision encodes features such as color, form, and orientation as separate entities (in "feature maps") (Treisman, 1986). Focused attention to these features recombines the separate features resulting in correct object perception. In the absence of focused attention, these features can bind randomly to form illusory conjunctions (Treisman & Schmidt, 1982; Treisman, 1986). Feature integration theory has had an overarching impact both within and outside the area of psychology.

In the early 1980s, neuroscientists were discovering that the primate visual cortex contained areas where neurons were specifically tuned to selective features (e.g., orientation, luminance, colour, shape etc.) (Gazzaniga et al., 2002). These findings perplexed the neuroscience community who was now faced with the question of how the brain solves the “binding problem” (i.e., how does the visual system recombine these disconnected features into unified wholes). Treisman approached this problem by testing patients with selective attention problems. She and her colleagues were first to demonstrate that the binding problem could present itself in everyday life and that one of its solutions involved spatial attention (Treisman and Schmidt, 1982; Goldstein, 2005). Treisman’s theory has had a tremendous impact, providing a starting point for a great number of experiments in the areas of cognitive psychology, vision science, imaging, neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience.

In 1984, Treisman was made Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research in their program of artificial intelligence (Treisman, 2006). The fellowship allowed Treisman to collaborate closely with computer scientists who approached the study of perception from a different angle. Two years later, Treisman and Kahneman moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where they were both professors in the Psychology Department (Treisman, 2006). In 1989, Treisman was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, London, and in 1990, she was awarded the Howard Crosby Warren medal of the Society for Experimental Psychologists. In 1993, Treisman accepted a position as a professor in the Psychology Department at Princeton University in New Jersey, where she still conducts research to this day. Along with her numerous graduate students, Treisman continues to tackle some of the more challenging questions in cognitive psychology.

Treisman continues to receive numerous prestigious awards recognizing her invaluable contributions to the study of perception and attention, including the William James Fellowship of the American Psychological Society (2002) and a D. Sc., granted honoris causa, from the University of British Columbia (2004). Clearly, Anne Treisman has been a key figure in the establishment of cognitive psychology as a science, and a significant contributor to its evolution.

Feature Integration Theory Experiments
According to Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory perception of objects is divided into two stages:

Pre-Attentive Stage:The first stage in perception is so named because it happens automatically, without effort or attention by the perceiver. In this stage, an object is analyzed into its features (i.e., colour, texture, shapes etc.). Treisman suggests that the reason we are unaware of the breakdown of an object into its elementary features is that this analysis occurs early in the perceptual processes, before we have become conscious of the object.

Evidence: Treisman created a display of four objects flanked by two black numbers. This display was flashed on a screen for one-fifth of a second and followed by a random dot masking field in order to eliminate residual perception of the stimuli. Participants were asked to report the numbers first, followed by what they saw at each of the four locations where the shapes had been. In 18 percent of trials, participants reported seeing objects that consisted of a combination of features from two different stimuli (i.e., colour and shape). The combinations of features from different stimuli are called illusory conjunctions (Treisman and Schmidt, 1982). The experiment also showed that these illusory conjunctions could occur even if the stimuli differ greatly in shape and size.

According to Treisman, illusory conjunctions occur because early in the perceptual process, features may exist independently of one another, and can therefore be incorrectly combined in laboratory settings when briefly flashed stimuli are followed by a masking field (Treisman, 1986).

Focused Attention Stage: During this second stage of perception features are recombined to form whole objects.

Evidence: Treisman repeated the illusory conjunction experiment, but this time, participants were instructed to ignore the flanking numbers, and to focus their attention on the four target objects. Results demonstrated that this focused attention eliminated illusory conjunctions, so that all shapes were paired with their correct colours (Treisman and Schmidt, 1982). The experiment demonstrates the role of attention in the correct perception of objects.


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Applied History of Psychology/Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget
From the 1920's through 1960's, behaviorism was the dominant force in psychology. However, psychologists eventually began to move away from strict behaviorism and move towards an emphasis on cognition or mental processes. This shift is often referred to as the "cognitive revolution" because the emphasis on cognition had such a profound influence on psychology. Much of this can be attributed to the work of Jean Piaget.

Born on August 9, 1896 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Jean Piaget, a Swiss philosopher, natural scientist and developmental psychologist began his career as a biologist at the early age of ten, when he published his first paper - a one-page report about his sighting of an albino sparrow. Piaget's interests in science soon began to reflect a deeper curiosity around science itself and the thinking involved in practicing science. It is from these beginnings that Piaget became interested in the nature of 'thought' and the development of 'thinking' and his work in this area resulted in one of the most famous and widely-accepted theories of cognitive development.

The Piagetian Model of Children's Thinking

 * Sensorimotor Period (birth to 2 years)
 * Key ideas in cognitive development at this stage:
 * Coordination of sensory input and motor responses
 * Development of object permanence
 * Little or no capacity for symbolic representation
 * Milestones:
 * Birth to 1 month: Child displays modification of reflexes to make one more adaptive.
 * 1 to 4 months: Primary circular reactions and coordination of actions occur.
 * 4 to 8 months: Child displays secondary circular reactions but will not search for hidden objects.
 * 8 to 12 months: Coordination of secondary circular reactions. The infant can retrieve hidden objects but continues searching where objects were previously found rather than where they were last hidden (A not B error).
 * 12 to 18 months: The child engages in tertiary circular reactions. The baby will systematically vary the height from which he/she drops things.
 * 18 to 24 months: The child is beginning to form true mental representations. There is deferred imitation.

 * Preoperational Period (2 to 7 years)
 * Key ideas in cognitive development at this stage:
 * Development of symbolic thought
 * Irreversible, egocentric thinking
 * Milestones:
 * 2 to 4 years: Development of symbolic capacities, as indicated by language, make-believe play, drawings, and understanding of spatial symbols. Growth of language and mental imagery occurs but communication remains egocentric.
 * 4 to 7 years: Child has good language and mental imagery skills, but an inability to represent transformations. She/he focuses on single perceptual dimensions in conservation, class inclusion, time, seriation, and other problems. The child also replaces magical beliefs about fairies, goblins, and events that violate expectations with plausible expectations and shows improved ability to distinguish appearance from reality. They are capable of creating more realistic drawings, which begin to depict the third dimension.

 * Concrete Operational Period (7 to 12 years)
 * Key ideas in cognitive development at this stage:
 * Mental operations applied to concrete objects and events
 * Development of conservation, mastery of concept of reversibility
 * Milestones:
 * Whole period: The child can now perform true mental operations, represent transformations and static states, and solve conservation, class, inclusion, time, and many other problems. She/he still has difficulty thinking of all possible combinations and transformations.

 * Formal Operational Period (12 years through rest of life)
 * Key ideas in cognitive development at this stage:
 * Mental operations applied to abstraction
 * Development of logical and systematic thinking
 * Milestones:
 * Whole Period: The adolescent can think about all possible outcomes, interpret particular events in terms of their relation to hypothetical events, and understand abstract concepts such as conservation of motion and chemical interactions.

Criticisms of Piaget's Stage Model

Although it is undeniable that Piaget’s work was highly influential and groundbreaking, it is not without criticism. Some theorists and developmental psychologists actually question whether or not development occurs in the stagewise fashion as Piaget suggested; that is, is cognitive development in children all or nothing (e.g. a child is either in the sensorimotor stage or the preoperational stage but not between) or do cognitive structures and abilities develop more gradually? These developmental psychologists point to experimental research that demonstrates that children can actually accomplish certain tasks earlier than Piaget would have thought.

For example, the work of Renee Baillargeon (1987) has demonstrated that the concept of object permanence may actually develop much sooner than the age of 8–12 months (as Piaget would have predicted). Object permanence is usually studied by showing an infant a highly desirable toy and then removing that toy and hiding it from view (for example, under a blanket). After viewing the toy being placed under the blanket, Piaget showed that infants as young as eight months would attempt to reveal the toy by pulling off the blanket. Piaget posited that this action demonstrated that the infant understood that the object continued to exist even though it was out of sight. Infants younger than eight months rarely attempted to remove the blanket, demonstrating that they failed to understand that the object continued to exist when hidden.

Baillargeon believed that infants younger than eight months failed Piaget’s task because they were lacking in the gross and fine motor movement required to reach out and remove the blanket from atop of the toy. As a result, Baillargeon (1987) designed a study to test object permanence that did not require a motor movement from the infant. In her study, Baillargeon (1987) seated a child in front of a large rotating cardboard screen. She showed the infant several trials of the screen moving back and forth in a 180 degree motion (starting flat on the table and moving away from the child until it again came to rest flat on the table). On some trials Baillargeon placed a block behind the rotating screen. On these trials the screen would rotate away from the child and come to rest on the block (moving only approximately 110 degrees) (possible task). Finally, on some trials the block was placed in sight but then as the rotating screen blocked it from view it was removed, allowing the screen to rotate the full 180 degrees and seemingly right through the block (impossible task). Results from this study revealed that infants as young as three and a half months looked significantly longer at the seemingly impossible task when compared to the possible tasks (screen resting on the block or screen rotating through air). Baillargeon (1987) interpreted this longer looking time as evidence that the infants knew that the block continued to exist even though it was blocked from view and that they were ‘shocked’ that the screen seemingly rotated right through it.

Another task that Piaget is famous for involves having an experimenter show an infant a highly desirable toy and place it within reach of either their left or right hand. The placement location of the toy is referred to as ‘Location A.’ The desirable toy is then covered with an object, such as a blanket, and the infant is given the opportunity to retrieve the toy. After hiding and retrieving the toy several times at Location A, the experimenter moves the toy to the opposite side of the child (but in view of the child). This is referred to as ‘Location B.’When the toy is hidden again, and the child is given another chance to retrieve it, surprisingly infants between 8 and 12 months of age reach for Location A rather than Location B! This is what Piaget called the ‘A not B Error.’

But many child development researchers following Piaget have questioned whether infants really do not understand that the toy has moved locations and that it now exists elsewhere. It was noted that a small percentage of infants in Piaget's studies actually looked at Location B (where the toy was) while reaching for Location A. These observations lead other researchers to come up with and use a novel design – termed the 'violation of expectancy paradigm' - to further test Piaget’s notions about young infants’ ability to search for objects and their memory for object location.

Ahmed and Ruffman (2000) conducted a series of three experiments to further explore the A not B errors that infants make. In their first study the authors attempted to replicate the results of Piaget’s original task, requiring infants to search for an object using a motor response. In the second study the authors used a ‘nonsearch task.’ Here the infants saw a toy being hidden and retrieved at Location A by an experimenter. Then the infant watched the experimenter move and hide the toy at a new location – Location B. The toy was then retrieved by the experimenter from Location A (impossible event) or Location B (possible event). If the infants understood that the toy was at Location B, retrieval from Location A should violate their expectancy and as a result, infants’ looking times should be longer for the impossible rather than the possible event. In the third study the authors used a nonsearch task that only involved one location. Infants were shown the toy only being hidden and retrieved from Location A. The violation of expectation would be when the experimenter retrieved the hidden toy from Location B (a location in which the toy was never hidden).

Results from these studies showed that tasks requiring a motor response replicated Piaget’s early findings, that is infants made the A not B error (Ahmed & Ruffman, 2000). However, when tasks did not require a motor response, infants who were aged 8 to 12 months looked longer at impossible events when compared to possible events – inconsistent with the A not B error (Ahmed & Ruffman, 2000). Together these results suggest that the ability to remember the location of objects develops prior to 8 to 12 months and earlier than Piaget believed.

Lev Vygotsky
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was born in Russia in 1896. In 1916, he graduated from Moscow University with a degree in Law and later worked in his native town of Gomel before he moved in Moscow in 1924, where he lived until his death in 1934. At the same time Piaget was working on his theory, this pioneering psychologist brought a new perspective to cognitive development research that stressed the importance of social interaction to cognitive growth. While his work was left incomplete after his unfortunate death at the age of 38, Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory of higher mental functions development has had a significant impact on the history of the cognitive sciences. Often compared and contrasted with Piaget’s cognitive-developmental theory, the sociocultural perspective challenges Piaget’s universalist notion of development in favour of a cultural relativist approach that considers specific cultural context and social interactions, with a particular emphasis on belief systems, language structure and social environment.

The main principles of his sociocultural theory suggest:
 * That cognitive growth occurs within a sociocultural context that affects its form and processes.
 * "Many of a child’s cognitive skills evolve from social interactions with parents, teachers, and other more competent associates” (Shaffer, 1999, p. 259).
 * Language plays a central role in mental development.

Vygotsky claimed that infants are born with very few elementary mental functions – attention, sensation, perception and memory – that are eventually stimulated and nurtured by culture, developing into new and more sophisticated mental processes he labeled “higher mental functions” (Shaffer, 1999). He suggested that each culture transmitted beliefs, values, and preferred methods of thinking and problem-solving which were then internalized by its children. Thus, culture played a significant role in teaching younger generations what to think and how to go about it. Vygotsky categorized these types of cultural information as “tools of intellectual adaptation” which allowed elementary mental functions to be adapted more readily to the particular social environment (1978).

The central tenant of sociocultural theory indicates that children acquire cultural information in the context of collaborative dialogue and exchange with a more knowledgeable partner. The child learner begins to internalize the directions of the instructor in order to complete tasks which are otherwise too complex to be completed by the child alone. While Vygotsky agreed with Piaget that children were actively involved in learning and discovery, he placed less importance on self-initiated discovery choosing instead to focus on the contributions of social interaction or dialogue (Shaffer, 1999). Within Vygotsky’s framework, truly important discoveries occur when the learner is operating within the “zone of proximal development”; that is, where the encouragement and instruction of a skillful tutor can push the learner’s level of accomplishment well beyond the level attained through independent discovery.

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory also raised significant questions about the relationship of language and thought. From his perspective, language:
 * Is the primary vehicle through which adults pass cultural systems of thought and problem-solving on to their children.
 * Is one of the more powerful tools of intellectual adaptation.

Of particular importance was Vygotsky's view on the significance of verbal self-directed utterances of pre-school aged children as it contrasts sharply with Piaget’s perspective.

Egocentric Speech (Piaget) vs. Private Speech (Vygotsky)

Both theorists recognize the pre-school child’s self-directed monologues but disagree on the significance of such verbal expressions to the child’s cognitive development. Piaget regards this as “egocentric” – merely reflecting the child’s ongoing mental activity. On the other hand Vygotsky recognized such self-directed speech as communicative rather than egocentric; it is “speech for self” or “private speech” (Shaffer, 1999, p. 265). He suggests that this type of speech helps young children to plan strategies and regulate their behaviour so that they are more likely to accomplish their goals. As such, language plays a critical role in cognitive development by helping children organize their thoughts and become more proficient problem solvers. Further, Vygotsky’s position suggests that this early speech pattern or “private speech” never fully disappears, but becomes a silent inner speech that serves as a “cognitive self-guidance system” used to regulate everyday behaviour in later years.

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory has greatly impacted the historical trajectory of developmental psychology as it has posed a strong challenge to universalist notions of cognitive development and has reminded us that cognitive growth is best understood within the cultural and social contexts in which it occurs.

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Applied History of Psychology/Social Development

Erick Erikson
Freud’s work attracted many followers, however his pupils did not always agree with his teachings. Many began to modify Freud’s work and as a result, became important theorists in their own right. Among the most notable neo-Freudian scholars was German born, Erik Homburger Erikson(1902–1994).

It was in the summer of 1927 when Erik, then a young artist, took a job in a school founded for the children of Sigmund Freud’s patients and friends. While working in this school, he associated with the psychoanalysts and later became trained by them. He began to practice psychotherapy, marked by a change in his name from Homburger to Erikson, and eventually began to promote his own ideas on the nature of human personality and its development. While he maintained several of Freud’s ideas in his theorizing, he made several of his own contributions to psychoanalytic thinking around development (Burger, 2000).

One of Erikson's greatest contribution was to propose eight stages of development, versus Freud's suggested five. Particularly, Erikson expanded Freud's genital stage to include adolescence and three stages of adulthood. Erickson also expanded Freud's theory by emphasizing the psychosocial outcomes of development by suggesting that a major psychological conflict is resolved at each psychosexual stage of development, which allows the individual who resolves the conflict to acquire skills and attitudes that permit him or her to contribute constructively to the society (Berk, 2000).

Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development contended that each life stage includes a crisis that requires resolution. Erikson posited that young children wrestle with issues of trust, autonomy, and initiative; school aged children wrestle with the issue of competence; adolescents wrestle with the issues of identity and itimacy; and adults wrestle with issues of generativity and integrity.

Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development - Adapted from (Myers, 1998)

 * Infancy (1st year): Trust vs. Mistrust:
 * If needs are met, infants develop a sense of basic trust

 * Toddler (2nd year): Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt:
 * Toddlers learn to exercise will and do things for themselves, or they doubt their abilities

 * Preschooler (3–5 years): Initiative vs. Guilt:
 * Preschoolers learn to initiate tasks and carry out plans, or they feel guilty about trying to be independent

 * Elementary School (6 years to puberty): Competence vs. Inferiority:
 * Children learn the pleasure of applying themselves to tasks, or they feel inferior

 * Adolescence (Teen years into 20s): Identity vs. Role Confusion:
 * Adolescents aim to refine a sense of self by testing and integrating ‘roles’ to form a single *Young Adulthood (20s to early 40s): Intimacy vs. Isolation:
 * Young adults struggle to form close relationships and capacity for intimate love, or they feel socially isolated

 * Middle Adulthood (40s – 60s): Generative vs. Stagnation:
 * Middle-aged adults discover a sense of contributing to the world (usually through family and work), or they may feel a lack of purpose

 * Late Adulthood (Late 60s and up): Integrity vs. Despair:
 * Older adults develop a feeling of satisfaction when reflecting on their life, or they may feel a sense of failure

Erikson's interests in social development and in particular, the development of one's sense of self, can be traced back to his childhood experiences and personal struggles with his own identity. Born to a Jewish father and Danish mother, Erikson grew up conflicted by his sense of self, he was “scored as a Jew in school but mocked as a Gentile in the synagogue because of his blond hair and blue eyes” (Hunt, 1993, p. 391).

Contributions and Criticisms of Erikson’s Theory:

Erikson's theory of social development is typically more accepted than Freud's theory which emphasizes humans' instinctual drives (Shaffer, 1999). Rather than viewing children as passive beings, driven by their instincts and shaped by their parents, Erikson stressed that children are active, curious explorers who are rational, adaptive in nature and impacted by social and cultural influences. In his eight proposed stages of development, he captured many of life’s central issues, such as, emotional development in infants, self-concept development in childhood, identity issues in adolescence, etc. His work is relatable, as it emphasises many of the personal dilemmas and social conflicts that people experience and are able to recognize in others (Shaffer, 1999).

Despite his lasting contributions to the thinking around development, Erikson has been criticized by his peers for being too vague about the actual causes of development. Unfortunately, Erikson was not explicit about what influences an individual to develop in certain ways or how the outcome of each psychosocial stage later influences personality. However, Erikson’s work has helped to advance our understanding of social development, his theory being more descriptive in nature has also left some unanswered questions about how or why development takes place (Shaffer, 1999).


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Applied History of Psychology/Moral Development

Lawrence Kohlberg
Lawrence Kohlberg (October 25, 1927 - January 19, 1987) was an American psychologist born in Bronxville, New York. Famous for his work in moral education and reasoning, Kohlberg proposed a stage theory of moral development that is thought to extend the work of Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development.

Kohlberg focused on the development of moral judgments in children rather than on their actions. He saw the child as a "moral philosopher." Like Piaget, Kohlberg gathered his data by asking subjects questions about hypothetical stories. One of these stories has become famous as a classical ethical dilemma:

 * In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $200.00 for the radium and charged $2000.00 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000.00 (which was half of what it cost). Heinz told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it to him cheaper or let him pay later. The druggist said, "no, I discovered the drug and I am going to make money from it." Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife. Should the husband have done that?

Based on his analysis of the answers that children provided to this ethical dilemma, Kohlberg developed his stage model of moral development.

Kohlberg's Stages in the Development of Moral Judgment

Level 1 - Preconventional
 * Stage 1 - Obedience-and-Punishment Orientation
 * The child obeys rules to avoid punishment and there is no internalization of moral standards. The child finds it difficult to consider two points of view in a moral dilemma and instead they focus on fear of authority and avoidance of punishment as reasons for behaving morally (Berk, 2000).
 * Pro: Theft is justified because the drug did not cost much to provide.
 * Con: Theft is condemned because Heinz will be caught and go to jail.

 * Stage 2 - Naive Hedonistic and Instrumental Orientation
 * The child becomes aware that people can have different perspectives in a moral dilemma; however, the child's behaviour is motivated by a selfish desire to obtain rewards and benefits. Although reciprocity occurs, it is self-serving, manipulative, and based on a market-place outlook. For example, "You can play with my blocks if you let me play with your cars" would be a common type of statement for children within this stage.
 * Pro: Theft is justified because his wife needs the drug. Heinz needs his wife's companionship and help in life.
 * Con: Theft is condemned because his wife will probably die before Heinz gets out of jail, so it will not do him much good.

Level 2 - Conventional
 * Stage 3 - "Good Boy" - "Nice Girl" Morality
 * The child is concerned with winning the approval and avoiding disapproval of others. In judging the goodness or badness of behavior, the child considers a person's intentions. The child holds the conception of a morally good person as one who possesses a set of virtues and as a result, the child places much emphasis on being "nice."
 * Pro: Theft is justified because Heinz is unselfish in looking after the needs of his wife.
 * Con: Theft is condemned because Heinz will feel bad thinking of how he brought dishonour to his family and his family will be ashamed of his act.

 * Stage 4 - "Law-and-order" Orientation
 * The individual blindly accepts social convention and rules. Emphasis is on "doing one's duty," showing respect to authority, and maintaining a given social order for its own sake. Moral choices no longer depend on close ties to others at this stage and instead, rules are seen as needing to be enforced in the same manner for everyone.
 * Pro: Theft is justified because Heinz would otherwise have been responsible for his wife's death.
 * Con: Theft is condemned because Heinz is a lawbreaker.

Level 3 - Postconventional
 * Stage 5 - Social Contract Orientation
 * The individual believes that the purpose of the law is to preserve human rights and that unjust laws should be changed. Morality is seen as based on an agreement among individuals to conform to laws that are necessary for the community welfare. Since it is a social contract, it can be modified as long as basic rights like life and liberty are not impaired.

 * Stage 6 - Universal Ethical Principal Orientation
 * Conduct is controlled by an internalized set of ideas, which, if violated, results in self-condemnation and guilt. The individual follows self-chosen ethical principals based on abstract concepts (e.g., the equality of human rights, the Golden Rule, respect for the dignity of each human being) rather than concrete rules (e.g., the Ten Commandments). Unjust laws may be broken because they conflict with broad moral principals.
 * Pro: Theft is justified because Heinz would not have lived up to the standards of his conscience if he had allowed his wife to die.
 * Con: Theft is condemned because Heinz did not live up to the standards of his conscience when he engaged in stealing.

Criticisms of Kohlberg's Theory

Carol Gilligan questioned the influence of gender on Kohlberg's work on moral development because Kohlberg's theory was developed based on interviews that Kohlberg had conducted exclusively with male participants. Gilligan noted that Kohlberg's theory devalued qualities most encouraged in females, specifically an "ethic of care," and stressed those qualities most encouraged in males, that is "justice, or an abstract, rational commitment to moral ideals" (Berk, 2000).

In addition to being questioned about the influence of gender, others have suggested that Kohlberg's theory of moral development is culturally-biased. Specifically, researchers have posited that the highest stages of his theory reflect a westernized ideal of justice based on individualistic thought and that it is biased against those that live in non-Western societies that do not value individualism as much (Shaffer, Wood, & Willoughby, 2002).

Finally, Shaffer and colleagues (2002) have criticized Kohlberg's theory of moral development for several important reasons. First, they argue that Kohlberg neglects to take into account the central role that emotion plays in morality. Given that emotions play a critical role in influencing our thoughts and motivating our actions, it seems critical that emotion be part of the model. Second, they criticize Kohlberg's model because it underestimates the moral sophistication of elementary school children. By focusing so heavily on legalistic concepts perhaps this model underestimates the moral sophistication of even very young children. Lastly, Shaffer and colleagues (2002) state that Kohlberg's model is deficient because he fails to consider that moral reasoning is not a good predictor of moral behaviour. If someone's self report of how they would act is not a good predictor of how they will actually act then perhaps Kohlberg's theory lacks generalizability and utility.

Carol Gilligan
Feminist, ethicist and psychologist Carol Gilligan was born in New York on November 28, 1936. Before turning to psychology, she studied English literature at Swarthmore College. She received her MA in clinical psychology from Radcliff College and her Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University.

After graduating, she worked as a lecturer at the University of Chicago for one year (1965–1966). She was subsequently hired by Harvard University and she received tenure as a full professor in 1986. During her tenure, Gilligan also spent two years teaching at the University of Cambridge in England as a Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions (1992–1994). In 1997, Harvard University School of Education appointed Gilligan to the endowed Patricia Albjerg Graham Chair in Gender Studies. This was the first Harvard University position in gender studies.

As part of her position at the School of Education, Gilligan initiated the Harvard Project on Women's Psychology and Girls' Development. She also worked with the Strengthening Healthy Resistance and Courage in Girls program.

Gilligan's early research career was influenced by her work with Lawrence Kohlberg. She began to develop an interest and primary focus on girls' moral development as a result of her observation that Kohlberg theory was based on his interview with privileged white men and boys. She felt that Kohlberg theory was biased and she developed a model of moral development based on her research with women.

Carol Gilligan's Stages of Moral Development

 * Pre-conventional - Goal is individual survival
 * Conventional - Self-sacrifice is goodness
 * Post-conventional - Principle of nonviolence: do not hurt others or self

Some of Gilligan's major contributions:

 * Psychological theory and women’s development (1982)
 * Mapping the moral domain (1988)
 * Making Connection (1990)
 * Women, girls and psychotherapy: Reframing Resistance (1991)
 * Meeting at the crossroads: Women’s psychology and girls’ development (1992)
 * Between Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationships (1995)
 * Birth of Pleasure (2002)


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Applied History of Psychology/Controversies

Longstanding Questions & Controversies About Human Development
''What exactly causes development and what course does it follow? '' Developmental theorists have pondered and debated over these questions for decades. In an effort to explain the complexities of human development, psychologists (such as those discussed above) have proposed and tested theories over the years; however, consensus around development's true cause and course has yet to be established (Shaffer, 1999).

Throughout psychological history and still in present day, three key issues remain among which developmental theorists often disagree. Particularly, often disputed is the role of early experiences on later development in opposition to current behaviour reflecting present experiences – namely the passive verses active issue. Likewise, whether or not development is best viewed as occurring in stages or rather as a gradual and cumulative process of change has traditionally been up for debate – a question of continuity versus discontinuity. Further, the role of heredity and the environment in shaping human development is a much contested topic of discussion – also referred to as nature/nurture debate.

The Active/Passive Issue:

A key topic of debate among developmental theorists revolves around the issue of ‘active’ or ‘passive’ development (Shaffer, 1999). Of interest is whether or not children should be viewed as active contributors to their own development (i.e. influence how others treat them) or as passive recipients impressed upon by others and their environment.

Only a generation ago, most people, including psychologists, believed that the “footprints of our genes and early experience [were] set in cement” (Myers, 1998, p. 143). They believed that in response to these events, one's development would follow a stable life course. For example, early psychoanalytic theorists like Freud believed that children were passive beings moulded by their parents.

On the other hand, psychologists like Erikson believed that children develop as a response to their adaptations to their environments and social/cultural influences. It wasn't until the 1960s, that new findings surfaced suggesting that personality and development evolved with time and frequently undergo surprising and unpredictable changes. For example, longitudinal research by Jean Macfarlane (1964), in which 166 people were followed from infancy to age 30, found that many of the participants who had severely troubled childhoods and adolescences were later rated as some of the most “mature and competent” adults within the study. Research by Thomas and Chess (1986) report similar results.

Thus, as Bernice Neugarten (1980) once said upon reflecting on her work on changes within the life cycle, “the primary consistency we have found is lack of consistency”.

The Continuity/Discontinuity Issue:

The debate among theorists about developmental change occurring steadily and over time or suddenly and perhaps in stages has been longstanding and has fuelled much of developmental thinking and research.

Continuity theorists view human development as an “additive process that occurs gradually and continuously, without sudden change” (Shaffer, 1999, p. 40). Whereas discontinuity theorists describe developmental growth as occurring through a series of abrupt changes, each which “elevates the child to a new and presumably more advanced level functioning” (p. 40).

In our account of prominent historical developmental researchers, several stage or discontinuity theorists have been considered: Piaget on cognitive development, Kohlberg on moral development, Erikson on social development and Freud on personality development. Over time, research has been conducted to support the idea that stage development may be true to certain times within development. For example, Thatcher, Walker and Guidice (1987) has found that there are spurts of brain growth during childhood and puberty that approximately correspond to Piaget's proposed stages. However, despite the groundbreaking work of these theorists, they have also faced criticisms demonstrating that life may not always progress through a fixed, predictable set of steps as suggested (see criticisms of each theorist above). Rather, theorists such as Vygotsky, discuss change as it occurs progressively and in accordance with ever-changing social and cultural influences.

The Nature Nurture Debate
One of the most important and long standing questions that has been debated by both philosophers and psychologists is whether or not we develop as individuals because of the biological contributions we receive from our parents (genetics) or environmental experience we gain after birth (Myers, 1998).

Here is how a few of the most prominent philosophers and psychologists weighed in on the issue:
 * In the 17th century, John Locke used the term "tabula rasa" to describe the state of the mind at birth as a "blank slate." Locke posited that it is only through our senses (experiences) that we come to develop ways of perceiving and ultimately understanding the world (Myers, 1998).  This view of empiricists is in contrast to that of nativists, who believed that certain elementary truths are innate to the human mind and need not be gained through experience.
 * G. Stanley Hall was one of the earliest psychologists to propose a theory of adolescent development. He believed that all individuals pass through the same four stages of development and that progression through these stages was based on physiological factors (genetics).  Development was framed as an "unchangeable, universal pattern, and the effects of the environment [were thought to be] minimal" (Dacey & Travers, 1996, 284).
 * Sir Francis Galton assumed that "talent is transmitted by inheritance in a very remarkable degree" (Galton, 1865, 157). As support for this claim Galton argued that the most desirable human traits, such as height or intelligence, tend to run in families.  Taking this notion one step further, Galton believed that we as a society could strive for human betterment by mating those people with the most desirable traits, as they would pass on their genes and likely produce the most favourable offspring.  It was this belief that founded the Eugenics movement.

Today, it is generally agreed upon that it is neither genetics nor environment alone that determine how we develop as individuals; but rather, genetics, environment, and the interaction between the two, are all thought to have a part in explaining how we develop. Traditional studies within the field of child development have primarily focussed on the impact that the family has on children. However, these studies confound the influence of genetics and environment because parents are the providers of both genes and environment. In order to tease apart the influence of genetics and environment, designs that are genetically sensitive must be utilized (Jenkins, 2006).

Twin Studies are one way to help tease apart genetic and environmental influences. Using this design, researchers compare monozygotic twins (MZ twins), who share 100% of their genes, to dyzygotic twins (DZ twins), who only share 50% of their genes. Knowing how genetically similar twins are and comparing how behaviourally similar they are allows researchers to infer the relative importance of genes and environment. If monozygotic twins (MZ) are proven to be more similar on a given trait or characteristic when compared to dyzygotic twins (DZ), it would suggest that there is a strong genetic component to that trait or characteristic. However, if monozygotic twins (MZ) are found to be no more similar to each other on a given trait or characteristic when compared to (DZ) twins, it would suggest that there is a strong environmental component to that trait or characteristic.

Adoption Studies are another important way of disentangling genetic and environmental effects. That is, studying children who were brought up from an early age by parents other than the ones who conceived them (Schaffer, 1996). Adopted children can be compared to their adoptive parents to determine how similar or different they are from each other. If adoptive parents and children are found to be similar to one another than this is likely support for environmental influence (because they do not share genetic material). Adopted children can also be compared to their biological parents (those which they have not been reared by). If biological parents and adopted children share similar characteristics, this lends support to the argument for genetic influences. However, adoption studies are not lacking criticism. Oftentimes 1 biological parents cannot or do not wanted to be located/do not wish to be tested and 2) children who are going to be adopted are often placed with families that resemble or share characteristics with their biological parents (Schaffer, 1996).

Finally, recent developments in the field of Molecular Genetics have allowed for the "investigation of gene-environment interaction in behaviour" (Jenkins, 2006). It is believed that polymorphisms on specific genes may actually make some children more vulnerable than others to negative influences within their environments (Caspi et al., 2002). Levels of symptomatology or psychopathology within individuals are then examined as a function of 1) genetics, 2) the environment, and 3) the combined effects of genetics and the environment, referred to as the 'gene-environment interaction.'

It is interesting however, to examine the history and assumptions behind the twin studies method. Classical twin studies were inspired by the writings of Francis Galton and build upon the family pedigrees studies of eugenicist Abraham Myerson (1925). In the past, family studies demonstrating clustering of particular traits or so-called mental disorders were taken as “proof” of the genetic argument. This search for the culprit genes and demonstration of the inheritibility of psychological traits and disorders continues. The belief in the inheritance of certain psychological traits deemed undesirable is one of the reason thousands of individuals were sterilized without their consent in the 1900s.

One of the main theoretical assumption of twin-studies is that of the “equal environment assumption.” In classical twin-studies examining MZ and DZ reared in similar environment, it is argued that higher concordance rates of a psychological trait or condition in MZ vs DZ demonstrates the genetic basis and inheritability of this trait or condition. However, MZ share a more similar prenatal and perinatal environment than DZ twins. DZ share the same placenta, they are treated more similarly, they are more often raised as a unit and spend more time together then MZ twins. As a result, it is not possible to completely tease apart the environment from the genetic influence or their interaction. For instance, if a particular disorder is associated with exposure to a toxin in the environment, it is more likely that DZ twins will share similar levels of exposure in comparison to MZ twins. Thus, it is problematic to conclude inheritance based on higher concordance rates of MZ vs DZ twins.

Studies of twins reared apart are also problematic, at least with regard to the pre-natal environment. The role of early bonding and attachment experiences prior to being separated would also need to be taken into consideration given their influence on psychological functioning.