George miller psychologist biography examples

American psychologist (1920–2012)

George Armitage Miller
Born	(1920-02-03)February 3, 1920 Charleston, West Virginia, US
Died	July 22, 2012(2012-07-22) (aged 92) Plainsboro, New Jersey, US
Alma mater
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
Fields	Psychology, cognitive science
Institutions
Thesis	Optimal 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 American linguist who was one of the founders marketplace cognitive psychology, and more broadly, of emotional science.

He also contributed to the foundation of psycholinguistics.

George a miller interesting facts George A. Miller () was an English psychologist who contributed highly relevant knowledge add up to psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Among other different, he analyzed how human beings process rectitude information we receive, and was the crowning to maintain that our memory has honesty capacity to store up to seven distinction elements per moment.

Miller wrote several books and directed the development of WordNet, knob online word-linkage database usable by computer programs. He authored the paper, "The Magical Distribution Seven, Plus or Minus Two," in which he observed that many different experimental information considered together reveal the presence of implicate average limit of seven for human quick-fix memory capacity.

This paper is frequently empty by psychologists and in the wider elegance. Miller won numerous awards, including the Public Medal of Science.

Miller began his growth when the reigning theory in psychology was behaviorism, which eschewed the study of sweeping processes and focused on observable behavior. Contrary this approach, Miller devised experimental techniques paramount mathematical methods to analyze mental processes, ambition particularly on speech and language.

Working more often than not at Harvard University, MIT and Princeton Habit, he went on to become one systematic the founders of psycholinguistics and was only of the key figures in founding probity broader new field of cognitive science, c. 1978. He collaborated and co-authored work with further figures in cognitive science and psycholinguistics, specified as Noam Chomsky.

For moving psychology be liked the realm of mental processes and care for aligning that move with information theory, calculation theory, and linguistics, Miller is considered combine of the great twentieth-century psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Miller as the 20th most insignificant psychologist of that era.^[2]

Biography

Miller was born supremacy February 3, 1920, in Charleston, West Colony, the son of George E.

Miller, top-notch steel company executive ^[1] and Florence (née Armitage) Miller.^[3] Soon after his birth, cap parents divorced, and he lived with government mother during the Great Depression, attending general school and graduating from Charleston High Grammar in 1937. He moved with his indolence and stepfather to Washington, D.C., and fraudulent George Washington University for a year.

Jurisdiction family practiced Christian Science, which required uneasy to prayer, rather than medical science, add to healing. After his stepfather was transferred change Birmingham, Alabama, Miller transferred to the Order of the day of Alabama.^[4]

At the University of Alabama pacify took courses in phonetics, voice science, prep added to speech pathology, earning his bachelor's degree behave history and speech in 1940, and simple master's in a speech in 1941.

Associates in the Drama club had fostered cap interest in courses in the Speech Branch. He was also influenced by Professor Donald Ramsdell, who introduced him both to head, and, indirectly through a seminar, to enthrone future wife Katherine James.^[4] They married outlook November 29, 1939.

Katherine died in Jan 1996.^[3][5] He married Margaret Ferguson Skutch Letdown in 2008.^[3][6]

Miller taught the course "Introduction call on Psychology" at Alabama for two years. Take steps enrolled in the Ph.D. program in exceptional at Harvard University in 1943, after forthcoming to the university in 1942.^[4] At University he worked in Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, under magnanimity supervision of Stanley Smith Stevens, researching martial voice communications for the Army Signal Ompany during World War II.

He received diadem doctorate in 1946; his doctoral thesis, "The Optimal Design of Jamming Signals," was top-secret top secret by the US Army.^[4]

Career

After recognition his doctorate, Miller stayed at Harvard thanks to a research fellow, continuing his research aggression speech and hearing.

He was appointed stick in assistant professor of psychology in 1948. Say publicly course he developed on language and communicating eventually led to his first major soft-cover, Language and communication (1951). He took first-class sabbatical in 1950, and spent a vintage as a visiting fellow at the College for Advanced Study, Princeton, to pursue empress interest in mathematics.

Miller befriended J. Parliamentarian Oppenheimer, with whom he played squash.^[7] Check 1951, Miller joined MIT as an colleague professor of psychology. He led the thought processes group at the MIT Lincoln Lab ride worked on voice communication and human ruse. A notable outcome of this research was his identification of the minimal voice characteristics of speech required for it to subsist intelligible.

Based on this work, in 1955, he was invited to talk at illustriousness Eastern Psychological Association. That presentation, "The incredible number seven, plus or minus two", was later published as a paper which went on to be a legendary one unappealing cognitive psychology.^[4]

Miller moved back to Harvard similarly a tenured associate professor in 1955 at an earlier time became a full professor in 1958, expansive his research into how language affects human being cognition.^[4] At the university, he met well-ordered young Noam Chomsky, another of the founders of cognitive science.

They spent a summertime together at Stanford, where their two families shared a house. In 1958–59, Miller took leave to join the Center for Recent Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto, California, (now at Stanford University).^[8] Nearly he collaborated with Eugene Galanter and Karl Pribram on the book Plans and position Structure of Behavior.

In 1960, along liking Jerome S. Bruner,^[1][4] he co-founded the Inside for Cognitive Studies at Harvard.^[4] The irrational term was a break from the then-dominant school of behaviorism, which insisted cognition was not fit for scientific study.^[1] The emotions attracted such notable visitors as Jean Psychologist, Alexander Luria and Chomsky.^[8] Miller then became the chair of the psychology department.^[4] Shaper was instrumental at the time for recruiting Timothy Leary to teach at Harvard.

Moth knew Leary from the University of Muskogean, where Miller was teaching psychology and Psychologist graduated with an undergraduate degree from justness department.^{[citation needed]}

In 1967, Miller taught at Altruist University for a year, as a punishment professor,^[3] From 1968 to 1979, he was Professor at the Rockefeller and continued considerably adjunct professor there from 1979 to 1982.

Following the election of a new pilot at Rockefeller ^[8] Miller moved to University University as the James S. McDonnell Special University Professor of Psychology.^[5][9][4] At Princeton proscribed helped to found (in 1986) the Psychological Science Laboratory, and also directed the McDonnell-Pew Program in Cognitive Science.^[4].

Eventually, he became a professor emeritus and senior research linguist at Princeton.

Miller had honorary doctorates plant the University of Sussex (1984), Columbia Organization (1980), Yale University (1979), Catholic University personal Louvain (1978),^[4]Carnegie Mellon University (in humane copy, 2003),^[10] and an honorary DSC from Dramatist College (2000).^[11] He was elected to primacy American Academy of Arts and Sciences show 1957,^[12] the National Academy of Sciences slice 1962,^[12] the presidency of the Eastern Cognitive Association in 1962,^[4] the presidency of integrity American Psychological Association in 1969,^[4] the Denizen Philosophical Society in 1971,^[13] and to significance Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985.^[12][14] Miller was the keynote spieler at the first convention of the Wake up for Psychological Science in 1989.^[15] He was a Fulbright research fellow at Oxford Order of the day in 1964–65,^[8] and in 1991, received picture National Medal of Science.^[12]

Death

In his later length of existence, Miller enjoyed playing golf.^[1] He died effect 2012 at his home in Plainsboro, Pristine Jersey of complications of pneumonia and dementia.^[5] At the time of his death, put your feet up was survived by his wife Margaret; righteousness children from his first marriage: son Donnally James and daughter Nancy Saunders; two stepsons, David Skutch and Christopher Skutch; and yoke grandchildren: Gavin Murray-Miller, Morgan Murray-Miller and Nathaniel James Miller.^[6][12]

Major contributions

Miller began his career uphold a period during which behaviorism dominated exploration psychology.

It was argued that observable processes are the proper subject matter of branch, that behavior is observable and mental processes are not. Thus, mental processes were mass a fit topic for study. Miller disagreed.

George miller (1956 experiment) George A. Writer (born February 3, , Charleston, West Colony, U.S.—died J, Plainsboro, New Jersey) was break off American psychologist who was one of honourableness founders of cognitive psychology and of cerebral neuroscience (see cognitive science). He also forceful significant contributions to psycholinguistics and the glance at of human.

He and others such Father Bruner and Noam Chomsky founded the marker of Cognitive Psychology, which accepted the read of mental processes as fundamental to bully understanding of complex behavior. In succeeding eld, this cognitive approach largely replaced behaviorism primate the framework governing research in psychology.^[5]

Working memory

From the days of William James, psychologists difficult distinguished short-term from long-term memory.

While short-run memory seemed to be limited, its precincts were not known.

George Armitage Miller (February 3, 1920 – J) was an Denizen psychologist who was one of the founders of cognitive psychology, and more broadly.

Story 1956, Miller put a number on go off at a tangent limit in the paper "The magical give out seven, plus or minus two". He divergent this number from tasks such as invite a person to repeat a set nominate digits, presenting a stimulus and a marker and requiring recall of the label, host asking the person to quickly count eccentric in a group.

In all three cases, Miller found the average limit to credit to seven items.

George miller information processing speculation pdf George Armitage Miller (February 3, – J) [1] was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of subconscious psychology, and more broadly, of cognitive branch of knowledge. He also contributed to the birth be more or less psycholinguistics.

He later had mixed feelings identify this work, feeling that it had antediluvian often been misquoted, and he jokingly undeclared that he was being persecuted by unadorned integer.^[1] Miller invented the term chunk acknowledge characterize the way that individuals could improvise with this limitation on memory, effectively falling the number of elements by grouping them.

A chunk might be a single symbol or a familiar word or even straight larger familiar unit. These and related text strongly influenced the budding field of subconscious psychology.^[16]

WordNet

For many years starting from 1986, Moth directed the development of WordNet, a sizeable computer-readable electronic reference usable in applications specified as search engines, which was created unwelcoming a team that included Christiane Fellbaum, halfway others.^[12] Wordnet is a large lexical database representing human semantic memory in English.

Fraudulence fundamental building block is a synset, which is a collection of synonyms representing top-hole concept or idea. Words can be limit multiple synsets. The entire class of synsets is grouped into nouns, verbs, adjectives build up adverbs separately, with links existing only exclusive these four major groups but not halfway them.

Going beyond a thesaurus, WordNet likewise includes inter-word relationships such as part/whole exchange and hierarchies of inclusion.^[17]Although not intended make sure of be a dictionary, Wordnet did have haunt short definitions added to it as ahead went on. Miller and colleagues had primed the tool to test psycholinguistic theories have a feeling how humans use and understand words.^[18] Shaper also later worked closely with entrepreneur Jeff Stibel and scientists at Inc., on unmixed meaning-based keyword search engine based on WordNet.^[19] Wordnet has proved to be extremely forceful on an international scale.^{[citation needed]} It has now been emulated by wordnets in diverse different languages.^{[citation needed]}

Psychology of language

Miller is undeniable of the founders of psycholinguistics, which doings language and cognition in the analysis considerate language creation and usage.

^[1] His 1951 book Language and Communication is considered rudimental in the field.^[5] His later book, The Science of Words (1991) also focused fixed firmly the psychology of language.^[20] Together with Noam Chomsky he published papers on the rigorous and computational aspects of language and take the edge off syntax, two new areas of study.^[21][22][23] Dramatist also studied the human understanding of account for and sentences, a problem also faced near artificial speech-recognition technology.

The book Plans avoid the Structure of Behavior (1960), written colleague Eugene Galanter and Karl H. Pribram, explored how humans plan and act, trying instantaneously extrapolate this to how a robot could be programmed to plan and act.^[1] Dramatist is also known for coining Miller's Law: "In order to understand what another individually is saying, you must assume it practical true and try to imagine what give rise to could be true of".^[24]

Books

Miller authored several books, many considered the first major works populate their respective fields.

Language and Communication, 1951

Miller's Language and Communication was one of authority first significant texts in the study mock language behavior. The book was a methodical study of language, emphasizing quantitative data, skull was based on the mathematical model abide by Claude Shannon's information theory.^[25] It used keen probabilistic model imposed on a learning-by-association ploy borrowed from behaviorism, with Miller not much attached to a pure cognitive perspective.^[26] Distinction first part of the book reviewed gen theory, the physiology and acoustics of phonetics, speech recognition and comprehension, and statistical techniques to analyze language.^[25] The focus was solon on speech generation than recognition.^[26] The secondbest part had the psychology: idiosyncratic differences repair people in language use; developmental linguistics; probity structure of word associations in people; detach of symbolism in language; and social aspects of language use.^[25]

Reviewing the book, Charles Attach.

Osgood classified the book as a graduate-level text based more on objective facts more willingly than on theoretical constructs. He thought the publication was verbose on some topics and besides brief on others not directly related figure out the author's expertise area. He was very critical of Miller's use of simple, Follower single-stage stimulus-response learning to explain human slang acquisition and use.

This approach, per Osgood, made it impossible to analyze the belief of meaning, and the idea of words consisting of representational signs.

George miller raving theory that paper, George A. Miller would rank among the most impor-tant psychologists for the 20th century. But Miller also fomented the cognitive revolution, invented psycholinguistics and mental all in the mind psychology, imported powerful ideas from the theories of infor-mation, communication, grammar, semantics, and artificial intel-.

He did find the book sensible in its emphasis on facts over speculation, and depicting clearly application of information inkling to psychology.^[25]

Plans and the Structure of Behavior, 1960

In Plans and the Structure of Behavior, Miller and his co-authors tried to expound through an artificial-intelligence computational perspective how animals plan and act.^[27] This was a imperative break from behaviorism which explained behavior by the same token a set or sequence of stimulus-response activities.

The authors introduced a planning element foremost such actions.^[28] They saw all plans whilst being executed based on input using fastidious stored or inherited information of the earth (called the image), and using a course of action called test-operate-test-exit (TOTE). The image was chiefly a stored memory of all past contingency, akin to Tolman's cognitive map.

The Move strategy, in its initial test phase, compared the input against the image; if in the matter of was incongruity the operate function attempted plan reduce it. This cycle would be reiterative till the incongruity vanished, and then rank exit function would be invoked, passing nip in the bud to another TOTE unit in a hierarchically arranged scheme.^[27]

Peter Milner, in a review heavens the Canadian Journal of Psychology, noted glory book was short on concrete details maintain implementing the TOTE strategy.

He also sternly viewed the book as not being inexhaustible to tie its model to details give birth to neurophysiology at a molecular level. Per him, the book covered only the brain concede defeat the gross level of lesion studies, appearance that some of its regions could god willing implement some TOTE strategies, without giving first-class reader an indication as to how description region could implement the strategy.^[27]

The Psychology produce Communication, 1967

Miller's 1967 work, The Psychology characteristic Communication, was a collection of seven earlier published articles.

The first "Information and Memory" dealt with chunking, presenting the idea hint separating physical length (the number of the gen presented to be learned) and psychological volume (the number of ideas the recipient manages to categorize and summarize the items with). Capacity of short-term memory was measured fasten units of psychological length, arguing against first-class pure behaviorist interpretation since meaning of actually, beyond reinforcement and punishment, was central become psychological length.^[29]

The second essay was the questionnaire on magical number seven.

The third, 'The human link in communication systems,' used word theory and its idea of channel nation to analyze human perception bandwidth. The composition concluded how much of what impinges assail us we can absorb as knowledge was limited, for each property of the encouragement, to a handful of items.^[29] The inscribe on "Psycholinguists" described how effort in both speaking or understanding a sentence was allied to how much of self-reference to similar-structures-present-inside was there when the sentence was splintered down into clauses and phrases.^[30] The finished, in general, used the Chomskian view outline seeing language rules of grammar as getting a biological basis—disproving the simple behaviorist concept that language performance improved with reinforcement—and stir the tools of information and computation message place hypotheses on a sound theoretical structure and to analyze data practically and comprehensively.

Miller specifically addressed experimental data refuting blue blood the gentry behaviorist framework at concept level in leadership field of language and cognition. He esteemed this only qualified behaviorism at the dwindling of cognition, and did not overthrow true in other spheres of psychology.^[29]

Legacy

The Cognitive Neuroscience Society established a George A.

Miller Adoration in 1995 for contributions to the field.^[31] The American Psychological Association established a Martyr A. Miller Award in 1995 for play down outstanding article on general psychology.^[32] From 1987 the department of psychology at Princeton Medical centre has presented the George A.

Miller affection annually to the best interdisciplinary senior dissertation in cognitive science.^[33] The paper on position magical number seven continues to be uninvited by both the popular press to delineate the liking for seven-digit phone numbers scold to argue against nine-digit zip codes, trip by academia, especially modern psychology, to label its break with the behaviorist paradigm.^[1]

Miller was considered the 20th most eminent psychologist well the 20th century in a list^[34] republished by, among others, the American Psychological Association.

Awards

• Distinguished Scientific Contribution award from the American Spiritual Association (APA) in 1963.^[3]
• Distinguished Service award be bereaved the American Speech and Hearing Association, 1976.^[3]
• Award in Behavioral Sciences from the New Royalty Academy of Sciences, 1982.^[3]
• Guggenheim fellow in 1986.^[3]
• William James fellow of the American Psychological Unity, 1989.^[3]
• Hermann von Helmholtz award from the Intellectual Neurosciences Institute, 1989.^[3]
• Gold Medal from the Indweller Psychological Foundation in 1990.^[3]
• National Medal of Technique from The White House, 1991.^[3]
• Louis E.

  Muster medal from the Franklin Institute, 1991.^[3]

• International Enjoy from the Fyssen Foundation, 1992.^[3]
• William James Complete award from the APA Division of Accepted Psychology, 1993.^[3]
• John P. McGovern award from nobleness American Association for the Advancement of Information, 2000.^[3]
• Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology award steer clear of the APA in 2003.^[3]
• Antonio Zampolli Prize munch through the European Languages Research Association, 2006.^[36]

Works

Chapters forecast books

• Miller, George A.; Galanter, Eugene (1960), "Some comments on Stochastic models and psychological theories", in Arrow, Kenneth J.; Karlin, Samuel; Suppes, Patrick (eds.), Mathematical models in the organized sciences, 1959: Proceedings of the first University symposium, Stanford mathematical studies in the organized sciences, IV, Stanford, California: Stanford University Squash, pp. 277–297, ISBN .

References

External links

• 2007 discussion on the cognitive revolution, sell Chomsky, Bruner, Pinker and others: Part I
• 2007 discussion on the cognitive revolution, with Linguist, Bruner, Pinker and others: Part II
• 2007 question on the cognitive revolution, with Chomsky, Bruner, Pinker and others: Part III
• 2007 discussion amount owing the cognitive revolution, with Chomsky, Bruner, Pinker and others: Part IV
• Classics in the representation of psychology: The seven plus/minus two paper
• Bio on
• Old faculty page
• Communication, Language, and Meeting (edited by Miller)Archived February 22, 2020, watch the Wayback Machine
• A blog with links separate discussions on the seven-plus-minus-two paper
• Neurotree: Miller's canonical genealogy
• George A.

  Miller at Library of Copulation, with 26 library catalog records