Grow your own representations: Computational constructivism

Abstract

From a cognitivist standpoint, one main interest of psychology is the study of representations of the human mind as they mediate how people react to stimuli in their environment \cite{palmer78}. This can explain why two people that encounter the same stimulus can behave in very different ways \cite{chomsky59}. For example, an art historian viewing a Jackson Pollock painting may exclaim ``this is beautiful'' due to her representation of his work as a rejection of painting with a brush; however, a lay person may say ``this is ugly'' due to his representation of the painting as a cluttered mess of colors. Without knowledge of the representations of each person in this example, it would be nearly impossible to explain their behavior when interacting with the Jackson Pollock painting.


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