ABSTRACT
In a recent examination of the field of cognition, Neisser (1976) begins with a harsh appraisal of the burgeoning research output in cognition. He notes that research in cognition has been disappointingly narrow, focusing inward on the analysis of specific experimental situations rather than outward toward the world beyond the laboratory. He calls for a cognitive psychology that is more attuned to "cognition as it occurs in the ordinary environment and in the context of natural purposeful activity" (p. 7) and "... to analyzing the environment that the mind has been shaped to meet . . ." (p. 8). His trenchant methodogical criticism continues with a sentence that alludes to a multiplicity of sins of contemporary research in cognition: "A satisfactory theory of human cognition can hardly be established by experiments that provide inexperienced subjects with brief opportunities to perform novel and meaningless tasks" (p. 8). Almost obscured in this tightly compressed sentence is a four-fold enumeration of methodological trends that impede progress: (a) most investigations of cognition are in the form of experiments, thereby restricting the study of phenomena to that which can be experimentally manipulated and which produces measurable effects; (b) most research uses inexperienced subjects who may not fully understand what is expected of them or who may not be adequately motivated to perform well, and may be distracted by the confrontion with a strange examiner whose presence interferes with the cognitive processes that are being studied; (c) the typical study of cognition provides only a brief opportunity to perform so that observations are made on the basis of a comparatively small sample of behavior; and (d) the tasks usually administered in cognition experiments are designed to be novel and meaningless in order to minimize the confounding impact of previous exposure to the phenomena. As a result, they are less likely to evoke routinized and well-organized modes of behavior that reveal how the subject typically responds. In summation, the current study of cognition is distorted by its restriction to variables that can be studied experimentally. It is likely to be deficient because it is based on mere glimpses of behavior evoked under unusual and unnatural circumstances wherein subjects are asked to deal with novel and/or meaningless problems that may not evoke customary modes of behavior. Neisser is neither the first nor the last to question the heavy emphasis of psychological research on experimental methods and to call for greater ecological validity of research. His comments are noted because they refer specifically to the field of cognition and because they come from an author whose wisdom in scanning the cognitive forest is widely acknowledged.
