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Michael Lamport Commons (born 1939) is a theoretical behavioral scientist and a complex systems scientist. He developed the model of hierarchical complexity.
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Michael Lamport Commons (born 1939) is a theoretical behavioral scientist and a complex systems scientist. He developed the model of hierarchical complexity.
Michael Lamport Commons was born in 1939 in Los Angeles and grew up in Hollywood. Commons holds two B.A.s from University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), one in mathematics, the other in psychology. He earned his M.A., and M.Phil. and in 1973 received his Ph.D., in psychology from Columbia University. Currently,[ when? ] he is Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School), and Director of the Dare Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts. [1]
His research interest is the quantitative analysis of psychological reality as it develops across the life span. With Francis Asbury Richards, Edward Trudeau, and Alexander Pekker, he developed the model of hierarchical complexity, a mathematical psychology model.
He is one of the cofounders of Society for Quantitative Analysis of Behavior, the Society for Research in Adult Development, the European Society for Research in Adult Development, the Society for Terrorism Research, and the Developmental Behavior Analysis Special Interest Group in the Association for Behavior Analysis International.
He is on the governing board of the Journal of Behavior Analysis Online. He is the past co-editor of the journal Behavioral Development Bulletin and the Journal of Behavior Analysis Online. He was a senior editor of Quantitative Analyses of Behavior, Volumes 1–11 and of four volumes on Adult Development including Beyond Formal Operations: Late Adolescent and Adult Cognitive Development and Clinical Approaches to Adult Development, as well as associate editor for a special issue of Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior on the nature of reinforcement. He is the consulting editor of Moral Development Series.
The model of hierarchical complexity (MHC), developed by Commons, is a way of measuring the complexity of a behavior. The MHC uses mathematical principles to quantify behavioral characteristics, assigning individuals to stages based on properly completed tasks. It can be used cross-culturally, across different species, and even for computers, and allows us to treat behavior accurately and in all-or-nothing terms. The MHC has many useful applications, such as in therapy, interventions, the development of organizations, etc.
Commons has been a part of the Dare Association, "an independent not-for-profit organization. Dare Association supports endeavors in the science and arts, especially behavioral science programs." [2]
The International Health, Education and Development Division of Dare Association focuses on collaborating in the goal "of improving the wellbeing of people in developing countries". [2]
The Dare Institute is a group led by the Dare Association. [1] This group is devoted to research in psychological topics such as human development, psychiatry and the law, political psychology, behavioral economics, and cognitive science.
Commons is also associated with Core Complexity Assessments, a company that uses research in developmental psychology to pair candidates with jobs. Core Complexity Assessments' "tools are designed to help companies and managers hire smarter, retain workers, invest in employee development and human resources planning, and thereby shape the future organizational structure of the company". [3]
Commons, with Mitzi Sturgeon White, was issued a patent related to hierarchical stacked neural networks. [4]
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which held from the 1920s to 1950s that unobservable mental processes were outside the realm of empirical science. This break came as researchers in linguistics and cybernetics, as well as applied psychology, used models of mental processing to explain human behavior. Work derived from cognitive psychology was integrated into other branches of psychology and various other modern disciplines like cognitive science, linguistics, and economics. The domain of cognitive psychology overlaps with that of cognitive science, which takes a more interdisciplinary approach and includes studies of non-human subjects and artificial intelligence.
Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult development, aging, and the entire lifespan. Developmental psychologists aim to explain how thinking, feeling, and behaviors change throughout life. This field examines change across three major dimensions, which are physical development, cognitive development, and social emotional development. Within these three dimensions are a broad range of topics including motor skills, executive functions, moral understanding, language acquisition, social change, personality, emotional development, self-concept, and identity formation.
Educational psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of human learning. The study of learning processes, from both cognitive and behavioral perspectives, allows researchers to understand individual differences in intelligence, cognitive development, affect, motivation, self-regulation, and self-concept, as well as their role in learning. The field of educational psychology relies heavily on quantitative methods, including testing and measurement, to enhance educational activities related to instructional design, classroom management, and assessment, which serve to facilitate learning processes in various educational settings across the lifespan.
Jean William Fritz Piaget was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called genetic epistemology.
Lawrence Kohlberg was an American psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development.
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.
Piaget's theory of cognitive development, or his genetic epistemology, is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence. It was originated by the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980). The theory deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans gradually come to acquire, construct, and use it. Piaget's theory is mainly known as a developmental stage theory.
In psychology, developmental stage theories are theories that divide psychological development into distinct stages which are characterized by qualitative differences in behavior.
Quantitative psychology is a field of scientific study that focuses on the mathematical modeling, research design and methodology, and statistical analysis of psychological processes. It includes tests and other devices for measuring cognitive abilities. Quantitative psychologists develop and analyze a wide variety of research methods, including those of psychometrics, a field concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement.
Stages of development may refer to:
The model of hierarchical complexity (MHC) is a framework for scoring how complex a behavior is, such as verbal reasoning or other cognitive tasks. It quantifies the order of hierarchical complexity of a task based on mathematical principles of how the information is organized, in terms of information science. This model was developed by Michael Commons and Francis Richards in the early 1980s.
Positive adult development is a subfield of developmental psychology that studies positive development during adulthood. It is one of four major forms of adult developmental study that can be identified, according to Michael Commons; the other three forms are directionless change, stasis, and decline. Commons also further divided the concept of positive adult development into six distinct areas of study: hierarchical complexity, knowledge, experience, expertise, wisdom, and spirituality.
The behavioral analysis of child development originates from John B. Watson's behaviorism.
Some of the research that is conducted in the field of psychology is more "fundamental" than the research conducted in the applied psychological disciplines, and does not necessarily have a direct application. The subdisciplines within psychology that can be thought to reflect a basic-science orientation include biological psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and so on. Research in these subdisciplines is characterized by methodological rigor. The concern of psychology as a basic science is in understanding the laws and processes that underlie behavior, cognition, and emotion. Psychology as a basic science provides a foundation for applied psychology. Applied psychology, by contrast, involves the application of psychological principles and theories yielded up by the basic psychological sciences; these applications are aimed at overcoming problems or promoting well-being in areas such as mental and physical health and education.
David Klahr is an American psychologist whose research ranges across the fields of cognitive development, psychology of science, and educational psychology and has been a professor at Carnegie Mellon University since 1969. He is the Walter van Dyke Bingham Professor of Cognitive Development and Education Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University and a member of the National Academy of Education, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, a Charter Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, on the Governing Board of the Cognitive Development Society, a member of the Society for Research in Child Development, and the Cognitive Science Society. He was an associate editor of Developmental Psychology and has served on the editorial boards of several cognitive science journals, as well as on the National Science Foundation's subcommittee on Memory and Cognitive Processes, and the National Institutes of Health's Human Development and Aging Study Section.
Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development criticize and build upon Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development.
Psychology encompasses a vast domain, and includes many different approaches to the study of mental processes and behavior. Below are the major areas of inquiry that taken together constitute psychology. A comprehensive list of the sub-fields and areas within psychology can be found at the list of psychology topics and list of psychology disciplines.
Philip David Zelazo is a developmental psychologist and neuroscientist. His research has helped shape the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience regarding the development of executive function.
Developmental psychology initially focused on childhood development through Jean Piaget's four stages of human cognitive development, the last stage of which is known as the formal operational stage. Extending developmental psychology to adults, most neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development have posited one or more stages of postformal thought. Postformal thought is also addressed by some non-Piagetian theories of developmental psychology, including Michael Commons' model of hierarchical complexity and Otto Laske's constructive developmental framework.
Juan Pascual-Leone is a developmental psychologist and founder of the neo-Piagetian approach to cognitive development. He introduced this term into the literature and put forward key predictions about developmental growth of mental attention and working memory.
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