I love tips :) Except for the posting limit ;-) So I am making an omnibus reply to several posts.
Claudia you made some great points about things that have come and gone. I might love to argue and discuss a few points, such as bottleneck models of attention--because I think we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater on that one. (I did a 3-year post doc on (cognitive aging and specifically) attention and have great respect for both models.) I think you misunderstood something I said. My intent was to make the point that sensation, perception...decision making are indeed the traditional areas of study in cognitive psych, but that many aspects of these areas lately only seem to be covered to the extent that they have some relation to either neural network (PDP--too long to write out or use) models or some neuroscience/biological component--which really we are only guessing is correctly imaging what we think we are imaging. Really, our background knowledge is only partial, so it's hard to be so certain about what is building on it. I'm a skeptic here--open to suggestions but very cautious. Indeed, most of your points still focus on traditional approaches to cognition that rely on inferring cognitive processes from our behaviors--capacity models of attention, working memory--although I don't know anyone who would argue vigorously that there is a unitary memory system--i.e, the old boxes model still holds to the extent that there are qualitatively different memory systems for long term storage and for working on information in the present; anyway, just saying that we could have a vigorous (friendly! educational!) discussion over some of these points. In regards to Gary's reply: Oh No! I never saw myself as Skinnerian. I really and truly believe we have a very rich inner thought life that is distinct from stimulus response contingencies! :) But, like you, I am left wondering when history happened and I blinked and missed it! Mike: OK, a new book on my amazon wishlist: Artificial Dreams. Interestingly, it has no reader reviews, and is a bit pricey. Hmm, maybe I should get it from the library :) How do you find time to keep up with all the literature? I knew I could count on tips folks to get a discussion going; I will follow along. However, I think I still stand by my current thinking (but am willing to change) that for the junior/senior level undergraduate what I want to teach them is more strongly focused on our incomplete knowledge developed from behavioral studies, rather than spending too much time talking about imaging correlates of incomplete knowledge. Does that make sense? Annette ps: analysis by synthesis dead? Wow, I'd better stop reading my old Neisser over and over again ;-) Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 619-260-4006 [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
