Arthur S. Reber

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Arthur S. Reber (born 1940) is an American cognitive psychologist. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and a Fulbright Fellow. He is known for introducing the concept of implicit learning and for using basic principles of evolutionary biology to show how implicit or unconscious cognitive functions differ in fundamental ways from those carried out consciously.

Contents

Career

Reber was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. in 1961 from the University of Pennsylvania in psychology, [1] working with Justin Aronfreed and Richard Solomon and his M.A. in 1965 and PhD degree in 1967 from Brown University under Richard Millward. He taught at the University of British Columbia from 1966 to 1970 when he moved to Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In 1998 he was appointed Broeklundian Professor of Psychology. He spent 1977–78 as a Fulbright Professor at the University of Innsbruck, Austria and 1995–96 as a visiting scholar at the University of Wales, Bangor. He retired in 2005 but maintains a visiting professor position at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and continues to work with colleagues and former students.

Research

Implicit learning

His M.S. thesis was the first demonstration of implicit learning, a form of learning that takes place without awareness of either the process of acquisition or knowledge of what was actually learned. Those experiments [2] used the artificial grammar learning methods where participants memorize strings of letters that appear random but are actually formed according to complex rules. After the learning period they are able to discern whether new, novel letter-strings are "grammatical" (i.e., conform to the rules) or "non-grammatical" (i.e., violate the rules) without being able to articulate the rules they are using. These processes have much in common with the notion of intuition where people often find themselves able to make effective decisions without being aware of the knowledge they are using, how, or even when, they acquired it. His 1993 book, Implicit Learning and Tacit Knowledge: An Essay on the Cognitive Unconscious reviews the early decades of research on the topic.

A variety of other techniques have been developed to study implicit cognitive functions and a host of related phenomena have been explored including implicit memory, the Implicit Association Test, the role of implicit acquisition in language learning and socialization and the multi-national, multi-university Project Implicit.

Some deny that implicit cognitive functions invariably lie outside of awareness. Researchers such as David Shanks, Pierre Perruchet and Lee Brooks have argued that implicit or tacit knowledge may, in fact, be available to consciousness [3] and that much of this tacit knowledge is not based on rules or patterns but rather on fragments, concrete exemplars and instances. [4] [5]

Independent of this point, the issues raised by decades of research has led to the growth of areas in the social sciences that have been determined to have unconscious cognitive functions as an integral element. They include, among others: language acquisition, sport and motor skills, organizational structure, acquiring expertise, belief formation, aging, aesthetics, emotion, and affect. The Cognitive Unconscious: The First Half-Century [6] will cover these issues.

Evolutionary theory

Reber developed a model based on the assumption that the underlying mechanisms that control implicit learning are based on evolutionarily old cortical and sub-cortical structures, ones that emerged long before those that modulate conscious control and self-reflection. [7] By applying principles of evolutionary biology, the model predicts that implicit cognitive functions should display features that distinguish it from explicit functions. Specifically, implicit processes should show little individual variation compared with explicit; [8] they should be operational early in life [9] and continue to function as people age. [10] They should be robust and remain intact in the face of neurological and psychiatric disorders that compromise explicit processing [11] and should display phylogenetic commonality. [12]

Origins of consciousness

Reber maintains that human consciousness should be viewed as a pole on a continuum of subjective, phenomenal states that can be traced back to simple reactivity of organic forms and not as something special in our universe. [13] We would do better to treat consciousness like we treat memory, not as a singular thing but as a label for a host of functions all of which have a common functional core. Cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists are, he notes, quite comfortable viewing memory as beginning in very basic functions of cellular biology (as Eric Kandel has shown) while still recognizing the various complex and sophisticated forms we see in humans as on a continuum with the primitive forms.

In his recent book The First Minds: Caterpillars, 'Karyotes, and Consciousness, [14] Reber introduced the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) model and developed this argument further, arguing that sentience is a fundamental property of all life, that life and consciousness are co-terminous. It is a given in evolutionary biology that all species, extant and extinct, evolved from these unicellular forms. The CBC is based on the presumption that sentience, consciousness followed the same path—the many ways that species experience events, similarly evolved from prokaryotes. Interestingly, the CBC also allows for a novel perspective on the Hard Problem. Rather that search for the ways in which brains make minds, consciousness is viewed as an integral feature of all life. In short, the emergentist's dilemma is reformulated and in a version that is physiologically more tractable. Reviewer Peter Kassan notes that the work is "solidly grounded in actual biology rather than fanciful speculation based on quantum mechanics, information theory, or science fiction." Kassan also says that it remains to be seen "whether the CBC sparks a renaissance of productive research" in consciousness studies. [15]

With František Baluška, a cell biologist at the University of Bonn, Reber is examining the various biochemical mechanisms that are likely candidates for the emergence of these kinds of sentience. [16] [17]

Lexicography

In 1985 Reber authored the Dictionary of Psychology, now in its 4th edition. His daughter Emily Reber co-authored the 3rd edition and his wife Rhianon Allen joined for the most recent edition. The dictionary has sold over a half-million copies in six languages.

Critique of the paranormal

In collaboration with James Alcock, York University, Reber has returned to a topic that interested him decades ago, why the field of parapsychology still exists when, after over 150 years of effort, no paranormal effect has ever been reliably demonstrated. This persistent belief is remarkable because, as they note, parapsychological claims simply cannot be true. For psi (an umbrella term often used for the field) to be real, effects would precede their causes, time's arrow turned upon itself, the laws of thermodynamics upended, and the inverse square law violated. [18] [19]

In a controversial move, Reber and Alcock maintain that it is actually futile to look at the data psi researchers publish. They use the classic rhetorical device adynaton "pigs can't fly" to make their point. Because they cannot, any data that claim to show that they do are necessarily flawed and result from weak methodology, improper data analyses, are Type II errors—or, occasionally, fraud.

A separate career

In addition to his work in cognitive psychology and the philosophy of mind, Reber has had a parallel career as a reporter and commentator on gambling, particularly poker. As a free-lance writer, he has authored hundreds of columns, most from the psychologist's point of view. These have been published in magazines such as Casino Player, Strictly Slots and Poker Pro Magazine and web sites like PokerListings.com. His breakdown of forms of gambling based on expected value was presented in The New Gambler's Bible. An overview of gaming appeared in Gambling for Dummies (co-authored with Richard Harroch and Lou Krieger) and recently he published Poker, Life and Other Confusing Things, a collection of essays. In 2012 he proposed a novel framework for the notion "gambling" based on the two dimensions of expected value of a game and the flexibility that a game affords each player. [20] Most recently Reber has turned to novel writing. His first effort at literary fiction, "Xero to Sixty" was published in 2015. It follows the life of Xerxes ("Xero") Konstantakis, a Greek layabout with intellectual roots who is tugged at constantly by the world of carnivals, smoke-filled gambling halls, poker rooms and race tracks. Xero's story begins when he flunks out of college and runs away with the circus and it follows him through to his sixtieth year.

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evolved to solve. In this framework, psychological traits and mechanisms are either functional products of natural and sexual selection or non-adaptive by-products of other adaptive traits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mind</span> Faculties responsible for mental phenomena

The mind is that which thinks, imagines, remembers, wills, and senses, or is the set of faculties responsible for such phenomena. The mind is also associated with experiencing perception, pleasure and pain, belief, desire, intention, and emotion. The mind can include conscious and non-conscious states as well as sensory and non-sensory experiences.

The problem of other minds is a philosophical problem traditionally stated as the following epistemological question: Given that I can only observe the behavior of others, how can I know that others have minds? The problem is that knowledge of other minds is always indirect. The problem of other minds does not negatively impact social interactions due to people having a "theory of mind" - the ability to spontaneously infer the mental states of others - supported by innate mirror neurons, a theory of mind mechanism, or a tacit theory. There has also been an increase in evidence that behavior results from cognition which in turn requires consciousness and the brain.

The unconscious mind consists of processes in the mind that occur automatically and are not available to introspection. Although these processes exist beneath the surface of conscious awareness, they are thought to exert an effect on conscious thought processes and behavior. Empirical evidence suggests that unconscious phenomena include repressed feelings and desires, memories, automatic skills, subliminal perceptions, and automatic reactions. The term was coined by the 18th-century German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Artificial consciousness (AC), also known as machine consciousness (MC), synthetic consciousness or digital consciousness, is the consciousness hypothesized to be possible in artificial intelligence. It is also the corresponding field of study, which draws insights from philosophy of mind, philosophy of artificial intelligence, cognitive science and neuroscience. The same terminology can be used with the term "sentience" instead of "consciousness" when specifically designating phenomenal consciousness.

Psychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of human mental functions and behavior. Occasionally, in addition or opposition to employing the scientific method, it also relies on symbolic interpretation and critical analysis, although these traditions have tended to be less pronounced than in other social sciences, such as sociology. Psychologists study phenomena such as perception, cognition, emotion, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. Some, especially depth psychologists, also study the unconscious mind.

Tacit knowledge or implicit knowledge—as opposed to formalized, codified or explicit knowledge—is knowledge that is difficult to express or extract; therefore it is more difficult to transfer to others by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. This can include motor skills, personal wisdom, experience, insight, and intuition.

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Artificial grammar learning (AGL) is a paradigm of study within cognitive psychology and linguistics. Its goal is to investigate the processes that underlie human language learning by testing subjects' ability to learn a made-up grammar in a laboratory setting. It was developed to evaluate the processes of human language learning but has also been utilized to study implicit learning in a more general sense. The area of interest is typically the subjects' ability to detect patterns and statistical regularities during a training phase and then use their new knowledge of those patterns in a testing phase. The testing phase can either use the symbols or sounds used in the training phase or transfer the patterns to another set of symbols or sounds as surface structure.

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Implicit cognition refers to cognitive processes that occur outside conscious awareness or conscious control. This includes domains such as learning, perception, or memory which may influence a person's behavior without their conscious awareness of those influences.

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A cognitive module in cognitive psychology is a specialized tool or sub-unit that can be used by other parts to resolve cognitive tasks. It is used in theories of the modularity of mind and the closely related society of mind theory and was developed by Jerry Fodor. It became better known throughout cognitive psychology by means of his book, The Modularity of Mind (1983). The nine aspects he lists that make up a mental module are domain specificity, mandatory operation, limited central accessibility, fast processing, informational encapsulation,‘shallow’ outputs, fixed neural architecture, characteristic and specific breakdown patterns, and characteristic ontogenetic pace and sequencing. Not all of these are necessary for the unit to be considered a module, but they serve as general parameters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CLARION (cognitive architecture)</span>

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Indirect memory tests assess the retention of information without direct reference to the source of information. Participants are given tasks designed to elicit knowledge that was acquired incidentally or unconsciously and is evident when performance shows greater inclination towards items initially presented than new items. Performance on indirect tests may reflect contributions of implicit memory, the effects of priming, a preference to respond to previously experienced stimuli over novel stimuli. Types of indirect memory tests include the implicit association test, the lexical decision task, the word stem completion task, artificial grammar learning, word fragment completion, and the serial reaction time task.

Implicit learning is the learning of complex information in an unintentional manner, without awareness of what has been learned. According to Frensch and Rünger (2003) the general definition of implicit learning is still subject to some controversy, although the topic has had some significant developments since the 1960s. Implicit learning may require a certain minimal amount of attention and may depend on attentional and working memory mechanisms. The result of implicit learning is implicit knowledge in the form of abstract representations rather than verbatim or aggregate representations, and scholars have drawn similarities between implicit learning and implicit memory.

Unconscious cognition is the processing of perception, memory, learning, thought, and language without being aware of it.

Knowledge of results is a term in the psychology of learning. A psychology dictionary defines it as feedback of information:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polanyi's paradox</span> Philosophical theory

Polanyi's paradox, named in honour of the British-Hungarian philosopher Michael Polanyi, is the theory that human knowledge of how the world functions and of our own capability are, to a large extent, beyond our explicit understanding. The theory was articulated by Michael Polanyi in his book The Tacit Dimension in 1966, and economist David Autor gave it a name in his 2014 research paper "Polanyi's Paradox and the Shape of Employment Growth".

References

  1. ↑ "Arthur S. Reber – Academic Vita". arthurreber.com. Retrieved September 5, 2018.
  2. ↑ Reber, A. S. (1967). Implicit learning of artificial grammars. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 6, 855‑863.
  3. ↑ Shanks, D. & St. John, M. (1994). Characteristics of dissociable human learning-systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17, 367–395.
  4. ↑ Perruchet, P. & Pacteau, S. (2006). Implicit learning and statistical learning: One phenomenon, two approaches. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 33–38.
  5. ↑ Brooks, L. & Vokey, J. (1991). Abstract analogies and abstracted grammars. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 120, 316–323.
  6. ↑ A. S. Reber & R. Allen, Eds. NY: Oxford University Press. Forthcoming, 2021.
  7. ↑ Reber, A. S. (1992). The cognitive unconscious: An evolutionary perspective. Consciousness and Cognition, 1, 93‑133.
  8. ↑ Reber, A. S., Walkenfeld, F. F., & Hernstadt, R. (1991). Implicit learning: Individual differences and IQ. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 17, 888‑896.
  9. ↑ Meulemans, T., Van der Linden, T. & Perruchet, P. (1998). Implicit sequence learning in children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 69, 199–221.
  10. ↑ Dennis, N., Howard, J. & Howard, D. (2004). Implicit sequence learning without motor sequencing in young and old adults. Experimental Brain Research, 175, 153–174.
  11. ↑ Knowlton, B., Ramus, S. & Squire, L. (1992). Intact artificial grammar learning in amnesia. Psychological Science, 3, 172–179.
  12. ↑ Herbranson, W. & Shimp, C. (2003). "Artificial grammar learning" in pigeons: A preliminary analysis. Learning and Behavior, 31, 98–106.
  13. ↑ Reber, A. S. (1997). Caterpillars and consciousness. Philosophical Psychology, 10, 437–450.
  14. ↑ NY: Oxford University Press, 2019
  15. ↑ Kassan, Peter (September–October 2020). "How Does It Feel?". Skeptical Inquirer . Vol. 44, no. 5. Amherst, New York: Center for Inquiry. pp. 57–59.
  16. ↑ Baluška, F. & Reber, A. S. (2019). Sentience and consciousness in single cells: How the first minds emerged in unicellular species. BioEssays, Mar;41(3):e1800229. doi: 10.1002/bies.201800229. Epub 2019 Feb 4. PMID   30714631.
  17. ↑ Reber, A. S. & Baluška, F. (forthcoming). Cognition in some surprising places. Journal of Biophysical Research Communications.
  18. ↑ Reber, A. S. & Alcock, J. (2019). Searching for the impossible: Parapsychology's elusive quest. American Psychologist
  19. ↑ Reber, A. S. & Alcock, J. (2019). Why parapsychological claims cannot be true. Skeptical Inquirer, 43, 8–10.
  20. ↑ Reber, A. S. (2012). The EVF Model of Gambling: A novel framework for understanding gambling and, by extension, poker.Gaming Research and Review Journal, 16, 63–80.
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