ABSTRACT
Introduction
Information-processing cognitive psychology has moved into a stage of normal science. Some criticisms are beginning to appear, but these may be more pertinent to normal science in general rather than only to that of information-processing psychology.
Normal Science and Narrowing of Focus
During scientific revolutions, much research concerns the focal, central issues whose importance is self-evident. As the discipline moves into normal science, much experimentation becomes responsive to a growing technical literature. It may diverge from the main issues and come to appear irrelevant, narrow, and insular.
Critiques
Noncumulative and Irrelevant Research Neisser (1976) has called for more ecological validity. By this he means research methods of greater sufficiency, and also a particular approach So cognition initially formulated by Gibson (1966). His negative views and proposed alternative have not been widely accepted, although the neo-Gibsonian position is a potential challenge to information-processing views. Newell (1973) considers the field to be in a fragmented state of disarray. He deplores the failure of most theorists to develop the concept of control processes. He also considers that flowcharts may sometimes be substituted for theoretical precision, and he objects to the practice of couching research questions as binary oppositions. Tulving has noted that 100 years of memory research has failed to yield a cumulative structure of knowledge.
These critiques may reflect the inevitable consequences of maturing normal science in combination with the relative newness of the paradigm. They are 525not universally shared. Another pioneer of information-processing psychology (Broadbent, 1971) expresses optimism for the prospects of our experimental traditions.
The Problem of Inferred Theoretical Mechanisms Particularly with respect to global models, some complain that there is a poor fit between theory and experiment. Some despair of the possibility of uniquely specifying theoretical mechanisms and entities. Examples from the physical sciences show that this problem is not unique to psychology. What theoretical mechanisms and entities are empirically justified is, in the last analysis, a matter of consensus supported by the persuasive use of the rational and conventional components of the scientific enterprise.
