Please read the chapter assigned for this week.
(Reading Schedule: http://www.uni.edu/~maclino/hybrid/hs_book_s11.pdf)
After reading the chapter, please respond to the following questions:
Of the various aspects of History & Systems presented in the chapter, which did you find the most interesting? Why? Which did you find least interesting? Why? What are three things you read about in the chapter that you think will be the most useful for you in understanding History & Systems? Why? What are some topics in earlier chapters that relate or fit in with this chapter? How so?
Please make sure you use the terms, terminology and concepts you have learned so far in the class. It should be apparent from reading your post that you are a college student well underway in a course in psychology.
Make a list of key terms and concepts you used in your post.
Let me know if you have any questions.
--Dr. M
After reading this chapter, I found that most interesting subject or aspect of this chapter to be the cognitive maps. Cognitive maps are the overall knowledge of a maze’s structure and spatial pattern that gives an organism a general sense of where to go in the maze. I found this information interesting because it helps me to understand how someone can remember things or know where to go to certain places due to this cognitive map knowledge. That way we have this knowledge in our brains in knowing where to go when we can’t see maybe perfectly or things have changed a bit. One aspect I found to be least interesting is the explanatory fictions. This is the tendency to propose some hypothetical internal factor mediating between observable stimuli and measurable behaviors and then to use the factor as a pseudo-explanation for the behavior. I found this uninteresting because I somewhat didn’t understand it, but then again I felt it not important to associated certain things to behaviors. We could associate the wrong things with behaviors this way.
The three things that I felt were most important to take from this chapter were operational definitions, reliability, and operant conditioning. Operational definitions are definitions involving precise descriptions of procedures for measurement and for specifying the variables in an experiment. Operational definitions are important because we need to know exactly what the experimenter is looking for. If we don’t have an operational definition experimenters may look at the experiment in different ways. The second is reliability. Reliability is the extent that repeated measures yield approximately the same results, and the issue was a vital one. Reliability is important in behaviorism and experiments, because we want to know if the tests are accurately testing what they should be testing and that results are the same throughout the test again and again. The last important aspect is operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is when some consequence follows a specific behavior and that the consequences will either increase or decrease the behaviors. Operant conditioning is very important because it can help us to control behaviors through reinforcement.
Terms: Cognitive maps, Explanatory fictions, operational definitions, reliability, operant conditioning
The most interesting topic I found in this chapter was Tolman's study of cognitive maps. Cognitive maps are what Tolman argured the rats developed while going through a maze. Tolman didn't believe that the rats learned stimulus-response connections, but believed that they developed a mental map in their heads to go through the maze and receive the food faster. I found it interesting because of the simple maze in the book on page 371 that shows how some rats were response learners and always turned the same way, or there were place learners, who always went to the same spot to get the food. Tolman used the place learners as the ones that supported his cognitive map theory because they learned faster than the response learner group of rats. It is interesting to me because it takes sort of the maze part of the picture, and you can study the decision making of the rat and how it more or less makes a decision based on its thought and cognitive memory. When Tolman adds the more confusing maps, the rats choose the general direction of the food based on what they learned from a previous cognitive map in their head which shows that the rats learn beyond just what they encounter, but outside the walls of the maze.
The least interesting section of this chapter to me was the section on molar vs. molecular behavior. Molar behavior was Tolman's theory of broad patterns of behavior that were dierect at a goal while molecular broke everything down into small sections that a reductionist would study. I didn't find it interesting because it is self-explanatory and was a section that was very broad in its examples and explanation.
Three parts of this chapter that I feel will be most useful in understanding the history and systems of psychology are latent learning, operant conditioning, and neobehaviorism. I feel that latent learning is important because it is our motivation to do things, or our hope of something in return for our learning. In the rats case it made them go faster because they knew that they would receive food at the end. Tolman said that he believed that the goal at the end did not effect the learning directly, but it was the motivation for the rat to be efficient. I feel that operant conditioning is important to the history and systems of psychology because it is parallel to our lives. We do something, it hurts, we don't do it again. Skinner would use this with rats and their ability to predict the outcome of their actions inside the Skinner Box. It is important because it not only tests our learning, but our memory as well. The last thing I felt was important to the history and systems of psychology was the neobehaviorism. It is important to know because all of these tests done by the various psychologists were under neobehaviorism. It lasted int he us from around 1920 to 1960 but played a major factor in how we understand learning today.
Some of the topics in the earlier chapters that tie into this is how the use of conditioning plays a key role in the results of all of the tests. Pavlov is influential in Skinner's experiments because Skinner and the Skinner box are conditioned for the rat to learn. Another way this chapter ties in with other chapters is Woodworth and his theory of transfer. Transfer was his belief that higher education shoud be desidned to exercise and strengthen the intellectual faculties. I feel like the tests in this chapter are designed to facilitate the rats to learn and as rats learn, the mazes become more complex to allow them to keep performing at higher levels.
Terms: cognitive maps, Tolman, stimulus-response, response learner, place learner, maze, cognitive memory, molar/molecular behavior, reductionist, latent learning, operational conditioning, neobehaviorism, Skinner box, Pavlov, conditioning, Woodworth, transfer
First of all I found the idea of neobehaviorism to be intriguing. I had not heard of it until this chapter and I found it new and somewhat exciting to find something fresh about behaviorism. The approach that the neobehaviorists took towards the study, by including ideas of evolution and staying more closely to the nurture side of the nature-nurture debate was something I had not expected to necessarily learn about in this chapter. From this, I really found the work of Hull to be most interesting. I think that I, as well as a lot of people, find the ‘underdog’ stories appealing because it reminds us that great things can happen. I liked how Hull incorporated the ideas and theories of Isaac Newton into his approach toward psychology. In the book it states that Hull thought of humans in a mechanical way and that the only way to fully understanding human behavior was to make a mechanical version of one that would be identical to a human. However, this idea is not possible even in today’s world since we still don’t have the full capability to understand exactly how the human mind works and we are still exploring many things about humans. Also, his ideas of a hypothetico-deductive system was appealing to me because I liked the approach of developing a theory, testing it, modifying the experiment, and then retesting based on the flaws or impurities of the first round of experiments.
The only thing I didn’t find to be completely interesting was the section over Skinner. I feel this way because we’ve been learning about Skinner in every psychology class. It is important, but it seems that not a whole lot of new information has been provided from class to class and it is starting to feel repetitive. Although behaviorism is my favorite psychological topic, the repetition of Skinner is beginning to feel a little old to me.
I think what will help with further understanding of the history of psychology is just learning different styles and practices of different psychologists within a certain practice, such as behaviorism. Tolman, Hull, and Skinner were all behaviorists, but they studied and approached behaviorism in different ways. Also, understanding how a style of psychology became so popular and why certain aspects of it were or were not widely accepted at first or even at all. Behaviorism goes somewhat hand in hand with the ideas of introspection and how people have different ways of viewing it; some behaviorists think that behaviorism has to be seen in order for it to be behavior others think that it can be inner workings, like digestion. With introspection there were some extremists in the science that thought one could not introspectively study his or her own experiences because there would be a bias or that the person would not have paid enough attention to the experience because they were documenting it in some way.
Terms: Hull, Tolman, Skinner, behaviorism, neobehaviorism, introspection, nature-nurture, evolution, Isaac Newton, hypothetico-deductive system
I felt the part of the chapter about Logical Positivism and operationism was important but kind of boring to read about. Logical positivism was developed when a group of men met every week at a coffee shop to discuss logic and philosophy. The group took an empiricist stance. They felt that it was very important to be able to measure, and observe concrete things when researching. The example in the book talks about measuring hunger. It isn’t something you can see or observe it can only be introspected on which makes it a questionable thing for someone to judge. Introspection would be an inconsistent thing to use to measure hunger because it is subjective to the person. In their quest to solve this little problem they stumbled upon, they decided factors like hunger needed to have operationism. This was idea that scientific concepts were to be defined, not in absolute terms, but with reference to the operations used to measure them. This other guy S.S. Stevens, who was the guy we can all blame for the measurement scales in stats, (nominal ordinal, interval, ratio) wrote a paper called “The Operational Definition of Concepts” that was the first to promote the use of operational definitions. Operational definitions are definitions involving precise descriptions of procedures for measurement and for specifying the variables in an experiment. Examples of these would be concepts that are invisible, self reported, things that before they would have used introspection for. If you use some kind of an operational definition for hunger, anxiety, aggression, memory, it becomes something that researchers can MEASURE. So, kind of boring but pretty important in understanding History and Systems. This is something that changed the way research was done to how it is done today.
One thing I found kind of interesting in the chapter was about Tolman’s research on rats and mazes. He studied the way the rats learned the mazes and he used the term, Sign-Gestalt to refer to the learned relationships between the cues of the animal’s expectations about what would happen depending on the path it chose. Tolman thought that the rat developed certain “expectancies” based on past experiences about how the mazes were organized and also about the best way to complete each maze. He obviously would not have been able to ask the rats this, he probably looked at the time it took to complete and repeat each maze. There is a little bit of inference here. He would do studies with them and switch up the food at the end of the maze to see about their “expectancies.” He found that if he changed the food at the end it kind of messed the rats up a little bit. He found the expectancies was the process of intervening between stimulus and response, but is closely tied to the clearly defined stimulus features of the experiment and the observed and easily measured behaviors.
Tolman and his students began to question the reliability of their research because there was some inconsistencies with their data. They perfected the test by making several improvements that made their research process more reliable. The key here was being able to make the research repeatable to them and other researchers. The data they were collecting was cool, but if it could not be consistently duplicated it isn’t much use to anyone. This is something that is also very important in psychology research and to this class. People were beginning to be interested in not only psychology, but applied psychology. It was cool to them they could figure this stuff out about rats, but if it could not be applied to anything, what is the point? Also, if someone else could not get the same result across the world, it isn’t very valid, there fore it is a waste of time. They needed to prove that all this money, space, and time they were using, wasn’t a waste of time by making findings more reliable and applying them to something. This is a very important issue in understanding the history of psychology.
I liked the part in Tolman’s research about Latent learning. This was noticed when the rats would complete the maze even if there was not food there for it to be rewarded with. He noticed that the food did not affect the leaning directly, it only motivated the rat to complete the maze as fast at it could to get the food. It was a reinforcer of the positive behavior. He set up an experiment to test his Latent Learning theory. There were three groups, one that consistently got reinforcement (food), one that had no reinforcement at the end of the maze, and one that only got food at the end of the maze after day ten of the experiment. Each rat in each group completed the maze once per day for 22 days. I found it interesting that the group that got food on day 11 immediately improved and did the best of the three groups. The group of rats that got no reinforcement did the worst of the three groups. And the group that consistently got rewarded learned the fastest, but did not do the best. It is kind of like some teachers that give homework that isn’t graded. You might do it, but you are going to put a lot more effort into it if it is being graded every time and you are going to improve really fast if you are doing the work, but don’t get graded until half way through the semester. Your going to try really hard to get some points, or food in this case.
Terms: Logical Positivism, empiricist, Introspection, Operationism, S. S. Stevens, The Operational Definition of Concepts, Operational Definitions, Tolman, Sign-Gestalt, learned relationships, expectancies, Reliable, Latent Learning, Reinforcement, Applied Psychology, Valid
I am still trying to wrap my mind around how this ties in and relates with Pavlov’s classical conditioning. Here goes..The rats are being rewarded with food. Instead of having a bell or a lab coated man as the conditioned stimulus... it is a maze as the conditioned stimulus. They know that if they complete the maze they will get some food. Therefore the conditioned response is completing the maze faster in order to be rewarded with the food. How did I do?
One topic that I found interesting was Skinner’s Experimental Analysis of Behavior. He came up with Type S conditioning and Type R conditioning. Type S conditioning can be demonstrated through the Pavlovian model. It works by pairing two stimuli together. One that sparks the response and one that does not. When there is an association formed between two stimuli that eventually create the same response, Type S conditioning is responsible for a certain behavior. Skinner challenged this concept though by saying some behavior is released by the organism and is controlled by the immediate consequence of the behavior, not by the stimulus. Type R conditioning, also known as operant conditioning, once a behavior is released, it is followed by a certain consequence. Depending on the consequence of the behavior, the organism will determine for itself if the behavior should be repeated again or not. I found this interesting because it was easy to understand the differences between the two. I never really understood how exactly these two differed, but now it is clear.
One topic that I found to be less interesting was Hull’s study on habit strength. I enjoy reading about different ways to break habits and what exactly makes a habit difficult to change for people, but this section was a little dry. Reinforcement for Hull is known as drive reduction. Primary drives are linked to survival and can be reduced with primary reinforcers (ex. food, shelter, water). Secondary reinforcers are stimuli that have been linked with primary reinforcers.
Three things that will be most helpful to me for understanding History & Systems are neobehaviorism, Hull’s drive-reduction theory, and Skinner’s Type S & Type R conditioning. Neobehaviorists believed that continuity among species allowed for general rules of behavior to be derived from nonhuman species. They understood that behavior required a thorough knowledge of how the organism learns and results from research should have practical applications. These are all important because they are, in some respect, still applied to situations today. Hull’s drive-reduction theory is important because it demonstrates how the mind makes connections to things in the world. It is important to understand this, especially for Psychology majors, because many of us will be counselors and encounter people that are substance abusers. Skinner’s two types of conditioning are important to distinguish between because even though they seem similar, they are different.
Skinner’s different types of conditioning relate to Pavlov, which we learned about in previous chapters. The different types of rat mazes presented in this chapter were similar to the water Morris maze and England’s Hampton Court Maze.
Terms: Skinner, Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Type S conditioning, Type R conditioning, Pavlovian Model, Hull, habit strength, drive reduction, primary reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, neobehaviorism, drive-reduction theory
Something interesting about the chapter was neobehaviorism. There are two key parts of this, first it was continuity of all species. This means that laws of behavior apply, to some degree to all species. The second is that learning is central to understanding behavior. This meant that neobehaviorists tended to lean toward nurture.
Not interesting was learning about latent learning. This happens below the surface, without being immediately transparent. Tollman also came up with cognitive maps. This was an overall knowledge of the maze’s structure and spatial patterns that gives a general sense of where to go.
Most important in this chapter in understanding the history of psychology was learning about operationism. This started with the Vienna Circle, which is a group that got together to discus science. Operationism says that scientific measures are to be defined by the operations used to measure them. The definition cannot go beyond the exact definition. This was a new way to look at doing research. This also addresses an issue of pseudo-problems which are questions that might be interesting but are unanswerable by specific definitions. Operationism is where S.S. Stevens got the idea for operational definitions. These are precise descriptions of procedures for measurement and variables. A result of operationism was the development of replication. This allowed people to retest and gain (or loose) confidence. It also resulted in converging operations, this is when understanding is enhanced when different operational definitions come together to the reiterate the same conclusion.
Also important to learning in this chapter was learning about Edward Tollman. He had three themes in his research. The first was molar over molecular behavior. Molar behavior is broad patterns directed at some goal. Tollman called this his field theory. His theory said that learning did not involve only strengthening and weakening connections betweens timulus information and motor responses. During learning an animal develops a field map of the environment.
The second theme was purposiveness or goal-directedness of behavior. This is a universal feature we learn. Third is intervening variables. Hypothetical factors that are not seen directly but are inferred from the manner in which independent and dependant variables are operationally defined. He developed the sign-gestalt which meant the learned relationships between environmental cues an the animals expectations.
Also important was learning about Clark Hull who was Tollman’s opposition. He had what he write a book called A behavior System that had 16 postulates. The most popular was postulate 4. This talked about congruity and reinforcement, and said that learning occurs when there is a close congruity between stimulus and response. Together they increase habit strength. His book also talked about a Drive reduction theory which states that reinforcement is defined in terms of drive reduction. Primary reinforcers are connected directly with survival and secondary reinforcers are stimuli associated with primary reinforcers. Lastly reaction potential is potential that response will occur at a given time and is influenced by many factors, drive and habit strength being most important.
Lastly the chapter talks about B.F. Skinner who talked about operant conditioning. Type S conditioning was what he called Pavlonian Model and Type R conditioning is what he called operant conditioning. This is behavior that is emitted and followed by a consequence. Future likelihood is determined by punishment or reinforcement. Behavior operates on environment.
Terms used: Pavloninan model, type r conditioning, type s conditioning, emitted, consequence, operant conditioning, cognitive maps, postulates, drive reduction theory, primary reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, reaction potential, operationism, operantional definitions, psudo-problems, neobehaviorism, replication
The thing that seemed to be the most interesting to me from the chapter was Tolman’s latent learning. Latent learning is learning that does not occur immediately and “below the surface” according to Tolman. This means that when an animal learns something but doesn’t show it until a specific event happens in which this knowledge is needed. An example I found pertaining to this topic is that a child may see a parent setting the table and a year later he discovers that he knows how to do this. It was not immediate action and the learning was still there for later use. The reason I find this most interesting is because we do it a lot in our lives. It is weird how we don’t even realize the learning we do until later on.
The least interesting concept from the chapter would be the simple word of operant. Operant is Skinner’s term to describe a form of behavior that “operates” on the environment ( it produces a predictable outcome). The reason I find this to be less interesting is because it is so basic and I have learned about the concept in previous classes. The term operant is used to describe conditioning by Skinner in which a behavior occurs, and the immediate consequences of the behavior determine its future probability of occurrence. This is called operant conditioning.
Three things that I think are the most beneficial when it comes to understanding the history of psychology are operational definitions, replication, and reliability. I know that each of these terms has been defined in previous chapters, but they seem to be the most important mentioned terms in this chapter as well. Operational definitions are definitions that are clearly described so that measurements and variables in the experiment can be easily understood. This allows for replication to take place. Replication can be done if terms (operational definitions) are defined clear enough. Replication allows for advances to be made in psychology. Reliability is when repeated measures yield the same outcome. For example, if a study is replicated and the same results are found over and over, this study would be considered more reliable. The three of these topics work together in order for psychological research to progress. There would be a limited amount of reliable history to psychology without these three things and there would be no hope for future research.
A few concepts that relate to this chapter from previous chapters would be of course as I mentioned operational definitions, replication, and reliability. Also, I feel like latent learning has to do with consciousness because basically the learning is in our unconscious when we don’t realize it then eventually we do become aware. Also, I feel like habit strength from this chapter, which is an intervening variable influencing behavior that was a direct function of the number of reinforced trials is somewhat related to paired associate learning. The more often you associate the two things, the stronger they become, just like habit strength.
Terms used: Tolman, latent learning, Skinner, operant, operant conditioning, operational definitions, replication, reliability, habit strength, consciousness, paired associate learning
I thought it was interesting to learn about Edward Tolman because he is not really someone you hear about a lot in your intro psych classes. Tolman was a behavioral psychologist although he never claimed himself as such at first. He developed terms such as goal-directedness (purposiveness) which is basically the universal thing we all learn of getting to or getting from a specific goal object. He also researched cognitive maps. Tolman did not believe that rats learned stimulus response connections when learning a maze because even when a rat swam a maze, they could later run through the maze. He believed that the rats actually had an overall knowledge of the maze and knew a general sense of where to go. He tested this by having place learner rats and response learner rats. The first groups food was always in the same place, and the response learners were when they turned to the right. The placer learners learned faster.
The least interesting thing to me about this chapter was honestly neobehaviorism. Neobehavorists all leaned towards the nurture side because they believed that learning is essential to understandin behavior. They also believed in evolution, believing that all the laws of behavior apply to every species.
Things that I think will be helpful in understaning History and Systems are Skinner's research obviously, since he researched operant conditioning and is mentioned in every intro to psych class. Everyone knows about his operant boxes (skinner boxes) that emitted shocks to rats to put them on different schedules of reinforcement.
It's probably also important to understand positivism and operationism. Positivism is a version of positive thinking which is basically the belief that only scientific method is the best approach to unconvering truth and the processes to which physical and human events occur.
Operationism is the belief that scientific concepts were to be defined not in absolute terms but with reference to the operations used to measure them. (concept of length)
I found the molar vs molecular behavior that Tolman argues to be quite interesting because it ties in with the Watson/Carr maze topic. One of Tolman's students did an experiment that resulted in Tolman realizing the maze studied could not just be a kinesthetic response. Instead of it being a smaller (molecular) behavior it had to be looked at as a whole (molar) behavior. The rats obviously were hungry so therefore used muscle memory to want to get to the food. Some of the examples he listed showed different types of situations with behaviors involving a certain type of response to that behavior. This also ties in with the theory known as field theory because he said our brain is like a "map control room" and that we develop field maps of the environment. I just found this to be interesting, not necessarily all that important.
I'm a little confused about neobehaviorism and what it exactly is. I understand that they lean more towards nurture than nature and why people do what they do, but I guess I just don't get why. What I get out of it is that they are definitely interesting in learning more about behavior through experiments, and more through animals rather than humans? This is an area I would definitely like to learn more about.
Three things I think that will help me learn about the history of psychology is learning about operationism and it's definitions that are still used today, Neobehaviorism and how it affects psychology and learning more about it, and also Skinner's Type S conditioning which pairs two stimuli producing the same response and Type R conditioning (operant) with an emitted response to a situation.
Reading about maze and rat studies relate to this chapter very well because all the findings from previous experiments generate new ideas and new findings which are helpful in learning about behavior. Reliability was also mentioned in this chapter as in previous chapters and how scientists questioned rat mazes to be maybe not so reliable as a research tool! This may be the case, but it's helping psychologists and scientists come up with new ideas.
Terms: reliability, operationism, operational definitions, neobehaviorism, molar behavior, field theory, Type S and Type R conditioning
The main guy that I thought was important was Edward C. Tolman. Tolman after being converted into psychology made writings that illustrated the complex interplay between empirical research and theorizing the tradition of logical positivism. After seeing that rats could learn from a previous learned actions he called this molar behavior referring to broad patterns of behavior that were directed at some goal. Also Tolman came up with a concept that many other psychologist were experiencing. Intervening variables are hypothetical factors that are nto seen directly but a inferred from the mannor which independent and dependent variables ar operationally defined.
The other thing that interested me was Tolmans Cognitive maps. When rats “learned” the maze he said they were creating a cognitive map of the maze. The overall knowledge of the maze. This theory was that they developed a mental map. As if we were driving and had a map of everything in our heads.
Hull on the other hand used hypothetico-deductive sytem. This system said that science was proccedded by developing sophisticated theories. The experiments that followed though did not support or fail to support the theorems, which could either strengthen or ruin an experiment.
Skinner was one of the main men that we still look into. His operant conditioning being the major key to his success. Being in a controlled environment he proves that there can be a certain learned reaction by administering a reward or punishment. In his operant chambers he would record the rate of success of a desired action and then either reward or punish.
Two things I did not find interesting were the neobehaviorism. I have not heard much about it so was hard to find motivation for a follow up of skinner. And secondly the post-watsonian Behaviorism. This book tends to jump around people so the timeline, and family facts, and then study, and assessment, I have no idea which came first and then how all of them relate.
All of these topics are important to history of psychology for they progressed the idea that Behaviors can be learned and then controlled by certain stimulus.
Terms: neobehaviorism, post watsonian behaviorism, operant conditioning, skinner, hypothetico-deduction system, cognitive maps, tolman, empirical research.
Reading Activity Week 11
I found Skinner Box to also be interesting. He had a lever for the rat to push down on to get food, which would be a positive consequence. There were also electric rods along the bottom that could stimulate shock, which was a negative consequence. This box helped to show extinction, which would happen when the rat did not get positive consequences, it would stop pressing the lever. He also noticed that the rats could distinguish between two environments. An example of this is that the rat could learn to only press the bar for food when the a light was on, not when it was off.
I also found Tolman’s cognitive maps to be uninteresting. Tolman said that rats created a map of the mazes they were learning in their head. He demonstrated this by showing that rats learn better when give food at a certain point every time, instead of getting food every time they do the same certain action, such as turn right.
Tolman was also important to understanding the chapter. I found the things he studied very bland. One thing emphasized in his theories was the molar versus molecular behavior. He believed one had to study things larger than the molecular muscle movements, glandular responses, or neurological responses. He preferred to look at the whole pattern of behavior, called molar behavior, to reach his goal. He said that during learning an animal develops a field map of the environment, which is why he calls his theory a field theory. Tolman also said that each behavior we do is directed toward some type of goal we want to reach, which he called goal-directedness or purposiveness. He also came up with the idea of the intervening variable. These are a factor that cannot be seen but may hypothetically be intervening between the independent and the dependent variables. This is a way that Tolman is influenced by logical positivism, which observes a difference between theoretical and observable events.
I think knowing the difference between operant and classical conditioning is important to this chapter. Classical conditioning is when a behavior is learned through the stimuli a subject receives and the response that occurs. Operant conditioning works to give a subject positive or negative consequences to help them learn a behavior.
I found Clark Hull to be useful in understanding the chapter. He went through many struggles before he came to college but still worked very hard, even though he was partially paralyzed. He had an interest in three things, his learning theory, aptitude testing, and hypnosis. He believed hypnosis was not that much different from normal consciousness and that the medical community overstated it’s therapeutic powers. He used the hypothetico-deductive system, which was a system of coming up with a theory, testing it, making revisions to the theory, then testing it again. This system can go on continuously of testing and retesting hypotheses. One thing he is famous for is his Postulate 4, about habit strength. He said that one learns when there is contiguity and reinforcement. When these are combined, habit strength is created. The more one learns, the more habit strength he/she has. This was all linked to his drive reduction theory. There are certain drives in animals and humans, like thirst and hunger, and primary reinforcers, like food or water, can reduce those drives. There are also secondary reinforcers, which are associated with the primary reinforcers.
These all relate back to the beginning of behavior through Watson. Many of Hulls ideas can also be linked back to Newton’s theory that everything can be explained mathematically.
Terms: Skinner Box, positive and negative consequence, cognitive maps, molar behavior, field theory, goad-directedness, intervening variable, logical positivism, operant and classical conditioning, hypothetico-deductive system, habit strength, contiguity, reinforcement, drive reduction theory, primary reinforcers, secondary reinforcers
I thought latent learning to be one of the most interesting components of the chapter. It is when we learn things “below the surface.” Meaning we don’t readily and consciously realize we’re learning something until we need that specific knowledge. He studied this with rats when he realized that the food at the end of the maze does not help the rats learn the maze, but simply motivates them to complete it. Therefore they learn how to complete the maze automatically, and below the surface without actually consciously thinking about it.
I also found logical positivism to be interesting because it was one of the first stepping-stones for behaviorism. Positivists had taken a strictly empiricist stance, maintain that certain knowledge about natural phenomena could only result from the public observation of measurable events. Something that I didn’t find as interesting was intervening variables. They are hypothetical factors that are not seen directly but are inferred from the manner in which independent and dependent variables are operationally defined—they gave thirst as an example in the book. I guess I just didn’t understand this concept very well so it wasn’t as interesting to me.
I thought cognitive maps to be pretty useful and interesting. They were the overall knowledge of a maze’s structure and spatial pattern that gave them a general sense of where to go in the maze, when done by rats.
I thought skinner’s operant conditioning was also an important topic—it is a basic but useful subject in psychology. It is when a behavior is emitted, followed by a consequence, and the future chances of that behavior occurring are then determined by those consequences. I also thought it was interesting how he chose the world “operant” to describe this behavior because the behavior “operates” on the environment.
I also thought tolman’s field theory to be useful. He explained that learning didn’t just involve strengthening and weakening the connections between our stimulus formation and responses, but proposed that the brain is more like a “map control room than it is like an old-fashioned telephone exchange” and that during learning we develop a “field map of the environment”
Terms: skinner, tolman, field theory, field map, cognitive map, dependent and independent variables, logical positivism, operant conditioning, latent learning
The thing I found most interesting from this chapter was the work of Hull. Hull thought of humans much like Isaac Newton thought about the physics. I thought his work was interesting because he thought of humans as machines that could be figured out and controlled. He used a system referred to as hypothetico-deductive This theory was based on as set of postulates about human behavior. Postulate 4 was the core of Hull’s beliefs. Postulate 4 described the importance of habit strength in learning. According to Hull, habit strength was based on contiguity and reinforcement. The reinforcement had to reduce a certain drive, such as food reducing hunger. A driver such as food was referred to as a primary driver because food was necessary for survival. A reinforcer that is not necessary for survival can also become a driver called a secondary driver. An example of this would be a tone that is sounded with the food. Because of this factor, his theory is sometimes referred to as a drive reduction theory. Contiguity and reinforcement work together to form habit strength; Resulting in learning. Hull also identified an important intervening variable in his experiments. He called it reaction potential and it described the likelihood that a particular response would occur at a given time. For example, a rat will only run a maze correctly if its hungry or if it has performed it enough times to have developed habit strength.
The thing I found least interesting from this chapter was the work of B. F. Skinner. I found it uninteresting because it is used in many other psych courses. Skinner is known for developing a take on behaviorism that differed from his predecessors (Toman and Hull). He didn’t believe in the use of explanatory fictions during research. These occur when researchers think of a possible variable that could potentially be affecting their research. He believed that the two goals of psychology should be to predict and control behavior of humans and nonhumans. In his first book, The Behavior of Organisms, he explained the differences between Type S and Type R conditioning. Type S conditioning was the model developed by Pavlov. A stimulus creates a response through pairing the two stimuli. Type S creates associations. Type R conditioning, also called operant conditioning, occurs when the behavior happens and is then reinforced. The reinforcement either increases or decreases the likelihood of the behavior happening again depending on what the reinforcement consists of. I found this interesting because it makes sense to treat them as two different types of conditioning techniques. Skinner used the term operant to describe the behavior because the behavior “’operates’ on the environment”. He may be most known for his experimental “Skinner boxes”. These boxes were developed for rats and he used them to explore operant conditioning. He was able to demonstrate extinction through operant conditioning when a rat was pushing the lever to receive a food pellet and it jammed up. This formed Skinner’s extinction curve. He also could demonstrate generalization. When a rat was being trained to push the bar it was usually light in the box. When the light was dimmed, the rat did not push the lever. This occurred because the rat generalized from his previous reinforcement setting that a light must be on to receive food. He demonstrated discrimination (differentiation according to Pavlov) when the rat would only push the lever with the light on. These were all a part of what Skinner called stimulus control. Because the environment plays such a big role in operant conditioning, it comes to control behavior. He also performed research on schedules of reinforcement. He found that rats could be trained to operate on a fixed ratio and fixed interval schedule. A fixed ratio schedule will offer a rat a food pellet only after they hit the lever a certain number of times. A fixed interval schedule will offer a rat a food pellet only after a certain amount of time elapsed.
The three things that I think are most important to understanding the history of psychology are operant conditioning, latent learning, and logical positivism. Latent learning was discovered by Tolman and referred to the process of “below the surface learning”. This occurred when someone witnessed something being done and at the same time unconsciously learned how to do it. I think this is important because it’s a process that’s done all the time but people put little thought into it. Logical positivism brought around the idea of operationism. Operationism was the idea that scientific concepts ahe to have an observable definition. These terms helped psychology develop into the science that it is thought of today. Operational definitions (defining terms by using precise descriptions for procedures, measurements, and variables) helped make experiments more replicable. Replication was needed so that other researchers could duplicate experiments and observe their results. This made psychological experiments more reliable and valid. This was used to create converging operations. This idea helps us understand psychological phenomenon by testing multiple operational definitions and observing whether or not they agree.
Terms: Skinner, Type S conditioning, Type R conditioning, operant conditioning, operant, stimulus control, schedules of reinforcement, fixed ratio and fixed interval schedule, explanatory fictions, Hull, hypothetico-deductive system, habit strength, drive reduction, primary reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, reaction potentioal, latent learning, logical positivism, operationism, operational definitions, replication,, converging operations
Latent learning is a term coined by Tolman when his rats would learn mazes without reinforcement. When the reinforcement was taken away they could still make their way through the maze because of what Tolman coined as a cognitive map that the rats had constructed over time. Another term coined by Tolman was reaction potential which is the probability that a response will occur at a given time. I did not find Intervening variables very interesting. They are assumed to intervene between stimulus and behavior because they are not seen, such as the example of thirst as presented in the book. Also neobehaviorism, which combined Pavlov's conditioning and positivism.
I was interested in reading about Tolman and all of his theories. I was interested in how Tolman had developed the theory that a rat that was put into a maze would eventually create a cognitive map of the maze, or know what was going to come next after the rat had went around a few times. He also used the term sign-gestalt to refer to the expectations of what would happen if a rat took a certain path. I felt like Tolman has had many contribution in psychology, but yet you don't really read about him until you start to get further in depth about learning about it. He also had the theory of latent learning and that learning takes reinforcement. He had the theory of the cognitive map which is the overall knowledge of a structure and that rats used this to find their way through mazes. Overall Tolman had some good contributions to to psychology, but I kind of wish that I would have learned about him sooner. I didn't particularly find anything in this chapter to be uninteresting, it was just a bunch of theories on how the mind and brain works and I enjoyed it. I think learning about Tolman will help with me understanding psychology because we now know that not only rats use latent learning and cognitive maps, but people do too. I used latent learning in elementary school, doing good work resulted in candy and I use cognitive maps everyday when I go somewhere that is familiar.
Terms: Tolman, Cognitive Maps, Sign-Gestalt, Latent Learning
I found that the Post-Watsonian Behaviorism was very interesting, especially with the neobehaviorists. They disagreed on a number of issues, but agreed that for one continuity among species allowed for general rules of behavior to be derived from nonhuman species, and two understanding behavior required a thorough knowledge of how the organism learns, and also how the research results should have practical applications. As I continued my reading I found Tolman’s purposive behaviorism to be interesting as well. Most of his research used maze learning, and he investigated both the general reliability of the maze as an apparatus and the manner in which rats learn mazes. It was really intriguing reading that he believed that all important behavior was goal-directed or purposive and that molar rather than molecular behavior should be the unit of study. He did not think that reinforcement was necessary for learning to occur.
One of the things that i've found to be most interesting was the neo-behaviorist view that to some degree all animals had the same laws of behavior, which makes it so that you can study the behavior of an animal, and it will be similar to doing the same study with a human. What i found interesting about this is that you are able to do things, like starvation studies on rats that would never be allowed on a human. something else that i found to be interesting was that Tolman thought that through his research and Freud's he could determine what causes war and eliminate it. What was really interesting about this idea is that his "world federation" idea would actually happen to some degree in the united nations.
The only thing that comes to mind that i didn't enjoy was the section about reaction potential. I didn't like this section because it was worded weirdly. I did understand it on my second readthrough, but the first time i read it it had confused me a little.
As always it was cool to learn on some deeper level material that we had learned earlier in the course. For example, this chapter showed what happened to behaviorism after Watson had left the scene. In many cases this resulted in making behaviorism a more concrete and accepted idea by repairing some of the tears in its thinking. For example, the introduction of logical positivism allowed behaviorism to go beyond what it had done in the past. Watson was such a strict behaviorist that he believed that everything must be observable if it is to be accepted as being real. This was rather short-sighted. There will always be things in the world that we do not understand and cannot observe. This is where logical positivism came into help. It allowed for abstract thoughts or behavior, such as thirst, hunger, love, etc, to be allowed as scientific even though they were unobservable on their own. Instead of looking for something invisible like these logical positivism declared that these behaviors can be closely tied to things that we can see, thus legitimizing the unobservable event. In addition to this came the idea of operationism, this held that scientific concepts were not to be defined in absolute terms but rather with reference to the operations used to measure them. This idea rose and fell quickly. It was helpful in that it allowed scientists to utilize definitions involving precise descriptions of procedures for measurement and for specifying the variables in an experiment. This allowed psychologists to study “invisible” feelings such as anger, hunger, thirst, anxiety all the while keeping loyal to the strict code of logical positivism. What ultimately led to the demise of operationism was that there was little to no consensus on an agreed upon best definition of an operational term used in studies. This made replication, the replicating of experiments done by other scientists, next to impossible. In an attempt to revive operationism the term converging operations was coined. This referred to the idea that our understanding of some behaviors is enhanced when several studies, each using different operational definitions, ‘converge on the same basic conclusion. All of this eventually led to the establishment of neobehaviorism which had three common tenants. The first was that they all agreed on the evolutionary continuity of the species. The second was that learning was central to understanding behavior and favored the nurture end of the nature/nurture debate. The third and final tenant was that whatever they accomplished was pretty much useless unless it could be applied practically to everyday life. Out of the neobehaviorists one name stands above the rest, B.F. Skinner. This individual is of significance for his introduction of the idea of operant conditioning. Skinner held that “psychology should have but two goals-the prediction and control of behavior, both nonhuman and human and he believed that this could be achieved through means of behaviorism. The term operant was chosen because this conditioning differed from classical because the behavior of the subject ‘operates’ on the environment. It becomes difficult to tell the two types of conditioning apart because they are so similar. However, classical conditioning is the association of two stimuli which produce one outcome and operant conditioning results in one behavior being associated with one particular outcome. Skinner ran into similar situations that Pavlov did with extinction. What Skinner expanded upon was the type of reinforcement that results in attaining particular behaviors. He came up with two types positive reinforcers, the adding of something (good or bad), and negative reinforcers, the removal of something (good or bad). One of Skinners most valuable contributions was his studies on the schedules of reinforcement, which he used to see which type would elicit the desired behavior the quickest. He came up with 4 types: Fixed Intervals(behavior reinforced after fixed periods of time), Variable Intervals(behavior reinforced after periods of time that vary from trial to trial), Fixed Ratio(behavior reinforced after a fixed number of responses), and Variable Ratio(behavior reinforced after a number of responses that varies from trial to trial, BEST). Skinner also held that in operant conditioning behavior is emitted, because they simply increase it with reinforcers, rather than elicited, because they did not force it to happen. One problem that Skinner tackled in his day was that of explanatory fictions, which he out rightly denied the existence of. These were the tendency of scientists to propose a hypothetical internal factor in the subject that could not be observed. This served as mediation and was measured through external measurable behavior and then used as a half answer for the behavior. Skinner’s Behaviorism swept the nation and was wildly popular in America from the 1930’s to the 50’s but did not spread to the rest of the world.
I am sorry to say that the least interesting people in this chapter were those whose names simply aren’t as well known. I usually cheer for the underdog but in this case the underdogs bored me. This is not to say that Edward Tolman and Clark Hall were unimportant, but simply monotonous. Tolman was driven to Behaviorism because he saw it as being practical and as a much better science than introspection. One way this took form was in his molar approach to science as opposed to a molecular stance. He believed that the whole behavior was more important than the parts that made up the behavior and his study of this broader behaviorism was called his field theory. This meant that he believed that all behaviors were motivated by some sort of goal. He coined the term purposiveness to describe these phenomena. Tolman also introduced the idea of the intervening variable which was a hypothetical factor that is not directly seen but can be inferred from a manner in which independent and dependent variables are defined. An example of this would be creating a stimulus condition (i.e.-no water for 12 hours) and then measuring the completion of some behavior that leads to meeting the subjects need (receiving water). Tolman also believed that animals created internal maps of tasks when they had experienced them time and time again. He used the term sign-gestalt to talk about the learned relationship between certain cues and an animal’s expectation and cognitive map to refer to an overall knowledge of a maze and the correct path to travel down. Tolman also believed in latent learning which is learning that occurs below the observable level; he would have to prove this by showing that learning occurred even if there were no reinforcers. He did this with mice and demonstrated that mice could learn a maze without reinforcers, however, their performance levels increased dramatically once a reinforcer was introduced. The other rather boring individual was Clark Hall. He is responsible for the hypothetico-deductive system which was a set of postulates that set out to explain through logic and research why certain behaviors occur, even though they cannot be directly observed. His most famous of these was postulate 4: habit strength which held that there needed to be a high emphasis of contiguity and reinforcement in order to form a behavior. Some of his other words were drive reduction, the meeting of a survival need, with certain reinforcers; primary(food/water/sex) and secondary(stimuli associated with primary reinforcers). Reaction potential referred to the probability(potential) that a response(reaction) will occur at a given time and can be inferred from several kinds of measurable behaviors. This ended up failing because it was overambitious and was narrow in which data it would allow and ignored any human nature involved in creating a behavior.
It is pretty obvious that this section related to the earlier chapter on Behaviorism pretty well, being this chapter was titled “The Evolution of Behaviorism”. Therefore, we could see clearly how many of these ideas built upon the foundation that Watson had established. It continued to rely upon changing the environment and reinforcement to change behavior. It also maintained that there was a high application rate to everyday life. It did differ in that it began to allow Behaviorists to study unseen events such as love and hunger. This was a simple addition onto the original view of Behaviorism, only accounting for what you can see and measure. Another big connection to the previous chapter was B.F. Skinner’s research on intervals when it came to reinforcement. This again, built off of one of the Behaviorist founding fathers, Ivan Pavlov. Ivan introduced Classical Conditioning while Skinner introduced Operant Conditioning. It just goes to show that sciences tend to build off of one another and become more complete in their knowledge.
Terms:behaviorism, Watson, logical positivism, operationism, operant conditioning, Ivan Pavlov, classical conditioning, B.F. Skinner, Clark Hall, Edward Tolman, Reaction potential, drive reduction, postulate 4, hypothetico-deductive system, latent learning, purposiveness, intervening variable, sign-gestalt, cognitive map, field theory, molar, molecular, explanatory fictions, fixed interval, variable interval, fixed ratio, variable ratio, schedules of reinforcement, negative/positive reinforcers, neobehaviorism, converging operations, replication