Pioneer of cognitive psychology dies at 92

Pioneer of cognitive psychology dies at 92: George A. Miller, an iconoclastic scholar who helped topple the behaviorist school of psychology and replace it with cognitive science, a shift that amounted to no less than a revolution in the study of the human mind, died July 22 at his home in Plainsboro, N.J. Before Miller, Bruner and Noam Chomsky came on the scene, the field of psychology was dominated by behaviorists such as B.F. Reflecting on the transformation of psychology that he helped bring about, Miller told the New York Times that the field was like a dog turning around three times before it lies down. Bruner said that Miller helped put the emphasis back on the human being as a mental being who observes the world, processes information, commits it to memory and makes decisions. In that essay, Miller observed that for most people, short-term memory is limited to about seven chunks of information.

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