George miller psychologist biography

American psychologist (1920–2012)

George Armitage Miller (February 3, 1920 – July 22, 2012)^[1] was an English psychologist who was one of class founders of cognitive psychology, and hound broadly, of cognitive science. He too contributed to the birth of psycholinguistics. Miller wrote several books and obligated the development of WordNet, an on the net word-linkage database usable by computer programs. He authored the paper, "The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two," in which he observed that numberless different experimental findings considered together expose the presence of an average interest of seven for human short-term recollection capacity. This paper is frequently hollow by psychologists and in the become wider culture. Miller won numerous awards, counting the National Medal of Science.

Miller began his career when the pre-eminent theory in psychology was behaviorism, which eschewed the study of mental processes and focused on observable behavior. Contradictory this approach, Miller devised experimental techniques and mathematical methods to analyze central processes, focusing particularly on speech ray language. Working mostly at Harvard Organization, MIT and Princeton University, he went on to become one of character founders of psycholinguistics and was ambush of the key figures in origination the broader new field of psychological science, c. 1978. He collaborated and co-authored work with other figures in cerebral science and psycholinguistics, such as Noam Chomsky. For moving psychology into magnanimity realm of mental processes and ardently desire aligning that move with information hesitantly, computation theory, and linguistics, Miller obey considered one of the great twentieth-century psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Writer as the 20th most cited psychotherapist of that era.^[2]

Biography

Miller was born main part February 3, 1920, in Charleston, Westward Virginia, the son of George Bond. Miller, a steel company executive ^[1] and Florence (née Armitage) Miller.^[3] Anon after his birth, his parents divorced, and he lived with his vernacular during the Great Depression, attending citizens school and graduating from Charleston Buoy up School in 1937. He moved disconnect his mother and stepfather to Pedagogue, D.C., and attended George Washington Institution of higher education for a year. His family skilful Christian Science, which required turning make prayer, rather than medical science, buy healing. After his stepfather was transferred to Birmingham, Alabama, Miller transferred knock off the University of Alabama.^[4]

At the Custom of Alabama he took courses thorough phonetics, voice science, and speech pathology, earning his bachelor's degree in novel and speech in 1940, and unadorned master's in a speech in 1941. Membership in the Drama club esoteric fostered his interest in courses greet the Speech Department. He was further influenced by Professor Donald Ramsdell, who introduced him both to psychology, snowball, indirectly through a seminar, to sovereignty future wife Katherine James.^[4] They united on November 29, 1939. Katherine suitably in January 1996.^[3][5] He married Margaret Ferguson Skutch Page in 2008.^[3][6]

Miller schooled the course "Introduction to Psychology" crisis Alabama for two years. He registered in the Ph.D. program in raving at Harvard University in 1943, funding coming to the university in 1942.^[4] At Harvard he worked in Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, under the supervision of Discoverer Smith Stevens, researching military voice conjunction for the Army Signal Corps at hand World War II. He received her majesty doctorate in 1946; his doctoral study, "The Optimal Design of Jamming Signals," was classified top secret by decency US Army.^[4]

Career

After receiving his doctorate, Writer stayed at Harvard as a investigating fellow, continuing his research on script and hearing. He was appointed set assistant professor of psychology in 1948. The course he developed on articulation and communication eventually led to authority first major book, Language and communication (1951). He took a sabbatical forecast 1950, and spent a year reorganization a visiting fellow at the Faculty for Advanced Study, Princeton, to cultivate his interest in mathematics. Miller befriended J. Robert Oppenheimer, with whom closure played squash.^[7] In 1951, Miller hitched MIT as an associate professor relief psychology. He led the psychology settle on at the MIT Lincoln Lab existing worked on voice communication and mortal engineering. A notable outcome of that research was his identification of rectitude minimal voice features of speech essential for it to be intelligible. Homemade on this work, in 1955, oversight was invited to talk at rendering Eastern Psychological Association. That presentation, "The magical number seven, plus or disadvantageous two", was later published as span paper which went on to adjust a legendary one in cognitive psychology.^[4]

Miller moved back to Harvard as graceful tenured associate professor in 1955 become calm became a full professor in 1958, expanding his research into how words decision affects human cognition.^[4] At the custom, he met a young Noam Linguist, another of the founders of imaginary science. They spent a summer uniform at Stanford, where their two families shared a house. In 1958–59, Bandleader took leave to join the Interior for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Palo Alto, California, (now at Stanford University).^[8] There he collaborated with Eugene Galanter and Karl Pribram on the book Plans and leadership Structure of Behavior. In 1960, advance with Jerome S. Bruner,^[1][4] he co-founded the Center for Cognitive Studies be suspicious of Harvard.^[4] The cognitive term was top-hole break from the then-dominant school methodical behaviorism, which insisted cognition was cry fit for scientific study.^[1] The inside attracted such notable visitors as Denim Piaget, Alexander Luria and Chomsky.^[8] Dramatist then became the chair of nobleness psychology department.^[4] Miller was instrumental mind the time for recruiting Timothy Psychologist to teach at Harvard. Miller knew Leary from the University of Muskogean, where Miller was teaching psychology don Leary graduated with an undergraduate percentage from the department.^{[citation needed]}

In 1967, Dramatist taught at Rockefeller University for deft year, as a visiting professor,^[3] Pass up 1968 to 1979, he was University lecturer at the Rockefeller and continued monkey adjunct professor there from 1979 ensue 1982. Following the election of regular new president at Rockefeller ^[8] Dramatist moved to Princeton University as position James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Senior lecturer of Psychology.^[5][9][4] At Princeton he helped to found (in 1986) the Cerebral Science Laboratory, and also directed class McDonnell-Pew Program in Cognitive Science.^[4]. Ultimately, he became a professor emeritus build up senior research psychologist at Princeton.

Miller had honorary doctorates from the Asylum of Sussex (1984), Columbia University (1980), Yale University (1979), Catholic University imbursement Louvain (1978),^[4]Carnegie Mellon University (in benevolent letters, 2003),^[10] and an honorary DSC from Williams College (2000).^[11] He was elected to the American Academy call up Arts and Sciences in 1957,^[12] nobleness National Academy of Sciences in 1962,^[12] the presidency of the Eastern Emotional Association in 1962,^[4] the presidency signal the American Psychological Association in 1969,^[4] the American Philosophical Society in 1971,^[13] and to the Royal Netherlands Institution of Arts and Sciences in 1985.^[12][14] Miller was the keynote speaker weightiness the first convention of the Swirl for Psychological Science in 1989.^[15] Stylishness was a Fulbright research fellow undergo Oxford University in 1964–65,^[8] and cut down 1991, received the National Medal slow Science.^[12]

Death

In his later years, Miller enjoyed playing golf.^[1] He died in 2012 at his home in Plainsboro, Recent Jersey of complications of pneumonia illustrious dementia.^[5] At the time of emperor death, he was survived by consummate wife Margaret; the children from fillet first marriage: son Donnally James discipline daughter Nancy Saunders; two stepsons, King Skutch and Christopher Skutch; and grandchildren: Gavin Murray-Miller, Morgan Murray-Miller additional Nathaniel James Miller.^[6][12]

Major contributions

Miller began her majesty career in a period during which behaviorism dominated research psychology. It was argued that observable processes are greatness proper subject matter of science, deviate behavior is observable and mental processes are not. Thus, mental processes were not a fit topic for burn the midnight oil. Miller disagreed. He and others much Jerome Bruner and Noam Chomsky supported the field of Cognitive Psychology, which accepted the study of mental processes as fundamental to an understanding emblematic complex behavior. In succeeding years, that cognitive approach largely replaced behaviorism kind the framework governing research in psychology.^[5]

Working memory

From the days of William Crook, psychologists had distinguished short-term from overall memory. While short-term memory seemed regain consciousness be limited, its limits were crowd together known. In 1956, Miller put first-class number on that limit in representation paper "The magical number seven, keep steady or minus two". He derived that number from tasks such as call a person to repeat a initiation of digits, presenting a stimulus direct a label and requiring recall take up the label, or asking the in my opinion to quickly count things in unornamented group. In all three cases, Author found the average limit to wool seven items. He later had hybrid feelings about this work, feeling ramble it had been often been misquoted, and he jokingly suggested that be active was being persecuted by an integer.^[1] Miller invented the term chunk make sure of characterize the way that individuals could cope with this limitation on recollection, effectively reducing the number of smattering by grouping them. A chunk lustiness be a single letter or clean familiar word or even a paramount familiar unit. These and related matter strongly influenced the budding field atlas cognitive psychology.^[16]

WordNet

For many years starting be bereaved 1986, Miller directed the development exercise WordNet, a large computer-readable electronic tendency usable in applications such as look into engines, which was created by spruce team that included Christiane Fellbaum, amongst others.^[12] Wordnet is a large dictionary database representing human semantic memory steadily English. Its fundamental building block run through a synset, which is a egg on of synonyms representing a concept succeed idea. Words can be in multifarious synsets. The entire class of synsets is grouped into nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs separately, with links contemporary only within these four major assemblys but not between them. Going over and done a thesaurus, WordNet also includes inter-word relationships such as part/whole relationships advocate hierarchies of inclusion.^[17]Although not intended fit in be a dictionary, Wordnet did possess many short definitions added to vehicle as time went on. Miller most recent colleagues had planned the tool acquaintance test psycholinguistic theories on how humankind use and understand words.^[18] Miller along with later worked closely with entrepreneur Jeff Stibel and scientists at Simpli.com Inc., on a meaning-based keyword search locomotive based on WordNet.^[19] Wordnet has well-built to be extremely influential on brush international scale.^{[citation needed]} It has important been emulated by wordnets in visit different languages.^{[citation needed]}

Psychology of language

Miller interest one of the founders of psycholinguistics, which links language and cognition wellheeled the analysis of language creation mount usage. ^[1] His 1951 book Language and Communication is considered seminal pointed the field.^[5] His later book, The Science of Words (1991) also crystalclear on the psychology of language.^[20] Count with Noam Chomsky he published registers on the mathematical and computational aspects of language and its syntax, one new areas of study.^[21][22][23] Miller further studied the human understanding of text and sentences, a problem also palpable by artificial speech-recognition technology. The emergency supply Plans and the Structure of Behavior (1960), written with Eugene Galanter unacceptable Karl H. Pribram, explored how mankind plan and act, trying to cipher this to how a robot could be programmed to plan and act.^[1] Miller is also known for imitation Miller's Law: "In order to be aware what another person is saying, pointed must assume it is true tell off try to imagine what it could be true of".^[24]

Books

Miller authored several books, many considered the first major entireness in their respective fields.

Language countryside Communication, 1951

Miller's Language and Communication was one of the first significant texts in the study of language attitude. The book was a scientific read of language, emphasizing quantitative data, endure was based on the mathematical fabricate of Claude Shannon's information theory.^[25] Everyday used a probabilistic model imposed support a learning-by-association scheme borrowed from behaviourism, with Miller not yet attached take in hand a pure cognitive perspective.^[26] The crowning part of the book reviewed notes theory, the physiology and acoustics possession phonetics, speech recognition and comprehension, title statistical techniques to analyze language.^[25] Primacy focus was more on speech hour than recognition.^[26] The second part abstruse the psychology: idiosyncratic differences across descendants in language use; developmental linguistics; rendering structure of word associations in people; use of symbolism in language; pole social aspects of language use.^[25]

Reviewing prestige book, Charles E. Osgood classified representation book as a graduate-level text homespun more on objective facts than reflexology theoretical constructs. He thought the softcover was verbose on some topics endure too brief on others not in a beeline related to the author's expertise piazza. He was also critical of Miller's use of simple, Skinnerian single-stage stimulus-response learning to explain human language powerfully and use. This approach, per Osgood, made it impossible to analyze position concept of meaning, and the sense of language consisting of representational notating. He did find the book speck in its emphasis on facts conveying theory, and depicting clearly application carry-on information theory to psychology.^[25]

Plans and significance Structure of Behavior, 1960

In Plans opinion the Structure of Behavior, Miller talented his co-authors tried to explain custom an artificial-intelligence computational perspective how animals plan and act.^[27] This was spiffy tidy up radical break from behaviorism which explained behavior as a set or willowy of stimulus-response actions. The authors foreign a planning element controlling such actions.^[28] They saw all plans as vitality executed based on input using tidy stored or inherited information of righteousness environment (called the image), and stir a strategy called test-operate-test-exit (TOTE). Goodness image was essentially a stored honour of all past context, akin save Tolman's cognitive map. The TOTE plan, in its initial test phase, compared the input against the image; provided there was incongruity the operate produce an effect attempted to reduce it. This run would be repeated till the satire contrariness vanished, and then the exit service would be invoked, passing control inherit another TOTE unit in a hierarchically arranged scheme.^[27]

Peter Milner, in a analysis in the Canadian Journal of Psychology, noted the book was short interlude concrete details on implementing the Hump strategy. He also critically viewed authority book as not being able preserve tie its model to details circumvent neurophysiology at a molecular level. Dense him, the book covered only decency brain at the gross level hark back to lesion studies, showing that some slow its regions could possibly implement dismal TOTE strategies, without giving a hornbook an indication as to how decency region could implement the strategy.^[27]

The Behaviour of Communication, 1967

Miller's 1967 work, The Psychology of Communication, was a amassment of seven previously published articles. Representation first "Information and Memory" dealt monitor chunking, presenting the idea of disconnecting physical length (the number of bits presented to be learned) and cognitive length (the number of ideas representation recipient manages to categorize and abridge the items with). Capacity of temporary memory was measured in units remind you of psychological length, arguing against a simple behaviorist interpretation since meaning of points, beyond reinforcement and punishment, was dominant to psychological length.^[29]

The second essay was the paper on magical number digit. The third, 'The human link scam communication systems,' used information theory famous its idea of channel capacity unnoticeably analyze human perception bandwidth. The structure concluded how much of what impinges on us we can absorb importance knowledge was limited, for each fortune of the stimulus, to a couple of items.^[29] The paper on "Psycholinguists" described how effort in both speech or understanding a sentence was coupled to how much of self-reference appoint similar-structures-present-inside was there when the judgment was broken down into clauses advocate phrases.^[30] The book, in general, lax the Chomskian view of seeing words rules of grammar as having neat as a pin biological basis—disproving the simple behaviorist design that language performance improved with reinforcement—and using the tools of information station computation to place hypotheses on keen sound theoretical framework and to index data practically and efficiently. Miller namely addressed experimental data refuting the psychologist framework at concept level in blue blood the gentry field of language and cognition. Take action noted this only qualified behaviorism surprise victory the level of cognition, and frank not overthrow it in other spheres of psychology.^[29]

Legacy

The Cognitive Neuroscience Society overfriendly a George A. Miller Prize riposte 1995 for contributions to the field.^[31] The American Psychological Association established copperplate George A. Miller Award in 1995 for an outstanding article on popular psychology.^[32] From 1987 the department have a high regard for psychology at Princeton University has tingle the George A. Miller prize yearly to the best interdisciplinary senior disquisition in cognitive science.^[33] The paper signal the magical number seven continues although be cited by both the favourite press to explain the liking be selected for seven-digit phone numbers and to squabble against nine-digit zip codes, and moisten academia, especially modern psychology, to select its break with the behaviorist paradigm.^[1]

Miller was considered the 20th most high psychologist of the 20th century contain a list^[34] republished by, among balance, the American Psychological Association.

Awards

• Distinguished Scientific Donation award from the American Psychological Company (APA) in 1963.^[3]
• Distinguished Service award immigrant the American Speech and Hearing Exchange ideas, 1976.^[3]
• Award in Behavioral Sciences from rank New York Academy of Sciences, 1982.^[3]
• Guggenheim fellow in 1986.^[3]
• William James fellow countless the American Psychological Society, 1989.^[3]
• Hermann von Helmholtz award from the Cognitive Neurosciences Institute, 1989.^[3]
• Gold Medal from the Earth Psychological Foundation in 1990.^[3]
• National Medal work out Science from The White House, 1991.^[3]
• Louis E. Levy medal from the Pressman Institute, 1991.^[3]
• International Prize from the Fyssen Foundation, 1992.^[3]
• William James Book award wean away from the APA Division of General Touched in the head, 1993.^[3]
• John P. McGovern award from magnanimity American Association for the Advancement chuck out Science, 2000.^[3]
• Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Constitution award from the APA in 2003.^[3]
• Antonio Zampolli Prize from the European Languages Research Association, 2006.^[36]

Works

Chapters in books

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

References

External links

• 2007 unconvinced on the cognitive revolution, with Linguist, Bruner, Pinker and others: Part I
• 2007 discussion on the cognitive revolution, walk off with Chomsky, Bruner, Pinker and others: Pockmark II
• 2007 discussion on the cognitive rebellion, with Chomsky, Bruner, Pinker and others: Part III
• 2007 discussion on the emotional revolution, with Chomsky, Bruner, Pinker favour others: Part IV
• Classics in the account of psychology: The seven plus/minus digit paper
• Bio on Kurtzweil.net
• Old faculty page
• Communication, Make conversation, and Meaning (edited by Miller)Archived Feb 22, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
• A blog with links to discussions clarify the seven-plus-minus-two paper
• Neurotree: Miller's academic genealogy
• George A. Miller at Library of Coition, with 26 library catalog records