As I have encountered it, science has always had an aura of
magic about it. Ironically enough, this sentiment is not unusual for a
researcher. In fact, scientists such as Einstein and many others are famous for
their almost spiritual descriptions of their discoveries. I would wager that it
is quite normal to be left dumbfounded by the extreme complexity of many
phenomena in our universe. However, the grand complexities and beauties
revealed by science are not the magical qualities I speak of. To be sure, contemplating
those aspects of existence is thrilling and definitely leaves me in awe. What
really mystifies me about science, though, is the process. How do we determine
what is fact and what is not?
Developing the proper methods to study a phenomenon is perhaps
one of the hardest skills for young scientists to learn. Methods courses are
often spoken of in terror by young undergraduates, and even experienced
scientists must work tirelessly on experimental approaches, only to have them
torn apart by reviewers. Though a news article may proclaim that a new material
was discovered “simply” through mixing chemicals or that a new black hole was
discovered “simply” by using a telescope, the process is much more complex than
that. Indeed, many scientists cringe at the way 10-second newsbytes describe
their methodologies.
In this way, psychology, particularly cognitive psychology,
presents some unique challenges. Whereas researchers in the physical sciences
(typically) at least have the benefit of being able to point to a tangible,
real result of their methods, cognitive scientists do not. Unfortunately, the
stuff of thought is tucked away in our skulls, making it quite difficult to
directly examine. Even new brain scanning techniques (e.g. fMRI) are hard to
interpret, but that’s another blog post entirely. Given these issues, cognitive
science has been plagued by questions such as “How do you measure activities of
the mind?” and “How do you observe thoughts?”.
In fact, these questions became so problematic in the early
20th century that many psychologists threw out the study of the mind
all together. Without going into too much of a history lesson, many of the
original psychologists such as Wilhelm Wundt attempted to determine the nature
of the mind through introspection (examining one’s own thoughts). However,
later researchers such as James B. Watson and, later, B. F. Skinner found this
approach laughably unscientific. Instead, these individuals argued that we
should study only observable behavior and leave the realm of the mind
the philosophers.
It wasn’t until the mid-1960s, with researchers such as
Ulric Neisser, that the study of cognition began to take hold again in what
many have described as the “Cognitive Revolution”*. There are many different
reasons why the cognitive studies began to become popular again, but one is that
scientists began to develop tangible, behavior-based techniques for studying
the mind.
Fast-forwarding 50+ years, how do I research the nature of
cognitive development? Thus far, I have used several techniques. In my first
study, I had children play with different toy tools under different conditions. Particularly, I was interested in whether children would recognize when certain
toys were non-functional. Through using toys with certain, distinct features (such as size), I was able to see was if children would be
able to notice when these features made toys ineffective for certain
tasks. Thus, by simply watching children’s behaviors, I could get a glimpse
into what they were thinking. Now, I have children playing a card game where I
ask them to tell me which cards match an example. By examining how children
change their answers under different conditions, I can gain insight into what
criteria children use to form categories of objects. Again, this is a
behavioral task that provides insight into how children may be thinking about
certain objects.
It is exceedingly important to underscore that these tasks
and studies provide only glimpses and guesses at what children are thinking. Individual experiments and tasks rarely if
ever completely prove any hypothesis or theory. Instead, science is about
incrementally accumulating evidence to support a hypothesis or theory, such
that, over time, we can develop a more accurate picture of reality.
In the interest of brevity, I have only provided a brief
description of the techniques I use in the lab. Hopefully, I can provide a
deeper explanation in a later post. Next week, expect a post describing what
the daily life of a graduate student looks like!
