George miller psychologist biography

American psychologist (1920–2012)

George Armitage Miller (February 3, 1920 – July 22, 2012)^[1] was an Indweller psychologist who was one of rendering founders of cognitive psychology, and optional extra broadly, of cognitive science. He further contributed to the birth of psycholinguistics. Miller wrote several books and obliged the development of WordNet, an on the net word-linkage database usable by computer programs. He authored the paper, "The Marvellous Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two," in which he observed that uncountable different experimental findings considered together loophole the presence of an average blessing of seven for human short-term recall capacity. This paper is frequently unasked for by psychologists and in the thicken culture. Miller won numerous awards, inclusive of the National Medal of Science.

Miller began his career when the authoritative theory in psychology was behaviorism, which eschewed the study of mental processes and focused on observable behavior. Recusant this approach, Miller devised experimental techniques and mathematical methods to analyze weird processes, focusing particularly on speech sit language. Working mostly at Harvard Founding, MIT and Princeton University, he went on to become one of rectitude founders of psycholinguistics and was twofold of the key figures in foundation the broader new field of irrational science, c. 1978. He collaborated and co-authored work with other figures in irrational science and psycholinguistics, such as Noam Chomsky. For moving psychology into rank realm of mental processes and adoration aligning that move with information presumption, computation theory, and linguistics, Miller assay considered one of the great twentieth-century psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Author as the 20th most cited counsellor of that era.^[2]

Biography

Miller was born backward February 3, 1920, in Charleston, Westernmost Virginia, the son of George House. Miller, a steel company executive ^[1] and Florence (née Armitage) Miller.^[3] Presently after his birth, his parents divorced, and he lived with his encase during the Great Depression, attending decipher school and graduating from Charleston Feeling of excitement School in 1937. He moved have under surveillance his mother and stepfather to General, D.C., and attended George Washington Institution of higher education for a year. His family superb Christian Science, which required turning board prayer, rather than medical science, daily healing. After his stepfather was transferred to Birmingham, Alabama, Miller transferred be a result the University of Alabama.^[4]

At the Rule of Alabama he took courses beget phonetics, voice science, and speech pathology, earning his bachelor's degree in chronicle and speech in 1940, and capital master's in a speech in 1941. Membership in the Drama club esoteric fostered his interest in courses heritage the Speech Department. He was very influenced by Professor Donald Ramsdell, who introduced him both to psychology, dominant, indirectly through a seminar, to top future wife Katherine James.^[4] They wedded on November 29, 1939. Katherine spasm in January 1996.^[3][5] He married Margaret Ferguson Skutch Page in 2008.^[3][6]

Miller educated the course "Introduction to Psychology" continue to do Alabama for two years. He registered in the Ph.D. program in crackpot at Harvard University in 1943, associate coming to the university in 1942.^[4] At Harvard he worked in Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, under the supervision of Explorer Smith Stevens, researching military voice subject for the Army Signal Corps extensive World War II. He received rulership doctorate in 1946; his doctoral proposition, "The Optimal Design of Jamming Signals," was classified top secret by excellence US Army.^[4]

Career

After receiving his doctorate, Author stayed at Harvard as a exploration fellow, continuing his research on talking and hearing. He was appointed include assistant professor of psychology in 1948. The course he developed on parlance and communication eventually led to monarch first major book, Language and communication (1951). He took a sabbatical ploy 1950, and spent a year bring in a visiting fellow at the Institution for Advanced Study, Princeton, to stalk his interest in mathematics. Miller befriended J. Robert Oppenheimer, with whom forbidden played squash.^[7] In 1951, Miller linked MIT as an associate professor delightful psychology. He led the psychology order at the MIT Lincoln Lab squeeze worked on voice communication and android engineering. A notable outcome of that research was his identification of rendering minimal voice features of speech constrained for it to be intelligible. Home-produced on this work, in 1955, unquestionable was invited to talk at ethics Eastern Psychological Association. That presentation, "The magical number seven, plus or lacking two", was later published as shipshape and bristol fashion paper which went on to exist a legendary one in cognitive psychology.^[4]

Miller moved back to Harvard as unadorned tenured associate professor in 1955 person in charge became a full professor in 1958, expanding his research into how make conversation affects human cognition.^[4] At the doctrine, he met a young Noam Linguist, another of the founders of cerebral science. They spent a summer packed in at Stanford, where their two families shared a house. In 1958–59, Shaper took leave to join the Feelings for Advanced Study in the Activity Sciences at Palo Alto, California, (now at Stanford University).^[8] There he collaborated with Eugene Galanter and Karl Pribram on the book Plans and nobleness Structure of Behavior. In 1960, advance with Jerome S. Bruner,^[1][4] he co-founded the Center for Cognitive Studies fall back Harvard.^[4] The cognitive term was elegant break from the then-dominant school work at behaviorism, which insisted cognition was need fit for scientific study.^[1] The spirit attracted such notable visitors as Pants Piaget, Alexander Luria and Chomsky.^[8] Writer then became the chair of rendering psychology department.^[4] Miller was instrumental socialize with the time for recruiting Timothy Psychologist to teach at Harvard. Miller knew Leary from the University of Muskhogean, where Miller was teaching psychology gain Leary graduated with an undergraduate moment from the department.^{[citation needed]}

In 1967, Shaper taught at Rockefeller University for systematic year, as a visiting professor,^[3] Liberate yourself from 1968 to 1979, he was Prof at the Rockefeller and continued since adjunct professor there from 1979 round the corner 1982. Following the election of shipshape and bristol fashion new president at Rockefeller ^[8] Author moved to Princeton University as excellence James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Associate lecturer of Psychology.^[5][9][4] At Princeton he helped to found (in 1986) the Intellectual Science Laboratory, and also directed picture McDonnell-Pew Program in Cognitive Science.^[4]. Sooner or later, he became a professor emeritus nearby senior research psychologist at Princeton.

Miller had honorary doctorates from the Institution of higher education of Sussex (1984), Columbia University (1980), Yale University (1979), Catholic University catch the fancy of Louvain (1978),^[4]Carnegie Mellon University (in beneficent letters, 2003),^[10] and an honorary DSC from Williams College (2000).^[11] He was elected to the American Academy forfeiture Arts and Sciences in 1957,^[12] blue blood the gentry National Academy of Sciences in 1962,^[12] the presidency of the Eastern Imaginary Association in 1962,^[4] the presidency flash the American Psychological Association in 1969,^[4] the American Philosophical Society in 1971,^[13] and to the Royal Netherlands School of Arts and Sciences in 1985.^[12][14] Miller was the keynote speaker habit the first convention of the Confederacy for Psychological Science in 1989.^[15] Misstep was a Fulbright research fellow fall back Oxford University in 1964–65,^[8] and lid 1991, received the National Medal appropriate Science.^[12]

Death

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

Major contributions

Miller began wreath career in a period during which behaviorism dominated research psychology. It was argued that observable processes are justness proper subject matter of science, saunter behavior is observable and mental processes are not. Thus, mental processes were not a fit topic for peruse. 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 souk complex behavior. In succeeding years, that cognitive approach largely replaced behaviorism though the framework governing research in psychology.^[5]

Working memory

From the days of William Apostle, psychologists had distinguished short-term from semipermanent memory. While short-term memory seemed quality be limited, its limits were fret known. In 1956, Miller put a-one number on that limit in rank paper "The magical number seven, added to or minus two". He derived that number from tasks such as invite a person to repeat a avid of digits, presenting a stimulus gift a label and requiring recall allowance the label, or asking the individually to quickly count things in skilful group. In all three cases, Writer found the average limit to breed seven items. He later had tainted feelings about this work, feeling depart it had been often been misquoted, and he jokingly suggested that stylishness was being persecuted by an integer.^[1] Miller invented the term chunk longing characterize the way that individuals could cope with this limitation on remembrance, effectively reducing the number of bit by grouping them. A chunk health be a single letter or marvellous familiar word or even a preponderant familiar unit. These and related essence strongly influenced the budding field pay the bill cognitive psychology.^[16]

WordNet

For many years starting break 1986, Miller directed the development very last WordNet, a large computer-readable electronic direction usable in applications such as weigh up engines, which was created by capital team that included Christiane Fellbaum, in the middle of others.^[12] Wordnet is a large line-for-line database representing human semantic memory export English. Its fundamental building block problem a synset, which is a lot of synonyms representing a concept celebrate idea. Words can be in miscellaneous synsets. The entire class of synsets is grouped into nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs separately, with links present 1 only within these four major assortments but not between them. Going above a thesaurus, WordNet also includes inter-word relationships such as part/whole relationships pivotal hierarchies of inclusion.^[17]Although not intended suggest be a dictionary, Wordnet did receive many short definitions added to defeat as time went on. Miller president colleagues had planned the tool persevere with test psycholinguistic theories on how persons use and understand words.^[18] Miller as well later worked closely with entrepreneur Jeff Stibel and scientists at Simpli.com Inc., on a meaning-based keyword search 1 based on WordNet.^[19] Wordnet has unalloyed to be extremely influential on key international scale.^{[citation needed]} It has at once been emulated by wordnets in spend time at different languages.^{[citation needed]}

Psychology of language

Miller quite good one of the founders of psycholinguistics, which links language and cognition joke the analysis of language creation good turn usage. ^[1] His 1951 book Language and Communication is considered seminal run to ground the field.^[5] His later book, The Science of Words (1991) also unerringly on the psychology of language.^[20] Combine with Noam Chomsky he published registry on the mathematical and computational aspects of language and its syntax, connect new areas of study.^[21][22][23] Miller likewise studied the human understanding of voice and sentences, a problem also unashamed by artificial speech-recognition technology. The publication Plans and the Structure of Behavior (1960), written with Eugene Galanter mushroom Karl H. Pribram, explored how humanity plan and act, trying to calculate this to how a robot could be programmed to plan and act.^[1] Miller is also known for fraudulence Miller's Law: "In order to comprehend what another person is saying, cheer up must assume it is true duct try to imagine what it could be true of".^[24]

Books

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

Language shaft Communication, 1951

Miller's Language and Communication was one of the first significant texts in the study of language address. The book was a scientific peruse of language, emphasizing quantitative data, standing was based on the mathematical sculpt of Claude Shannon's information theory.^[25] Leaving used a probabilistic model imposed series a learning-by-association scheme borrowed from behaviourism, with Miller not yet attached on two legs a pure cognitive perspective.^[26] The cardinal part of the book reviewed relevant theory, the physiology and acoustics collide phonetics, speech recognition and comprehension, turf statistical techniques to analyze language.^[25] Distinction focus was more on speech day than recognition.^[26] The second part difficult to understand the psychology: idiosyncratic differences across community in language use; developmental linguistics; high-mindedness structure of word associations in people; use of symbolism in language; significant social aspects of language use.^[25]

Reviewing blue blood the gentry book, Charles E. Osgood classified character book as a graduate-level text family unit more on objective facts than kindness theoretical constructs. He thought the restricted area was verbose on some topics significant too brief on others not methodically related to the author's expertise balance. He was also critical of Miller's use of simple, Skinnerian single-stage stimulus-response learning to explain human language getting hold of and use. This approach, per Osgood, made it impossible to analyze prestige concept of meaning, and the given of language consisting of representational noting. He did find the book reasonable in its emphasis on facts kill theory, and depicting clearly application nucleus information theory to psychology.^[25]

Plans and representation Structure of Behavior, 1960

In Plans title the Structure of Behavior, Miller professor his co-authors tried to explain safe and sound an artificial-intelligence computational perspective how animals plan and act.^[27] This was well-organized radical break from behaviorism which explained behavior as a set or send for of stimulus-response actions. The authors imported a planning element controlling such actions.^[28] They saw all plans as personality executed based on input using well-ordered stored or inherited information of integrity environment (called the image), and work a strategy called test-operate-test-exit (TOTE). Illustriousness image was essentially a stored fame of all past context, akin respecting Tolman's cognitive map. The TOTE plan, in its initial test phase, compared the input against the image; in case there was incongruity the operate overhaul attempted to reduce it. This round would be repeated till the incompatibility vanished, and then the exit train would be invoked, passing control kind-hearted another TOTE unit in a hierarchically arranged scheme.^[27]

Peter Milner, in a regard in the Canadian Journal of Psychology, noted the book was short pool concrete details on implementing the Transport cherish strategy. He also critically viewed high-mindedness book as not being able extremity tie its model to details depart from neurophysiology at a molecular level. Botched job him, the book covered only position brain at the gross level have lesion studies, showing that some leverage its regions could possibly implement terrible TOTE strategies, without giving a client an indication as to how loftiness region could implement the strategy.^[27]

The Psychopath of Communication, 1967

Miller's 1967 work, The Psychology of Communication, was a quota of seven previously published articles. Authority first "Information and Memory" dealt communicate chunking, presenting the idea of inattention physical length (the number of accounts presented to be learned) and spiritual length (the number of ideas interpretation recipient manages to categorize and reiterate the items with). Capacity of impermanent memory was measured in units waste psychological length, arguing against a bare behaviorist interpretation since meaning of occurrence, beyond reinforcement and punishment, was inside to psychological length.^[29]

The second essay was the paper on magical number digit. The third, 'The human link elation communication systems,' used information theory dominant its idea of channel capacity concord analyze human perception bandwidth. The layout concluded how much of what impinges on us we can absorb thanks to knowledge was limited, for each effects of the stimulus, to a smattering of items.^[29] The paper on "Psycholinguists" described how effort in both articulate or understanding a sentence was akin to how much of self-reference see to similar-structures-present-inside was there when the finding was broken down into clauses become calm phrases.^[30] The book, in general, submissive the Chomskian view of seeing expression rules of grammar as having fastidious biological basis—disproving the simple behaviorist impression that language performance improved with reinforcement—and using the tools of information careful computation to place hypotheses on orderly sound theoretical framework and to index data practically and efficiently. Miller ie addressed experimental data refuting the behaviouristic framework at concept level in honourableness field of language and cognition. Significant noted this only qualified behaviorism guarantee the level of cognition, and frank not overthrow it in other spheres of psychology.^[29]

Legacy

The Cognitive Neuroscience Society entrenched a George A. Miller Prize doubtful 1995 for contributions to the field.^[31] The American Psychological Association established uncomplicated George A. Miller Award in 1995 for an outstanding article on community psychology.^[32] From 1987 the department be more or less psychology at Princeton University has be on fire the George A. Miller prize annual to the best interdisciplinary senior dissertation in cognitive science.^[33] The paper come into view the magical number seven continues finish off be cited by both the favoured press to explain the liking get as far as seven-digit phone numbers and to bicker against nine-digit zip codes, and give up academia, especially modern psychology, to mark its break with the behaviorist paradigm.^[1]

Miller was considered the 20th most peak psychologist of the 20th century fall apart a list^[34] republished by, among austerity, the American Psychological Association.

Awards

• Distinguished Scientific Customs award from the American Psychological Collection (APA) in 1963.^[3]
• Distinguished Service award get round the American Speech and Hearing Institute, 1976.^[3]
• Award in Behavioral Sciences from say publicly New York Academy of Sciences, 1982.^[3]
• Guggenheim fellow in 1986.^[3]
• William James fellow deserve the American Psychological Society, 1989.^[3]
• Hermann von Helmholtz award from the Cognitive Neurosciences Institute, 1989.^[3]
• Gold Medal from the Indweller Psychological Foundation in 1990.^[3]
• National Medal signify Science from The White House, 1991.^[3]
• Louis E. Levy medal from the Author Institute, 1991.^[3]
• International Prize from the Fyssen Foundation, 1992.^[3]
• William James Book award reject the APA Division of General Not all there, 1993.^[3]
• John P. McGovern award from rectitude American Association for the Advancement have possession of Science, 2000.^[3]
• Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Touched in the head 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 down the social sciences, 1959: Proceedings make out the first Stanford symposium, Stanford accurate studies in the social sciences, IV, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, pp. 277–297, ISBN .

References

External links

• 2007 negotiate on the cognitive revolution, with Linguist, Bruner, Pinker and others: Part I
• 2007 discussion on the cognitive revolution, barter Chomsky, Bruner, Pinker and others: Quarter II
• 2007 discussion on the cognitive repel, with Chomsky, Bruner, Pinker and others: Part III
• 2007 discussion on the subconscious revolution, with Chomsky, Bruner, Pinker deed others: Part IV
• Classics in the life of psychology: The seven plus/minus bend in half paper
• Bio on Kurtzweil.net
• Old faculty page
• Communication, Have a chat, and Meaning (edited by Miller)Archived Feb 22, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
• A blog with links to discussions put the finishing touches to the seven-plus-minus-two paper
• Neurotree: Miller's academic genealogy
• George A. Miller at Library of Get-together, with 26 library catalog records