Within cognitivism two currents can be distinguished. The first, called Human Information Processing (HIP) or human information processing theory. This current is inspired by cybernetics. Specifically, it is based on the analogy between the operations of the human mind and the data processing processes carried out by computers.
The HIP analyzes operations of cognitive processes such as memory, thought, language, movement and perception. In this Psychology-Online article, we will delve together about information processing theory.
Human information processing is not a true theory of cognitive development, but a approach in which the mind is compared to a computer that processes stimuli applicable to various cognitive processes such as the memory, the thought, the language, movement and perception. This approach focuses on performance (not competition), sees changes as quantitative (not qualitative) and is interested in the way in which a process develops (not in what is develops).
Background of information processing theory
The first models of mental functioning proposed by the HIP in the sixties of the last century were characterized by the treatment rigidly serial information and by the final placement, in the sequence of the production operations and the selection.
These models envisaged limited information processing capacity and autonomous treatment channels. The merit of these "pipeline" models lies in their simplicity. However, experimental data have not always confirmed its validity.
Starting in the 1970s, "cascade" or "parallel" models have appeared that provide for the prosecution of the information simultaneous through communicating channels and that selection operations are placed in the early stages of the information preparation process. These models imply an unlimited processing capacity, the possibility of interaction between the different levels of information processing and of resorting to alternative strategies.
While the pipeline models, of a structural type, postulated the existence of "blocks" of oil treatment operations. information, these seconds are functional, since they involve, above all, information flows on which the different operations.
Who Created the Information Processing Theory? The name of this type of study derives from the title of the book written in 1972 by Peter H. Lindsay and Donald A. Norman "Human information processing: an introduction to psychology ", but the foundations of the theory must be sought from the dawn of cognitivism. Let's look at all the authors of the information processing theory:
- Neisser, father of cognitivism. He proposed the HIP model considering the human mind as an information processor.
- Serial models are models of mental functioning proposed in the 1960s. The most famous of them is the multi-store or modal model proposed in 1968 by Richard Chatam Atkinson Y Richard Shiffrin.
- The successive "cascade" and "parallel" models, which appeared in the 1970s, provide for the simultaneous processing of information through communicating channels. An example of a "cascade" model, which has appeared since the 1970s, is the "Double Path Cascade Model" from Max coltheart, Brent Edward Curtis, Paul Atkins and Michael Haller.
- An example of a "parallel" model, on the other hand, is "Parallel Distributed Processing" (PDP), which became popular in the 1980s thanks to studies by psychologists. David Rumelhart and James Mcclelland.
According to early HIP theories, to process the information the human system must be done with serial phases, not in parallel. Each stage requires a few milliseconds. The processing is based on the comparison of the acquired information with the new information. Let's see examples of the theory of information processing through the functioning of memory:
- The phenomenological reality provides a series of stimuli (inputs) in the form of energy recognizable and transformable by the perceptual system. Stimulus detectors are nothing more than nerve cells. For example, the sound of a melody or the smell of perfume.
- All entry and exit information is stored in a small short term memory It stores little information, but very quickly. That sound or smell is momentarily stored in short-term memory.
- The cells that detect the stimulus are activated and extract information from the working memory to compare it with long-term memory and allow recognition. Continuing with the examples, the system looks to see if it has information about the sound or smell in question. If you have it, that means you have to buy them and you will recognize them.
- The long term memory it contains an infinite number of quickly compiled data stored, unlike short memory, with a rather slow process.
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