On 9/5/2013 9:52 AM, Gary Berg-Cross wrote:
> It might be worth noting that in between Kant/Otto Selz and Herb Simon
> both Bartlett and Jean Piaget used the Schema idea. Bartlett for memory
> and Piaget more widely as the basis of cognitive structure whose
> elements are schemas (aka schemata). Schemata come about as a result
> of the interaction of biological maturation along with ongoing and
> cumulative experience. (01)
The word 'schema' has been used since Plato and Aristotle in a variety
of ways. Kant's use of the word had a strong influence on the way
most philosophers and psychologists use the word. But his definition
(quoted below) is far too vague. (02)
The Wikipedia article about the word 'schema' as used in psychology
erroneously cites Piaget 1926 as the first use. In support, they
have a broken link, which should point to the following page: (03)
http://ici-bostonready-pd-2007-2008.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/Schema+theory+of+learning.pdf (04)
This page doesn't have any detail about Piaget, but it summarizes
the work by Richard C. Andersen. Following is a TR by Andersen
from 1977 whose title could be taken directly from Selz (1922):
"Schema-directed processes in language comprehension". (05)
https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/17946/ctrstreadtechrepv01977i00050_opt.pdf?sequence=1 (06)
Andersen does not cite Selz, but he cites many AI articles from
the 1960s and '70s. He doesn't cite de Groot, Newell, Simon, or
Quillian, who had cited Selz in the AI literature of the '60s and
'70s. The term 'schema-directed' is a simple substitution of the
word 'schema' in the widely used AI term 'pattern-directed', which
was strongly influenced by Newell & Simon. (07)
I did cite Selz in my 1984 book, and I included one of his diagrams
in my article on semantic networks in the Encyclopedia of AI (first
published in 1987, second edition 1992): (08)
http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/semnet.htm
Semantic Network (09)
See Figure 12, which I copied from Selz (1922) and translated his
German words to English. At the end of this note (after Kant's
definition), I include my discussion about that article. For the
citations, see the references in the article. (010)
A few years ago, I downloaded a couple of articles by Michel ter Hark,
which go into more detail about Selz and his influence. But they seem
to have disappeared from the WWW. If anyone would like a copy, send
me an offline note. Following is a very brief overview: (011)
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/09/15/a-forgotten-pioneer-in-cognitive-psychology-otto-selz/ (012)
Summary: Selz's definitions, research methods, and analyses in 1922
were more detailed than anything else during the next few decades.
He was not as well known among psychologists as Piaget or Bartlett.
But his influence on AI through de Groot and Simon was at least as
strong or stronger. Since the 1970s, the influence of Selz's schemata
(if not his name) has been very strong. (013)
John
________________________________________________________________________ (014)
Source: http://www.phil.pku.edu.cn/resguide/Kant/CPR/9.html (015)
From pp. 182-183 of the translation by N. K. Smith: (016)
The schema of the triangle can exist nowhere but in thought. It is
a rule of synthesis of the imagination, in respect to pure figures
in space. Still less is an object of experience or its image ever
adequate to the empirical concept; for this latter always stands
in immediate relation to the schema of imagination, as a rule for
the determination of our intuition, in accordance with some specific
universal concept. The concept 'dog' signifies a rule according to
which my imagination can delineate the figure of a four-footed
animal in a general manner, without limitation to any single
determinate figure such as experience, or any possible image that
I can represent in concreto, actually presents.
________________________________________________________________________ (017)
Source: http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/semnet.htm (018)
An important class of executable networks was inspired by the work of
the psychologist Otto Selz (1913, 1922), who was dissatisfied with the
undirected associationist theories that were then current. As an
alternative, Selz proposed schematic anticipation as a goal-directed
method of focusing the thought processes on the task of filling empty
slots in a pattern or schema. Figure 12 is an example of a schema that
Selz asked his test subjects to complete while he recorded their verbal
protocols. (019)
(Figure 12. A schema used in Otto Selz's experiments) (020)
The expected answers for the empty slots in Figure 12 are the supertypes
of the words at the bottom: the supertype of Newspaper and Magazine is
Periodical, and the supertype of Periodical and Book is Publication.
This task is actually more difficult in German than in English: Selz's
subjects tried to find a one-word supertype for Zeitung (Newspaper) and
Zeitschrift (Magazine), but the correct answer in German is the two-word
phrase periodische Druckschrift. (021)
The similarity between Selz's method of schematic anticipation and the
goal-directed methods of AI is not an accident. Two of the pioneers in
AI, Herbert Simon and Allen Newell, learned of Selz's theories from one
of their visitors, the psychologist and chessplayer Adriaan de Groot
(Simon 1981). In his analysis of chess playing, de Groot (1965) applied
Selz's theories and methods of protocol analysis to the verbal reports
of chessplayers ranging from novices to grandmasters. Newell and Simon
(1972) adopted Selz's method of protocol analysis for their study of
human problem solving. Their student, Ross Quillian (1966), combined
Selz's networks with the semantic networks used in machine translation.
Quillian's most significant innovation was the marker passing algorithm
for spreading activations, which was adopted for later systems, such as
NETL by Scott Fahlman (1979) and the massively parallel algorithms by
Hendler (1987; 1992) and Shastri (1991; 1992). (022)
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