Motivation, Emotion, and Cognition : Integrative Perspectives On Intellectual Functioning and Development

(Rick Simeone) #1
Long separation inevitably leads to reunion, and vice versa.
—Chinese proverb

It takes time for the human to bring all that he or she knows about a prob-
lem at hand, and it never completely happens... The peaks of rationality
always rise up on the temporal horizon just another ridge or two away.
Much real behavior takes place on the foothills of rationality... Cognitive
psychology—I should say modern experimental psychology—has located
itself at immediate behavior and only gradually moves up the scale. Such
movement, then, becomes an indicator of putting it all together.
—Allen Newell (1988, p. 428)

In late January and early February, 2003, Kasparov, arguably the best chess
player in the world, had another human-machine face-off with computer chess,
not Deep Blue this time, but its more academic cousin, Deep Junior. The six-
game match led to a draw, and a much happier Kasparov (Kasparov, 2003).
Although the human player and computer chess seem neck-and-neck in
generating strong moves, there are distinct differences as to how they do it.
The human relies more on experience-based and knowledge-based percep-
tions and intuitions, the machine on its speed and capacity of computation
(literally three million moves per second!). Human thinking is more fuzzy and
flexible and the machine is more precise and rigid. Kasparov got annoyed but
his opponent, a cold, calculating machine, never did, even as Kasparov tried


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Beyond Cognitivism: Toward

an Integrated Understanding

of Intellectual Functioning

and Development

David Yun Dai
University at Albany, State University of New York


Robert J. Sternberg
Yale University


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