Seven ages of Max

Andy YoungPsychology

University of YorkEngland

Maxschrift, MACCSMarch 2009

Overview• Max Coltheart is a towering figure in cognitive

psychology.

• Cognitive psychology uses evidence to understand human mental abilities such as perception, memory, language and reasoning. It has its roots in work from the 1940s and 1950s, but it was Neisser’s 1967 book defined it as a distinct enterprise.

• Max’s PhD was submitted in 1968, so his career has been largely synchronous with the huge explosion of interest in the field that followed Neisser’s setting the scene.

• Max’s contributions have been notably wide-ranging, covering many areas of the field and using all of its major approaches – a number of which he himself pioneered or was there from the outset.

• Max has therefore become the cognitive psychologist's cognitive psychologist.

• During the period covered by Max’s career, cognitive psychology has itself grown enormously – metamorphosing into the much grander and all-embracing cognitive science – a development that many fear has represented a takeover of the core psychology curriculum for which Max has been in no small part responsible.

• So how has he achieved this commanding position?

• We will look at some of Max’s contributions to a selection of topics covering the entire span of his career to date.

Monologue from Shakespeare’s 'As You Like It':“All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances;And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages.”

Seven ages of Max...

The first age: MiniMax

“At first the infant,Mewling and puking in

the nurse's arms;"

"And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school.”

1957-1964: undergraduate and postgraduate student at University of Sydney

• acquiring acquiring essential essential academic academic skillsskills

• see if you see if you can spot at can spot at least one least one other well-other well-known known Australian Australian prof in this prof in this picture…picture…

The second age:EyeMax

1965-1966: lecturing at University of Sydney

1967-1969: lecturing at Monash University

A classic problem solved - use of retinal sizeParticipants viewed a disc of light and judged its

distance.All visual distance cues other than retinal size

eliminated:• monocular viewing through pinhole - no stereopsis• room was dark - no cues from surroundings• no knowledge of room - blindfolded and brought via

a circuitous route

• participants could use this - so they can use retinal size!

• Coltheart, M. The effects of two kinds of distance information upon visual judgments of absolute size. Nature, 1969, 221, 383.

But retinal size is ambiguous - a three-inch disk at three feet could be a six-inch disc at six feet.

• so disambiguating verbal or tactile information was given…

Visual memory without cueing

T Q R D

M X N K

D H P ZWith a cue immediately after presentation,

the cued item can be reported, leading to Sperling's idea of a short-lived 'iconic' visual memory store

Developing the iconic memory approach• an artifact of tachistoscope technology?• Coltheart, M., Lea, C.D., and Thompson, K. In defence of iconic

memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1974, 26, 633-641.

• more than one form of persistence is probably involved…• Coltheart, M. Persistences of vision. Philosophical Transactions of

the Royal Society, 1980, 290, 57-69.

• Newell’s (1972) critique of 1960s experimental psychology – need for overarching theory and value of problems that come from outside the psychology laboratory

• Coltheart, M. Ecological necessity of iconic memory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1981, 6, 17-18.

Shift to Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) and other paradigms

• e.g. Veronika Coltheart's studies

The third age:LogoMax

1969-1972: University of Waterloo, Canada

1972-1975: University of Reading, UK

1969-1972: University of Waterloo, Canada

It took a while to get used to life in the opposite hemisphere…

A neuropsychological application (cerebral asymmetry) building on elements of the iconic memory technique

• brief visual hemifield presentation

• letter strings• hemifield report• Coltheart, M., and Arthur, B. Visual

hemifield differences in tachistoscopic performance with visual hemifield report. American Journal of Psychology, 1971, 84, 355-364.

1972-1975: University of Reading, UK

• reading words• Forster and Chambers

(1973)• mental chronometry -

e.g. time to read words, time to decide whether or not a string of letters is a word

BPS invited paper – Imperial College, London, December 1973 – “The organisation of word recognition”

• one of the first psychologists to dress like a rock star…

Nonwords

• rint, sint

Regular words

• hint, mint

Irregular words• pint

Homophones• so and sew

Pseudohomophones• brain and brane

We can use more than one way of converting print into sounds - the corner stone of dual-route models of reading

Visual information we use in reading

mixed font script is readable

AnD sO iS mIxEd CaSe

So, to some extent, we can make use of abstract letter identities

• Coltheart, M., and Freeman, R. Case alternation impairs word identification. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 1974, 3, 102-104.

Orthographic information we use in reading

The orthographic neighbourhood – aka Coltheart’s N

• an orthographic neighbour is a word that differs from the original string by changing only one letter

• for example, orthographic neighbours of the word 'cat' include 'bat', 'fat', 'cot', 'cab', etc.

• Coltheart, M., Davelaar, E., Jonasson, J.T., and Besner, D. Access to the internal lexicon. In Dornic, S. (Ed.), Attention and Performance VI. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1977.

The fourth age:NeuroMax

1975-1987:Birkbeck College,

University of London, UK

Acquired disorders of readingMarshall and Newcombe 1973 - deep

dyslexiaSemantic errors• dinner read as "food"• uncle - "cousin"Derivational errors• wise - "wisdom"Visual errors• stock - "shock"Problems with function words• some - "one of them horrid words

again"Inability to read nonwords• wux - "don't know"Mixed errors• sympathy - "orchestra"

The first deep dyslexia meeting

Marcel

Shallice

Saffran

Morton

Marin

Allport

Patterson

MAX

Sasanuma

Newcombe

Marshall

The deep dyslexia book• Coltheart, M. Deep dyslexia: a review of

the syndrome. In Coltheart, M., Patterson, K., and Marshall, J.C. (Eds.), Deep Dyslexia. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.

• Coltheart, M. Reading phonological recoding, and deep dyslexia. In Coltheart, M., Patterson, K., and Marshall, J.C. (Eds.), op.cit.

• Coltheart, M. The semantic error: types and theories. In Coltheart, M., Patterson, K., and Marshall, J.C. (Eds.), op.cit.

• Coltheart, M. Deep dyslexia: a right hemisphere hypothesis. In Coltheart, M., Patterson, K., and Marshall, J.C. (Eds.), op.cit.

Cognitive Neuropsychology

Defining the field and its approach:

• using theories of normal performance to account for effects of brain injury

• using effects of brain injury to test theories of normal performance

and founding the journal…and committing the first heresy - the right

hemisphere account of deep dyslexia• Coltheart, M. Deep dyslexia: a right hemisphere hypothesis. In

Coltheart, M., Patterson, K., and Marshall, J.C. (Eds.), op.cit.

But summer barbies in London could be a bit disappointing…

It was time to return to Australia…

Welcome home!

The fifth age:ModelMax

1987-1997: Macquarie University

Functional architecture• dual-route theory - evidence• Coltheart, M. and Rastle, K. Serial

processing in reading aloud: Evidence for dual-route models of reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1994, 20, 1197-1211.

Functional modelling• Dual-Route Cascaded (DRC)

implemented model• Coltheart, M., Rastle, K., Perry, C.,

Langdon, R., & Ziegler, J. (2001) DRC: A Dual Route Cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Psychological Review , 108, 204 - 256.

Understanding developmental disordersDyslexia• possibility of different types of developmental

dyslexia, and their relation to theories of reading• Castles, A. and Coltheart, M. Varieties of developmental dyslexia.

Cognition, 1993, 47, 149-180.

Congenital prosopagnosia• heterogeneity of symptoms between different

members of same family with problems in face recognition

• Schmaltzl, L., Palermo, R. and Coltheart, M. Cognitive heterogeneity in congenitally based prosopagnosia: a family study. Journal of Neuropsychology, 2008, 2, 899-117.

Teaching and rehabilitation

• theory-driven rehabilitation

• rehabilitation as a strong test of underlying theory

• Coltheart, M. Bates, A. and Castles, A. Cognitive neuropsychology and rehabilitation. In Humphreys, G.W. and Riddoch, M.J. (eds): Cognitive Neuropsychology and Cognitive Rehabilitation. London: Lawrence Erlbaum 1994.

The sixth age:Mad Max

2000 onwards: MACCS

Cognitive neuropsychiatry

• applies logic of cognitive neuropsychology to 'psychiatric' phenomena such as delusions and hallucinations

Studying and simulating false beliefs

• mirror misidentification• Breen, N., Caine, D. & Coltheart, M. (2001)

Mirrored-self misidentification: Two cases of focal-onset dementia. Neurocase , 7, 239-254

• Barnier, A.J., Cox, R.E., O’Connor, A., Coltheart, M., Langdon, R., Breen, N., & Turner, M. (2008). Developing hypnotic analogues of clinical delusions: Mirrored-self misidentification. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 13, 406-430

Dual-factor theory• a generic model applicable to a wide range of

delusions • Langdon, R. & Coltheart, M. The cognitive neuropsychology of

delusions. Mind & Language, 2000, 15, 184-218.

A national treasure…

The seventh age: Double Max

• ARC Foundation Fellow• Fellow of the British Academy• Commonwealth Centenary Medal• Bartlett Lecturer• Australian Museums Eureka Prize• etc., etc., etc.

• clever ideas• always ready to push a

point as far as it will go• quick to identify new

areas and techniques• able to see how to bring

different lines of research together in beneficial ways

• extraordinary capacity for hard work

• exceptional talent for collaboration

How does he do it?

• still dressing like a rock star

• and now he often has the simultaneous video screen…

• and the list of particular requirements for his dressing room…

The family Max

• encyclopaedic knowledge of wine, clearly based on in-depth practical tasting sessions

Max the bon viveur

• familiar with the finest restaurants in Sydney, and warmly greeted by the owners and shown to the best table

• he must be hugely busy doing all these things - yet he responds immediately to all e-mails

• strange parallel with Capgras delusion

• Max in person and Max in print

Paradoxes of Max

• from the Coltheart attic…

The picture of

Dorian Coltheart

Shakespeare's final age“Last scene of all,That ends this strange eventful history,Is second childishness and mere oblivion;Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans

everything”

perhaps there is a God after all…

or was it just a letter migration misreading of dog?

Credits

Thanks to Veronika, Anne and other spies and informants...

And thanks to Max, for so much inspiration on so many levels!