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TASK 6: FROM THINKING ANIMALS TO BEHAVIOURISM (THE PERCEPTION OF…

- - - - German physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828)
    - - Mesmerism
        
        • took root in continental Europe after Mesmer claimed he could cure patients by restoring their ‘animal magnetism’
        
        • Became popular in America after the Parisian Charles Poyen in the 1830-40s gave a series of lectures
    - - Spiritualism
        
        • Belief that the spirits of the dead could be attracted by mediums
        
        • Started in the mid 19th C when two young girls (fox sisters
    - - Informing the public about the “new psychology”
        
        • New psychologists published hundreds of articles about the new, scientific psychology In popular magazines. Unfortunately their impact was limited, because the topics they talked about failed to capture the public’s imagination to the same degree as phrenology, mesmerism and spiritualism
        
        • Benjamin (2000) described one attempt in McClure’s magazine
  - - - • As a result of Darwin’s and Spencer’s writings many learned individuals became interested and they looked for similarities between human and animal behavior
        to place the different species on the evolution scale
    - - • Briton George Romanes combined observations of behavior with interference of the animal’s adaptive capacities. These capacities were believed to be the result of mind that resembled that of humans.
        
        Anthropomorphic interpretation: interpreting behavior of non-human living creatures by attributing human motives and human-like intelligence to them. Animals had reasoning capacities similar to those of humans
      - Thorndike’s puzzle box
        
        • By attempting to study children’s behavior, Thorndike used chickens because children participants were hard to find.
        
        • Change 1: Thorndike did not rely on anecdotal evidence, but on careful observation of animals put in controlled environments
        
        • Change2: he based his conclusions on the animals’ behavior not on what supposedly went on in their minds
        
        • After Thorndike’s PhD, turned to educational issues and therefore, is also celebrated as the father of educational psychology
        
        Paradigm: He put hungry animals in puzzle boxes he constructed himself. Outside the box, food was presented which the animal could reach if it managed to solve the puzzle and open the door.
         He noted how long it took the animal to get out of the box
        
        Law effect = behavioral law introduced by Thorndike to refer to the fact that behaviors followed by positive consequences are strengthened and more likely to be repeated
        
        Instrumental conditioning = name introduced by Thorndike to refer to learning on the basis of the law of effect, called operant conditioning by Skinner
        
        Comparative psychology = study of behavior of animals, usually with the intention to shed light on human functioning within the framework of the evolutionary theory.
      - Pavlolv's research
        
        • Studied digestive system in animals (won a Nobel prize in 1904). Introduced techniques that allowed him to continuously measure the secretion of fluids by the organs
        
        • After 1900 became interested in the question of why organs started to secrete fluids before the food was presented. This would be the start of his research on classical conditioning
        
        big impact on the development of behaviorism.
        
        The 1913 behaviorist manifesto
        
        • In 1907, Watson became editor of Psychological review and took this advantage to promote the case of animal research.
        
        n 1913, he published an article against the lack of rigor in the ongoing investigations in most psychological laboratories. This article would become the beginning of behaviorism
        
        o In the article, there is a transition from introspection into one’s own mind to the observation of other’s behavior.
        o The impact of the evolutionary theory gave way to observation of others, survival in the context of natural selection primarily depends on “how” the animal acts not what It “thinks”.
        
        o Introspection turned out to be a very counterintuitive and difficult procedure for students to use in their practicals. They found it much easier to observe what others were doing.
        o In order to become a real science, psychology had to focus on observable behavior and ignore everything that referred to consciousness, thinking, feelings
        
        o In his manifesto, Watson left an opening for later study of more complex behavior. In his later writings he came to deny the importance of such behavior.
        
        Behaviourism = movement in psychology arguing that observable behaviours are the most important aspect of human functioning to be understood; denies the various extents the relevance of information processing going on in the mind; particularly strong in the USA in the first half of the twentieth century
- - - - Because science is based on observation and experimentation, its findings are always true.
      - Scientific theories are summaries of the empirical findings. Therefore, they are always true as well.
      - Because scientific knowledge is infallible, it should be the motor of all progress.
  - - - You had to be able to represent the elements of a mathematical law as numbers.
         Gave way to operational definitions – Hull= definition of a variable in terms of how the variable has been measured, allows description of the variable in quantitative form
      - distinction had to be made between independent variables and dependent variables.
      - Necessity for verification in science. Statements were only useful if they could be verified by empirical observation
        
        Verification = principle that up to the 1950’s formed the core of the scientific method: a proposition was meaningful (scientific) if its truth could be empirically verified
        
        This ruled out religious statements, and also introspective statements.
      - Further developments in behaviourism: Skinner vs Tolman
        
        • Watson’s legacy was continued by three heavyweight successors (in addition to hundreds of lesser-known researchers all over the world)
        
        Clark Hulk
        
        Burrhus Frederic Skinner (operant conditioning & radical behaviourism)
        
        Radical behaviorism= strong version of behaviourism; defended by Skinner, which denies the relevance of information processing in the mind and holds that all human behavior can be understood on the basis of S-R associations
        
        Tolman and purposive behaviorism:
        He doubted Skinner’s interpretation of operant conditioning, according to Tolman, operant conditioning could not be understood in simple S-R terms and he devised several experiments to show this.
        
        • In Skinner’s view, animals acquired behaviors because the association between an environment cue and a particular behavior was strengthened by subsequent reinforcement.
        • Tolman argued that animals who were not reinforced should not learn.
        
        Blodgett’s maze: Three conditions
        
        A condition in which hungry rats were placed in a maze that contained food at the end of the maze.
        
         Rats in this condition showed a fast learning curve. They made fewer errors running towards the food.
        
        A condition in which hungry rats were placed in the same maze, but the food was only introduced on day 3.
        
         Rats in this condition did not run towards the end of the maze on the first two days, but showed a very different behavior on day 4.
        
        A condition in which food was introduced on day 7.
        
         Showed the same massive and instantaneous learning on day 8
        
        • According to Tolman, this showed that the rat’s learning was not due to the fact that presence of food had reinforce taking the correct turns, but that the rats had learned the layout of the maze and were able to use this knowledge when they had a reason to do so – he called this latent learning – the acquisition of knowledge that is not demonstrated in observable behavior.
        
        1 more item...
        
        Purposive behaviourism = version o fbehaviourism defended by Tolman, wich saw behavior as goal-related (means to an end) agreed with other behavirourists that psychology should be based on bservable behaviour
- - - - • Three key ideas about respondent condition
        
        Extinction
        
        Generalization
        
        Discrimination
    - - • Four point about operant condition
        
        process is widespread
        
        Learning by operant conditioning is not confined to any particular
        
        Teachers are not the only persons controlling reinforcements
        
        Multiple examples of operant conditioning often happen at the same time