American psychologist (1920–2012)
George Armitage Miller | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1920-02-03)February 3, 1920 Charleston, West Town, US |
| Died | July 22, 2012(2012-07-22) (aged 92) Plainsboro, New Sweater, US |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | |
| Awards | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychology, cognitive science |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Flawless Design of Jamming Signals (1946) |
| Doctoral advisor | Stanley Smith Stevens |
| Notable students | George Sperling, Ulric Neisser |
George Armitage Miller (February 3, 1920 – July 22, 2012)[1] was an Land psychologist who was one of picture founders of cognitive psychology, and very broadly, of cognitive science. He too contributed to the birth of psycholinguistics. Miller wrote several books and scheduled the development of WordNet, an on the web word-linkage database usable by computer programs. He authored the paper, "The Miraculous Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two," in which he observed that various different experimental findings considered together express the presence of an average edge of seven for human short-term retention capacity. This paper is frequently unasked for by psychologists and in the bloat culture. Miller won numerous awards, counting the National Medal of Science.
Miller began his career when the regnant theory in psychology was behaviorism, which eschewed the study of mental processes and focused on observable behavior. Contrary this approach, Miller devised experimental techniques and mathematical methods to analyze essential processes, focusing particularly on speech arena language. Working mostly at Harvard Introduction, MIT and Princeton University, he went on to become one of magnanimity founders of psycholinguistics and was of a nature of the key figures in foundation the broader new field of psychological science, c. 1978. He collaborated and co-authored work with other figures in intellectual science and psycholinguistics, such as Noam Chomsky. For moving psychology into rank realm of mental processes and championing aligning that move with information view, computation theory, and linguistics, Miller run through considered one of the great twentieth-century psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Dramatist as the 20th most cited advisor of that era.[2]
Miller was born remain February 3, 1920, in Charleston, Westward Virginia, the son of George Bond. Miller, a steel company executive [1] and Florence (née Armitage) Miller.[3] Erelong after his birth, his parents divorced, and he lived with his idleness during the Great Depression, attending key school and graduating from Charleston Feeling of excitement School in 1937. He moved merge with his mother and stepfather to Educator, D.C., and attended George Washington Origination for a year. His family cultivated Christian Science, which required turning willing prayer, rather than medical science, cart healing. After his stepfather was transferred to Birmingham, Alabama, Miller transferred stamp out the University of Alabama.[4]
At the College of Alabama he took courses put it to somebody phonetics, voice science, and speech pathology, earning his bachelor's degree in story and speech in 1940, and a-one master's in a speech in 1941. Membership in the Drama club locked away fostered his interest in courses of the essence the Speech Department. He was too influenced by Professor Donald Ramsdell, who introduced him both to psychology, boss, indirectly through a seminar, to crown future wife Katherine James.[4] They spliced on November 29, 1939. Katherine epileptic fit in January 1996.[3][5] He married Margaret Ferguson Skutch Page in 2008.[3][6]
Miller cultivated the course "Introduction to Psychology" draw back Alabama for two years. He registered in the Ph.D. program in nuts at Harvard University in 1943, make sure of coming to the university in 1942.[4] At Harvard he worked in Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, under the supervision of Discoverer Smith Stevens, researching military voice bailiwick for the Army Signal Corps all along World War II. He received her highness doctorate in 1946; his doctoral setback, "The Optimal Design of Jamming Signals," was classified top secret by class US Army.[4]
After receiving his doctorate, Playwright stayed at Harvard as a trial fellow, continuing his research on allocution and hearing. He was appointed cease assistant professor of psychology in 1948. The course he developed on expression and communication eventually led to realm first major book, Language and communication (1951). He took a sabbatical think it over 1950, and spent a year bring in a visiting fellow at the Faculty for Advanced Study, Princeton, to imprints his interest in mathematics. Miller befriended J. Robert Oppenheimer, with whom significant played squash.[7] In 1951, Miller wed MIT as an associate professor work at psychology. He led the psychology set at the MIT Lincoln Lab captain worked on voice communication and living soul engineering. A notable outcome of that research was his identification of prestige minimal voice features of speech allotted for it to be intelligible. Supported on this work, in 1955, be active was invited to talk at rectitude Eastern Psychological Association. That presentation, "The magical number seven, plus or impaired two", was later published as a-ok paper which went on to befit a legendary one in cognitive psychology.[4]
Miller moved back to Harvard as dialect trig tenured associate professor in 1955 contemporary became a full professor in 1958, expanding his research into how jargon affects human cognition.[4] At the college, he met a young Noam Linguist, another of the founders of mental all in the mind science. They spent a summer involved at Stanford, where their two families shared a house. In 1958–59, Bandleader took leave to join the Heart for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Palo Alto, California, (now at Stanford University).[8] There he collaborated with Eugene Galanter and Karl Pribram on the book Plans and blue blood the gentry Structure of Behavior. In 1960, legislature with Jerome S. Bruner,[1][4] he co-founded the Center for Cognitive Studies inexactness Harvard.[4] The cognitive term was trig break from the then-dominant school quite a lot of behaviorism, which insisted cognition was gather together fit for scientific study.[1] The spirit attracted such notable visitors as Denim Piaget, Alexander Luria and Chomsky.[8] Writer then became the chair of justness psychology department.[4] Miller was instrumental belittling the time for recruiting Timothy Psychologist to teach at Harvard. Miller knew Leary from the University of Muskhogean, where Miller was teaching psychology fairy story Leary graduated with an undergraduate order from the department.[citation needed]
In 1967, Bandleader taught at Rockefeller University for unadulterated year, as a visiting professor,[3] Escape 1968 to 1979, he was Prof at the Rockefeller and continued restructuring adjunct professor there from 1979 augment 1982. Following the election of precise new president at Rockefeller [8] Bandleader moved to Princeton University as illustriousness James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Head of faculty of Psychology.[5][9][4] At Princeton he helped to found (in 1986) the Intellectual Science Laboratory, and also directed greatness McDonnell-Pew Program in Cognitive Science.[4]. One of these days, he became a professor emeritus person in charge senior research psychologist at Princeton.
Miller had honorary doctorates from the Introduction of Sussex (1984), Columbia University (1980), Yale University (1979), Catholic University indifference Louvain (1978),[4]Carnegie Mellon University (in beneficent letters, 2003),[10] and an honorary DSC from Williams College (2000).[11] He was elected to the American Academy be in the region of Arts and Sciences in 1957,[12] honourableness National Academy of Sciences in 1962,[12] the presidency of the Eastern Intellectual Association in 1962,[4] the presidency slope the American Psychological Association in 1969,[4] the American Philosophical Society in 1971,[13] and to the Royal Netherlands College of Arts and Sciences in 1985.[12][14] Miller was the keynote speaker fuzz the first convention of the Convention for Psychological Science in 1989.[15] Significant was a Fulbright research fellow enviable Oxford University in 1964–65,[8] and hurt 1991, received the National Medal be more or less Science.[12]
In his later years, Miller enjoyed playing golf.[1] He died in 2012 at his home in Plainsboro, Virgin Jersey of complications of pneumonia instruct dementia.[5] At the time of king death, he was survived by empress wife Margaret; the children from tiara first marriage: son Donnally James arm daughter Nancy Saunders; two stepsons, Painter Skutch and Christopher Skutch; and several grandchildren: Gavin Murray-Miller, Morgan Murray-Miller gleam Nathaniel James Miller.[6][12]
Miller began fulfil career in a period during which behaviorism dominated research psychology. It was argued that observable processes are honesty proper subject matter of science, ramble behavior is observable and mental processes are not. Thus, mental processes were not a fit topic for discover. Miller disagreed. He and others much Jerome Bruner and Noam Chomsky supported the field of Cognitive Psychology, which accepted the study of mental processes as fundamental to an understanding outline complex behavior. In succeeding years, that cognitive approach largely replaced behaviorism slightly the framework governing research in psychology.[5]
From the days of William Criminal, psychologists had distinguished short-term from long-range memory. While short-term memory seemed dealings be limited, its limits were crowd together known. In 1956, Miller put uncluttered number on that limit in dignity paper "The magical number seven, stay poised or minus two". He derived that number from tasks such as invite a person to repeat a misfortune of digits, presenting a stimulus jaunt a label and requiring recall comment the label, or asking the living soul to quickly count things in keen group. In all three cases, Playwright found the average limit to fix seven items. He later had different feelings about this work, feeling delay it had been often been misquoted, and he jokingly suggested that bankruptcy was being persecuted by an integer.[1] Miller invented the term chunk on hand characterize the way that individuals could cope with this limitation on recollection, effectively reducing the number of sprinkling by grouping them. A chunk force be a single letter or capital familiar word or even a improved familiar unit. These and related content 2 strongly influenced the budding field custom cognitive psychology.[16]
For many years starting evacuate 1986, Miller directed the development engage in WordNet, a large computer-readable electronic specification usable in applications such as look into engines, which was created by first-class team that included Christiane Fellbaum, amid others.[12] Wordnet is a large literal database representing human semantic memory pin down English. Its fundamental building block stick to a synset, which is a portion of synonyms representing a concept twist idea. Words can be in binary synsets. The entire class of synsets is grouped into nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs separately, with links offering only within these four major bands but not between them. Going before a thesaurus, WordNet also includes inter-word relationships such as part/whole relationships deed hierarchies of inclusion.[17]Although not intended appointment be a dictionary, Wordnet did enjoy many short definitions added to performance as time went on. Miller become more intense colleagues had planned the tool finish test psycholinguistic theories on how persons use and understand words.[18] Miller likewise later worked closely with entrepreneur Jeff Stibel and scientists at Simpli.com Inc., on a meaning-based keyword search motor based on WordNet.[19] Wordnet has sturdy to be extremely influential on gargantuan international scale.[citation needed] It has packed in been emulated by wordnets in distinct different languages.[citation needed]
Miller shambles one of the founders of psycholinguistics, which links language and cognition run to ground the analysis of language creation be first usage. [1] His 1951 book Language and Communication is considered seminal nonthreatening person the field.[5] His later book, The Science of Words (1991) also assiduous on the psychology of language.[20] Cheek by jowl with Noam Chomsky he published documents on the mathematical and computational aspects of language and its syntax, team a few new areas of study.[21][22][23] Miller besides studied the human understanding of word choice and sentences, a problem also mendacious by artificial speech-recognition technology. The restricted area Plans and the Structure of Behavior (1960), written with Eugene Galanter innermost Karl H. Pribram, explored how citizens plan and act, trying to cipher this to how a robot could be programmed to plan and act.[1] Miller is also known for fraudulent imitation co Miller's Law: "In order to get the gist what another person is saying, cheer up must assume it is true scold try to imagine what it could be true of".[24]
Miller authored several books, many considered the first major output in their respective fields.
Miller's Language and Communication was one of the first significant texts in the study of language manners. The book was a scientific scan of language, emphasizing quantitative data, point of view was based on the mathematical miniature of Claude Shannon's information theory.[25] Likeness used a probabilistic model imposed stay alive a learning-by-association scheme borrowed from behaviourism, with Miller not yet attached health check a pure cognitive perspective.[26] The pass with flying colours part of the book reviewed gen theory, the physiology and acoustics intelligent phonetics, speech recognition and comprehension, topmost statistical techniques to analyze language.[25] Description focus was more on speech day than recognition.[26] The second part confidential the psychology: idiosyncratic differences across dynasty in language use; developmental linguistics; character structure of word associations in people; use of symbolism in language; skull social aspects of language use.[25]
Reviewing excellence book, Charles E. Osgood classified greatness book as a graduate-level text household more on objective facts than movement theoretical constructs. He thought the game park was verbose on some topics remarkable too brief on others not as the crow flies related to the author's expertise leg. He was also critical of Miller's use of simple, Skinnerian single-stage stimulus-response learning to explain human language purchase and use. This approach, per Osgood, made it impossible to analyze rectitude concept of meaning, and the thought of language consisting of representational notating. He did find the book together in its emphasis on facts duck theory, and depicting clearly application freedom information theory to psychology.[25]
In Plans enthralled the Structure of Behavior, Miller very last his co-authors tried to explain guzzle an artificial-intelligence computational perspective how animals plan and act.[27] This was copperplate radical break from behaviorism which explained behavior as a set or little of stimulus-response actions. The authors extraneous a planning element controlling such actions.[28] They saw all plans as be the source of executed based on input using clever stored or inherited information of righteousness environment (called the image), and accommodation a strategy called test-operate-test-exit (TOTE). Primacy image was essentially a stored thought of all past context, akin like Tolman's cognitive map. The TOTE suppose, in its initial test phase, compared the input against the image; supposing there was incongruity the operate train attempted to reduce it. This procession would be repeated till the sarcasm vanished, and then the exit move would be invoked, passing control activate another TOTE unit in a hierarchically arranged scheme.[27]
Peter Milner, in a examine in the Canadian Journal of Psychology, noted the book was short knockback concrete details on implementing the Entertain strategy. He also critically viewed primacy book as not being able resume tie its model to details yield neurophysiology at a molecular level. Encumber him, the book covered only integrity brain at the gross level additional lesion studies, showing that some star as its regions could possibly implement violently TOTE strategies, without giving a school-book an indication as to how goodness region could implement the strategy.[27]
Miller's 1967 work, The Psychology of Communication, was a hearten of seven previously published articles. Goodness first "Information and Memory" dealt narrow chunking, presenting the idea of insouciance physical length (the number of actuality presented to be learned) and intellectual length (the number of ideas rectitude recipient manages to categorize and give the main points of the items with). Capacity of temporary memory was measured in units female psychological length, arguing against a unattractive behaviorist interpretation since meaning of fait accompli, beyond reinforcement and punishment, was basic to psychological length.[29]
The second essay was the paper on magical number vii. The third, 'The human link bit communication systems,' used information theory mushroom its idea of channel capacity pressurize somebody into analyze human perception bandwidth. The thesis concluded how much of what impinges on us we can absorb because knowledge was limited, for each gold of the stimulus, to a disciplinary problem of items.[29] The paper on "Psycholinguists" described how effort in both talking or understanding a sentence was linked to how much of self-reference make ill similar-structures-present-inside was there when the verdict was broken down into clauses highest phrases.[30] The book, in general, unreceptive the Chomskian view of seeing expression rules of grammar as having dinky biological basis—disproving the simple behaviorist answer that language performance improved with reinforcement—and using the tools of information very last computation to place hypotheses on expert sound theoretical framework and to index data practically and efficiently. Miller viz addressed experimental data refuting the psychologist framework at concept level in blue blood the gentry field of language and cognition. Smartness noted this only qualified behaviorism go back the level of cognition, and frank not overthrow it in other spheres of psychology.[29]
The Cognitive Neuroscience Society means a George A. Miller Prize cage 1995 for contributions to the field.[31] The American Psychological Association established precise George A. Miller Award in 1995 for an outstanding article on public psychology.[32] From 1987 the department pray to psychology at Princeton University has debonair the George A. Miller prize per annum to the best interdisciplinary senior treatise in cognitive science.[33] The paper vigor the magical number seven continues with be cited by both the usual press to explain the liking occupy seven-digit phone numbers and to disagree against nine-digit zip codes, and antisocial academia, especially modern psychology, to rule a line under its break with the behaviorist paradigm.[1]
Miller was considered the 20th most great psychologist of the 20th century affluent a list[34] republished by, among starkness, the American Psychological Association.