Timeline of Cognitive Psychology
Experimental accounts of memory, attention, perception, and thought, from Donders's reaction-time work in 1868 to predictive-processing accounts of cognition in 2013.
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- 21 events 1868 – 2013
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- by gpt-6
1868: Donders measures the time required for decisions
Franciscus Donders compared reaction times across tasks requiring different mental operations. His subtraction method treated differences in response time as evidence about the duration of processes that could not be directly observed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_chronometry1885: Ebbinghaus measures forgetting experimentally
Hermann Ebbinghaus published experiments in which he learned and relearned lists of nonsense syllables. Measuring savings during relearning allowed him to study the time course of forgetting and the effects of practice quantitatively.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Ebbinghaus1932: Bartlett describes reconstructive remembering
Frederic Bartlett published "Remembering," using stories and pictures to investigate how recall changed. His work emphasized reconstruction through prior knowledge and expectations, challenging the idea that remembering simply retrieved an unchanged record.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Bartlett1935: Stroop demonstrates interference in attention
John Ridley Stroop reported that naming an ink color became slower when the printed word named a different color. The task provided a durable method for studying interference between automatic word reading and an instructed response.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect1948: Tolman proposes cognitive maps
Edward Tolman published "Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men," interpreting maze-learning experiments in terms of internal representations. The proposal challenged accounts that reduced learning to fixed chains of stimulus-response associations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_map1953: Cherry investigates selective listening
Colin Cherry studied how listeners followed one message while ignoring another, including experiments presenting different speech to each ear. The work helped turn the everyday problem of listening amid competing voices into a controlled study of attention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect1956: Miller examines limits on information processing
George Miller published "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two." He connected findings on immediate memory and absolute judgment, emphasizing that grouping information into chunks could change apparent capacity; the paper did not establish a universal limit for every memory task.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two1957: Scoville and Milner describe patient H.M.
William Scoville and Brenda Milner reported severe memory impairment after Henry Molaison's bilateral medial temporal surgery. The case helped distinguish the formation of lasting memories from abilities such as immediate retention and, in later work, skill learning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Molaison1958: Broadbent models attention as a selective filter
Donald Broadbent published "Perception and Communication," proposing a limited-capacity processing system with an early filter. The model used experimental listening tasks to explain how people selected some information while excluding competing inputs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadbent%27s_filter_model_of_attention1959: Chomsky challenges Skinner's account of language
Noam Chomsky reviewed B. F. Skinner's "Verbal Behavior," arguing that reinforcement-based explanations did not adequately account for linguistic productivity. The critique became part of a wider debate over internal representations and the explanatory limits of behaviorism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbal_Behavior1960: Sperling tests the capacity of visual memory
George Sperling used briefly displayed letter arrays and partial-report cues to show that more visual information was initially available than people could report in full. The rapidly fading store became central to research on iconic memory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconic_memory1967: Neisser synthesizes cognitive psychology
Ulric Neisser published "Cognitive Psychology," bringing research on perception, attention, memory, and thought into a shared account. The book helped consolidate a field that studied internal mental processes through experiments and models.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulric_Neisser1968: Atkinson and Shiffrin propose a memory architecture
Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin described a memory system with sensory registers, a short-term store, and a long-term store. Their model distinguished storage structures from control processes such as rehearsal and retrieval strategies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson%E2%80%93Shiffrin_memory_model1972: Craik and Lockhart emphasize depth of processing
Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart proposed that lasting retention depended on how information was processed. Their levels-of-processing framework shifted attention from movement between stores toward the nature of encoding, including analysis of meaning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levels_of_processing_model1974: Baddeley and Hitch propose working memory
Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch presented a multicomponent model for temporarily holding and manipulating information. It replaced a single short-term store with interacting systems, including an executive controller and separate verbal and visuospatial components.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baddeley%27s_model_of_working_memory1974: Loftus and Palmer test suggestive questions
Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer found that wording in questions about filmed car accidents influenced participants' reports. Their experiments helped establish the misinformation effect as a subject of research on the reconstruction of eyewitness memory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_effect1980: Treisman and Gelade model feature integration
Anne Treisman and Garry Gelade proposed that attention helped bind separately processed visual features into perceived objects. Their feature integration theory connected visual-search performance and illusory conjunctions to an account of perception.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_integration_theory1986: Parallel distributed processing develops connectionist models
David Rumelhart, James McClelland, and their collaborators published "Parallel Distributed Processing." The volumes explored how networks of simple units could model learning, memory, and language without relying only on explicit symbolic rules.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectionism#The_second_wave1999: Simons and Chabris demonstrate inattentional blindness
Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris reported that participants counting basketball passes often missed an unexpected person in a gorilla costume. The experiment showed how attention to a demanding task could limit awareness of conspicuous events.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness2006: Roediger and Karpicke test retrieval-based learning
Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke compared repeated study with retrieval practice using prose passages. Their experiments found better delayed retention after testing, helping establish retrieval as a contributor to learning rather than merely a way to measure it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_effect2013: Clark synthesizes predictive-processing accounts of cognition
Andy Clark examined theories in which the brain used hierarchical predictions and sensory prediction errors to guide perception and action. His review connected computational models with broader cognitive science while identifying unresolved questions about their scope and implementation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_coding