Mark H. Johnson

Last updated

Mark Johnson

FBA
Born
Mark Henry Johnson

1960 (age 62–63) [1]
Alma mater University of Edinburgh (BSc)
University of Cambridge (PhD)
Known for Rethinking Innateness
Awards Queen's Anniversary Prize (2006) [2]
Scientific career
Institutions University of Cambridge
Carnegie Mellon University
Birkbeck, University of London
Thesis An analysis of the neural systems underlying filial preference behaviour in the domestic chick  (1985)
Doctoral advisor Patrick Bateson [3]
Website www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/people/professor-mark-johnson

Mark Henry Johnson FBA (born 1960) [1] is a British cognitive neuroscientist who, since October 2017, has been Professor of Experimental Psychology and Head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. [2] [4] He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. [5]

Contents

Education

Johnson was educated at the University of Edinburgh (BSc)[ when? ] and the University of Cambridge where his PhD was supervised by Patrick Bateson. [3] [6] He was a postgraduate student at King's College, Cambridge. [1]

Career and research

In 1996, Johnson co-authored, (with Jeffrey Elman, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Elizabeth Bates, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett), the book Rethinking Innateness , [7] which examines neural network approaches to development. [8] In the book, Elman et al. propose that genetic information might provide "constraints" on how a dynamic network responds to the environment during learning. For example, they suggest that a learning system can be seen as being subject to architectural constraints during development, an idea that gave birth to the neural network field of constructivist modelling. Rethinking Innateness has received more than 1,500 citations, [4] and was nominated as one of the "One hundred most influential works in cognitive science from the 20th Century" (Minnesota Millennium Project). [8]

Johnson has gone on to develop [9] an Interactive Specialization approach to development, that views cognitive brain development as a series of back-propagated interactions between genetics, brain, body and environment. This model of cognitive development emphasises that development is a stochastic, network-based, interactive process. As such, it echoes contemporary work in other areas of development, such as probabilistic epigenesis and gene regulatory networks.

In 2007, Johnson co-authored (with Denis Mareschal, Sylvain Sirois, Michael Spratling, Michael Thomas and Gert Westermann) Neuroconstructivism, [10] which discusses the relationship between cognition, the brain and the environment. Specifically, they argue that "the brain acquires and develops multiple, fragmentary representations that are just sufficient for on-the-fly processing" and that these representations "serve to cause behaviours rather than to mirror the environment." Volume 2 contains a variety of neural network models that investigate how these representations change during learning (including models from Randy O’Reilly, Matthew Schlesinger and Yuko Munakata).

Johnson specialises in the development of the brain networks subserving social cognition. He is the author of more than 200 papers, [4] and has written or edited seven books, most notably his textbook Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience [11] He serves, with Denis Mareschal, as co-editor of the journal Developmental Science.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognitive science</span> Interdisciplinary scientific study of cognitive processes

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes with input from linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, computer science/artificial intelligence, and anthropology. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition. Cognitive scientists study intelligence and behavior, with a focus on how nervous systems represent, process, and transform information. Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include language, perception, memory, attention, reasoning, and emotion; to understand these faculties, cognitive scientists borrow from fields such as linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology. The typical analysis of cognitive science spans many levels of organization, from learning and decision to logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organization. One of the fundamental concepts of cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."

Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind and brain; that is, the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend, and produce language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Connectionism</span> Cognitive science approach

Connectionism is a name of an approach to the study of human mental processes with many 'waves'. The first one appeared in the 1950s with Warren Sturgis McCulloch and Walter Pitts both focusing on comprehending neural circuitry through a formal and mathematical approach, and Frank Rosenblatt who published the 1958 book “The Perceptron: A Probabilistic Model For Information Storage and Organization in the Brain” in Psychological Review, while working at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory.

Computational neuroscience is a branch of neuroscience which employs mathematical models, computer simulations, theoretical analysis and abstractions of the brain to understand the principles that govern the development, structure, physiology and cognitive abilities of the nervous system.

A cognitive model is an approximation of one or more cognitive processes in humans or other animals for the purposes of comprehension and prediction. There are many types of cognitive models, and they can range from box-and-arrow diagrams to a set of equations to software programs that interact with the same tools that humans use to complete tasks. In terms of information processing, cognitive modeling is modeling of human perception, reasoning, memory and action.

Modularity of mind is the notion that a mind may, at least in part, be composed of innate neural structures or mental modules which have distinct, established, and evolutionarily developed functions. However, different definitions of "module" have been proposed by different authors. According to Jerry Fodor, the author of Modularity of Mind, a system can be considered 'modular' if its functions are made of multiple dimensions or units to some degree. One example of modularity in the mind is binding. When one perceives an object, they take in not only the features of an object, but the integrated features that can operate in sync or independently that create a whole. Instead of just seeing red, round, plastic, and moving, the subject may experience a rolling red ball. Binding may suggest that the mind is modular because it takes multiple cognitive processes to perceive one thing.

In the field of psychology, nativism is the view that certain skills or abilities are "native" or hard-wired into the brain at birth. This is in contrast to the "blank slate" or tabula rasa view, which states that the brain has inborn capabilities for learning from the environment but does not contain content such as innate beliefs. This factor contributes to the ongoing nature versus nurture dispute, one borne from the current difficulty of reverse engineering the subconscious operations of the brain, especially the human brain.

Neuroconstructivism is a theory that states that phylogenetic developmental processes such as gene–gene interaction, gene–environment interaction and, crucially, ontogeny all play a vital role in how the brain progressively sculpts itself and how it gradually becomes specialized over developmental time.

Developmental cognitive neuroscience is an interdisciplinary scientific field devoted to understanding psychological processes and their neurological bases in the developing organism. It examines how the mind changes as children grow up, interrelations between that and how the brain is changing, and environmental and biological influences on the developing mind and brain.

Jeffrey Locke Elman was an American psycholinguist and professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He specialized in the field of neural networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Decety</span>

Jean Decety is an American-French neuroscientist specializing in developmental neuroscience, affective neuroscience, and social neuroscience. His research focuses on the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms underpinning social cognition, particularly social decision-making, empathy, moral reasoning, altruism, pro-social behavior, and more generally interpersonal relationships. He is Irving B. Harris Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago.

Interactive Specialization is a theory of brain development proposed by the British developmental cognitive neuroscientist Mark Johnson, formerly head of the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development at Birkbeck, University of London, London and who is now Head of Psychology at the University of Cambridge.

Rethinking Innateness: A connectionist perspective on development is a book regarding gene/environment interaction by Jeffrey Elman, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Elizabeth Bates, Mark Johnson, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett published in 1996. It has been cited about 4,000 times in scientific articles, and has been nominated as one of the "One hundred most influential works in cognitive science from the 20th Century".

Annette Karmiloff-Smith CBE FBA FMedSci (1938–2016) was a professorial research fellow at the Developmental Neurocognition Lab at Birkbeck, University of London. Before moving to Birbeck, she was Head of the Neurocognitive Development Unit at Institute of Child Health, University College, London. She was an expert in developmental disorders, with a particular interest in Williams syndrome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wolfgang Prinz</span> German cognitive psychologist

Wolfgang Prinz is a German cognitive psychologist. He is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and an internationally recognized expert in experimental psychology, cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind. He is the founder of the common coding theory between perception and action that has a significant impact in cognitive neuroscience and social cognition.

Educational neuroscience is an emerging scientific field that brings together researchers in cognitive neuroscience, developmental cognitive neuroscience, educational psychology, educational technology, education theory and other related disciplines to explore the interactions between biological processes and education. Researchers in educational neuroscience investigate the neural mechanisms of reading, numerical cognition, attention and their attendant difficulties including dyslexia, dyscalculia and ADHD as they relate to education. Researchers in this area may link basic findings in cognitive neuroscience with educational technology to help in curriculum implementation for mathematics education and reading education. The aim of educational neuroscience is to generate basic and applied research that will provide a new transdisciplinary account of learning and teaching, which is capable of informing education. A major goal of educational neuroscience is to bridge the gap between the two fields through a direct dialogue between researchers and educators, avoiding the "middlemen of the brain-based learning industry". These middlemen have a vested commercial interest in the selling of "neuromyths" and their supposed remedies.

Externalism is a group of positions in the philosophy of mind which argues that the conscious mind is not only the result of what is going on inside the nervous system, but also what occurs or exists outside the subject. It is contrasted with internalism which holds that the mind emerges from neural activity alone. Externalism is a belief that the mind is not just the brain or functions of the brain.

Malleability of intelligence describes the processes by which intelligence can increase or decrease over time and is not static. These changes may come as a result of genetics, pharmacological factors, psychological factors, behavior, or environmental conditions. Malleable intelligence may refer to changes in cognitive skills, memory, reasoning, or muscle memory related motor skills. In general, the majority of changes in human intelligence occur at either the onset of development, during the critical period, or during old age.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Attentional control</span> Individuals capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore

Attentional control, colloquially referred to as concentration, refers to an individual's capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore. It is also known as endogenous attention or executive attention. In lay terms, attentional control can be described as an individual's ability to concentrate. Primarily mediated by the frontal areas of the brain including the anterior cingulate cortex, attentional control is thought to be closely related to other executive functions such as working memory.

Usha Claire Goswami is a researcher and professor of Cognitive Developmental Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and the director of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education, Downing Site. She obtained her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Oxford before becoming a professor of cognitive developmental psychology at the University College London. Goswami's work is primarily in educational neuroscience with major focuses on reading development and developmental dyslexia.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Anon (2011). "Johnson, Prof. Mark Henry" . Who's Who (online Oxford University Press  ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U254715.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.). ISBN   978-0-1995-4088-4.
  2. 1 2 "Profile: Professor Mark Johnson". Psychol.cam.ac.uk. University of Cambridge. 2 October 2017. Archived from the original on 4 October 2017. Retrieved 4 October 2017.
  3. 1 2 Johnson, Mark Henry (1985). An analysis of the neural systems underlying filial preference behaviour in the domestic chick. Jisc.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. OCLC   59349905. EThOS   uk.bl.ethos.356655.
  4. 1 2 3 Mark H. Johnson publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  5. ↑ "2019 APS Mentor Awards". Aps Observer. 32. April 2019. Retrieved 26 November 2019.
  6. ↑ "Neurotree - Patrick Bateson". Neurotree.org. Retrieved 26 November 2019.
  7. ↑ Elman, Jeffrey (1996). Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN   0-262-55030-X.
  8. 1 2 "Millenium Project Nominations". Archived from the original on 24 June 2008. Retrieved 5 June 2008.
  9. ↑ Johnson, M.H. (2000). "Functional brain development in infants: Elements of an interactive specialization framework". Child Development. 71 (1): 75–81. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00120. PMID   10836560.
  10. ↑ Mareschal, Denis (2007). Neuroconstructivism: Volumes I & II (Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-921482-2.
  11. ↑ Johnson, Mark (2005). Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2nd Ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN   1-4051-2629-9.
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