The LNR approach to human information processing

Our goal is to understand the mechanisms of the human information processing system. We view the human as an info.rmation processing mechanism built upon a biological substratethe result of :many years of evolution and change, existing within and influenced by a social and cultural environment. We want to understand the t: asic information processing mechanisms that pick up environmental information, that store, retrieve, reconstruct, infer, deduce, and otherwise process that information. The goal, moreover, is to create a precise theoretical formulation of psychological mechanisms and knowledge structures. This means that our enterprise is multi-faceted: simultaneously examining a broad set of issues from across the range of psychological phenomena. Three different issues are dominant (and inseparable). First is the understanding of the psychological mechanisms that underlie behavior; second is the representation of knowledge and the many ways is which it is used by the psychological mechanisms; and third is the need to relate the mechanisms and knowledge within the person to the environment, the social interactions, and the culture. Human behavior results from the continual interaction of all of these influences, as much shaped by the cultural history of the person and the immediate demands of the environment as by the limitations and powers of the psychological mechanisms.