Please read chapter 11. After reading the chapter, please respond to the following questions:
What were three (3) things from the chapter that you found
interesting? Why were they interesting to you? What one (1) thing did
you find the least interesting? Why? Which of the applied psychologists
did you find the most interesting? What did you read in the chapter that
you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of
psychology?
Think of a topic from an earlier chapter. How does the
current chapter relate to the topic from the earlier chapter we have
already read?
What PERSON from the chapter would you like to learn more about? Why?
What I found to be interesting in chapter eleven was the section on molar behavior. This theory, thought up by Tolman suggested that a behavior is emitted due to a certain goal that is wished to be reached. An example given in the book was that a rat was taught to swim through a maze and was able to complete the maze later, running rather than swimming. Tolman was the first to suggest that the target behavior was not learned as a series of “kinesthetic responses” and that the individual understood the meaning behind the movements being emitted. An example that can be much more relatable is that of the UNI campus. When I am walking on campus I typically have an end goal in mind and I can get there whether I am walking or riding a bike; both very different movements but both serve the same purpose, get to my destination.
I also found Tolman’s theory on latent learning to be very interesting as well. This suggested that learning occurred without being immediately recognizable and was not truly demonstrated until later on and the behavior was being reinforced. Tolman demonstrated this using once again three separate groups of rats and a maze. The rats that were given no reward upon completing the maze ever throughout the experiment made many errors and saw little improvement through each trial. The rats that were given a reward each time they successfully completed the maze saw a steady increase in performance each trial. The rats that were at first given no reward upon completion of the maze at first had many errors but once a reward was received, there was an incredible improvement in their performance. This suggests that the rats “knew” what they were learning without it being apparent to them. Once a reward was given, their performance showed that they had truly learned the maze much better than what had initially been demonstrated, and they had even proven to make fewer errors than the rats that were rewarded each time they had been successful.
Finally I found Skinner’s discovery of extinction to be very interesting, in that it was a complete accident. Extinction occurs when a behavior that had been previously reinforced is no longer reinforced and the target behavior is then no longer emitted. While Skinner was running a test on satiation, the feeder had become jammed; this caused the rat to no longer press the lever as it had previously, meaning the target behavior was no longer being emitted. Why this is so interesting to me is that it is a very important concept in the study of behaviorism and it was founded by one of the most behaviorists by accident and was pretty much the complete opposite of what the study had initially been set up for.
What I found to be the least interesting was all of the biography written for Edward Tolman. While it does set the background for his research, I find myself skimming and paying very little attention to what it is I am supposed to be learning.
The person I found to be most interesting was B.F. Skinner because he was so important to the science of psychology, and specifically behaviorism. He was also so passionate about his work and everything that it encompassed and it was odd how well that was portrayed in the book. It is also very evident in one of his quotations (after discovering extinction):
“All that weekend I crossed streets with particular care and avoided all unnecessary risks to protect my discovery from loss through my accidental death.”
Skinner is also the psychologist from this chapter that I would like to learn more about.
I feel that this entire chapter is useful in understanding the history of psychology in that it shows the evolution of behaviorism. It takes what we learned from the last chapter on behaviorism and what Pavlov discovered and just builds. It adds more complex ideas such as satiation and extinction, to the idea of punishment and reinforcement (Watson).
I found Hulls learning theory to be interesting, and I also found B.F. Skinners need for “technology” in child rearing and education and society to be interesting in this chapter. I also found the part about him outlining and entire community and how it would function according to behaviorism
The one thing I didn’t find interesting in this chapter is hard to determine because overall this chapter did not seem as interesting and was harder to read. The least interesting part of this chapter was the sections on Clark Hull. I was not as interested in his life and career has I have be interested in the life and careers of other applied psychologists from other chapters.
The section I think will be the most useful in the History of Psychology from this chapter is that it appears that most psychologists initially started out on different career paths that lead them to the psychology field. I find that this over whelming theme and occurrence of this shows, that psychology is very accepting and spans many different disciplines and careers.
A topic from this chapter that relates to other chapters that I have been read so far, is behavior and systems of behavior, or how behaviors can be changed an modified based on stimulus, and the environment (I am not familiar with the technical terms regarding this).
I would like to read more about B.F Skinners personal life, and family as well as how his life impacted his career choices and possible his approaches to his profession.
One thing I found interesting in this chapter was latent learning. I thought Tolman’s testing of this was interesting because he thought learning in rats would occur even without a reinforcement. This relates to the age old question in education, traditional v. progressive, or giving grades and other rewards beneficial or harmful to students. According to this study the data would suggest grades or rewards are beneficial, but according to Tolman, and progressivists, grades are not required and learning would have occurred even without the rewards.
Another interesting experiment in this chapter was Clark Hull’s dissertation using Chinese characters and associated them with a nonsense sound. Hull studied the learning curve and found performance improved gradually, but steadily. Meaning repetition and by extension memorization played an important role in the development of skills. The data from this experiment was used to help advance Hull’s learning theory. His work, along with many others, shows one view of teaching which continues to be debated today: Is repetition and route memorization or active discovery learning the best way to teach.
I also found the part on B. F. Skinner’s work on the home front in WWII to be interesting. Project Pigeon was used as a part of behavioral technology where the pigeons were to direct
Missiles toward targets. This project was even funded by the military for a time. The whole idea of having birds direct missiles seems odd to me. How is a bird meant to discriminate between friendly troops and the enemy; that’s a lot of trust to be putting in a bird. I don’t know what is more ridiculous the fact that the military was buying into this idea or that someone would come up with it. It goes to show how popular psychology was and afraid of the enemy we were at this time.
One thing I didn’t find interesting was operationism. I think this is because there isn’t an easy way in which to describe operationism since it is referenced to the operations used to measure them. It questions the concept of length and other fixed measurements which just gives me a headache even thinking about it.
I found Clark Hull to be the most interesting because of his work with educational psychology and my background in education. I am able to make more connections with this applied psychologist. I would also like to learn more about Hull and what he did with education. B. F. Skinner was also interesting, but I feel he gets a lot more attention since I have heard of him before in my two other psychology classes.
Behaviorists in this chapter relate to behaviorist in the previous chapter. These behaviorists used the founders discussed in chapter 10 to come up with their own views and ideas. This is also important when understanding the history of psychology. At this point behaviorism was pretty well established, as established as it was going to be, by the earlier pioneers, but was also opening doors newer forms psychology.
I found the topic of intervening variables to be interesting in Chapter 11 because it seemed to me to show underlying variables of why animals and people act in certain ways that we don't necessarily always think of. It seemed kind of surprising that psychologists took this long to define and consider these types of variables as large factors in behavior. I would have thought that in the history of maze learning psychologists would have considered that the rats would have certain expectancies after performing a maze several times.
The next piece of information I found interesting doesn't have so much to do with psychological research, but I found Tolman's conviction to refuse to sign an oath of loyalty to the United States as incredibly courageous, especially for it being in the time of the McCarthy red scare. It's incredibly easy to sign a loyalty oath as such even if it is ridiculous and overhyped, but not only did he stand up for his basic rights. He went even farther by refusing to resign and leave Berkeley out of respect for his fellow colleagues, and fought successfully to repeal the oath and preserve the concept of academic freedom. I found this short section to be very inspiring.
The third piece of information I found interesting was the operant conditioning of Skinner. I have learned about operant conditioning in previous psychology classes, but I always find it enjoyable to read about, and unlike Pavlov and classical conditioning, the Skinner's behaviorism usually doesn't describe a 'famous' experiment every single time. I like operant conditioning because it seems useful in having some real world applicability like in raising children as the book points out. I know if I ever have a child, and we are in a toy store (or any store with toys) and my child throws a tantrum I will NOT buy my child a toy and reinforce his/her bad behavior.
I found the section on Hull to be least interesting. It may have been because I had some trouble understanding it, but I just found it to be very dry and boring.
I found Tolman to be the most interesting because of his radical stances on war and how he stood up for his beliefs. I also found his intervening variables to be interesting as well in considering different factors that affect animals and humans behavior.
I think learning about Skinner's operant conditioning will be the most useful to understanding the history of psychology because even though his behaviorism fell out of favor in the broader psychological community, his work still had much more of a lasting impact than Tolman or Hull.
The current chapter relates to Pavlov's classical conditioning because it is fairly similar to operant conditioning. Skinner differentiated between Type S and Type R conditioning and argued that Type S conditioning can't explain behavior that is performed by the animal or human and is controlled by the consequences of the behavior, not the stimulus as Pavlov discovered.
I'd like to learn more about Hull because I didn't feel like I fully understood his work and contributions to psychology. Maybe if the information was explained to me I would find it more interesting.
I was interested in the article about replication and Converging Operations. Replication says that when you define your terms as clearly as possible then other people can follow in your footsteps and recreate the same experiment to achieve similar results. Converging Operations means that we start to understand phenomenon more clearly when we use several studies to enhance the results. I thought this was interesting to find in a psychology book because these terms seem to apply more to sciences more than an abstract discipline like psychology were experiments can vary from person to person individually. I really didn't like reading the few paragraphs about operationsism and operational definitions. I had to read these several times just to try and get a basic grasp of what they were trying to say. This confusion led me to become frustrating and move on to the next topic. However, from what I did understand it looked like a fairly interesting topic, so I hope I can have it clarified for me and possibly look more into it on Thursday's assignment i.e. pseudo problems. Edward Tolman seemed like an interesting psychologist and I would like to learn more about him. I was interested by his "writings" and the theory of logical positivism. Along with that the Molar Behavior was an interesting read, at first I really didn't understand what it was exactly but then after re-reading the article and looking at the books many examples it became more clear and a rather unorthodox type of study than the previous research, analyze and repeat method. The last thing that I found interesting was another term that I was familiar with because of my Education classes and that was Tolman's idea of the cognitive map. I find the rat and maze example interesting because I always like to see just how quickly people can pick up their surroundings and make a map in their head of the environment when entering a new area like a new town, school, or going on vacation. BF Skinner would be somebody that I would want to learn more about because the book talked about his contributions to Operant Conditioning, which we have talked about in pervious chapters and looked back at. This was something similar to what we read earlier, although the specifics are not as close as we thought.
I found Tolman’s idea of a cognitive map interesting. He said that “rats didn’t learn stimulus-response connections when learning a maze. Rather, he argued that they created a cognitive map of a maze- an overall knowledge of a maze’s structure and spatial pattern that gave them a general sense of where to go in the maze” (371). To demonstrate this idea using rats in different mazes. The rats first learned to run a simple maze, having only one path to choose from that would lead to the end. After being able to master this maze, he placed them in a more difficult one with multiple routes to choose but only one leading to the food. He said that “rats had acquired not merely a strip-map to the effect that the original specifically trained-on path led to food but, rather, a wider comprehensive map to the effect that food was located in such and such a direction in the room” (372). He not only could relate this to rats in mazes but to humans in life. “narrow strip-maps, which are maladaptive in the long run, result from too much mindless repetition on the original path, an environment too limited to see the whole picture, and levels of motivation or frustration that are too high” (372). To be at our highest potential we need to put ourselves in the “optimal conditions of moderate motivation and of an absence of unnecessary frustrations” (373). Unfortunately his testing did little to help improve our society, but helped with today’s understanding of animal cognition.
I had no idea that Skinner had written a book called Walden Two. He wrote about the creation of the perfect society. The description of this book reminded me somewhat of the story the Giver. Skinner describes a life that seems idyllic. “Members could choose the kinds of work they would do, within the limits of their ability. To receive all the community’s benefits, each member had to earn a certain number of labor credits per year” (392). He had ideas that were very ahead of his time such as strict equality of the sexes. There would be an equal ratio of men and women on the Planners and women would pursue anything that interested them. The reason why he called the book Walden Two was because he related it to Thoreau’s original Walden. The second most important thing to the people in the book was to “protect natural resources of the environment around Walden. The values of living the simple life and protecting the earth” (392). He thought that “behavioral scientists should naturally play a leading role in the design of society, given their expertise”, but unfortunately there’s not a clear way of how to accomplish this in a democracy. (393). Skinner was the most interesting and influential person in this chapter. I find his radical theory on behaviorism to be very interesting and I would like to learn more about his theories. I have learned about him in many classes before, but this gave a more in-depth look into his studies.
I found it interesting that our society was highly populated with behaviorists, whereas in Europe, especially Great Britain it was not as popular. Europeans were more inclined to observe animals in their natural environment and look at their instinctive behaviors compared to Americans who studied animals in the lab and their learned behaviors (394). This specifically relates to chapter 10 which discussed the origins of behaviorism. Many behaviorists studied the behaviors of animals and then could apply them to humans.
I found the section on that was the basic terms of neobehaviorism was very boring. I thought the section was a little too long for just explaining the basic idea but I can see why I would be necessary for it to be a focus of a section in the chapter.
The first thing I found interesting in this chapter was Edward C. Tolman and how his gestalt views of psychology helped shape his theories that he had came up with and expanded. First, molar over molecular behavior showing that learning mazes for example is not just a kinesthetic mindset, it is also something learned and looked at as a whole.
The second thing I found interesting was another one of Tolman's research which was latent learning. Tolman believed that reinforcment was not always necessary to learn and for example the food the rats recieved at the end of the maze did not effect the rate of learning directly. Tolman found that latent learning happened below the surface and wasn't seen right away. This was shown in his rat experiments. In the first ten days the rats learned a maze, but didnt show that they knew it until he added food as a reward, they knew it and ran it very quickly.
The third thing I found interesting was Skinner and his experiments. I have always heard about the Skinner box, but I don't know much about Project Pigeon. Project Pigeon was Skinners first attempt at developing behavioral technology. He trained pigeons to direct missels by the number of pecks they used. Skinner had a good project going until the miitary ended the project creating setbacks for Skinner, which he eventually got over. I found this interesting because I like to hear about the little studies and experiments they may not have succeeded and how psychologists got over them and moved on.
One section I did not find very interesting was logical positivism and operationism. I found it hard to follow and understand. I know about operational definitions from researching and I still find it very difficult to understand.
The psychologist I found most interesting is BF Skinner. I've learned about him in many other psych classes, but learning about his smaller experiences is beneficial and interesting to me.
I think all of this is very beneficial to history and understanding how behaviorism started to take part in America's pyschology. I think Skinner and Tolman's theories are fascinating and are good to know how they developed from Watson and other earlier psychologists in the behavioral.
This chapter relates to the previous chapter in its behaviorism studies and how it is evolving from Watson's ideas and theories.
The person I would like to learn more about is Tolman because he used gestalt to look at behaviorism and I feel like I know the least about hime.
One of the first things from the chapter to interest me was how detailed the researchers were in going about documenting their experiments. The detail that went into these experiments was critical to the researcher. Good experiments were considered to be operational. This meant that the experiment could easily be replicated by others because of the detail that went into their experiments. Also converging operations added great credibility to experiments because if someone could arrive at the same answer through a different process the experiment was considered valid.
Another topic I found interesting was latent learning. The concept is interesting to me because basically you learn something by learning something else. The example the book provides is how the rat learns the maze without the motivation to learn the maze. The rat’s motivation is to find the food as quickly and efficiently as possible and by doing so learns the maze.
I also liked learning about the different types of conditioning. Such as S conditioning which is where an identifiable stimulus elicits a response. R conditioning is a conditioning type based on how something behaves and consequences based on that behavior which directs future behavior. Lastly operant is what describes the type of behavior that is coming from the test subject.
I found the in perspective section uninteresting because the book had just spent a vast amount of time going over that information. It seemed pointless to recount it in such a long amount of time. Basically the length of the summary just began to bore me after a while.
This chapter easily ties into the last chapter by building on the studies of behaviorism and expanding upon them. This chapter also really helped me to understand how behaviorism developed in the 20th century into what it is today. The topics from this chapter will be of great benefit to me if I am able to apply certain behaviorist methods to my classroom as I become a teacher. I really enjoyed the section on B.F. Skinner and would definitely like to learn a little more about him as a psychologist.
Looking back on chapter 11 the first thing that I found interesting was examining the difference between molar and molecular behavior. I think this is interesting because molar behavior looks at the bigger picture of behaviorism. It is the examination of the larger picture of someone or something trying to do something. A second thing that I found interesting was intervening variables. I thought it was interesting to read this and think about what factors that we can’t measure or control affect our decision making and behaviorism. A third thing that I found interesting was Tolman’s theory about cognitive maps. He thought that rats created in their minds an overall knowledge of the maze’s structure and spatial pattern that gave them a general sense of where to go in the maze.
The one thing that I did not have that big of an interest in was the evaluation of Tolman. It wasn’t interesting to me because it faded away from the content that is more interesting to me. I think that his contributions should be appreciated. I wasn’t really interested to read about what other psychologists had to say about his contributions.
The applied psychologist that I found most interesting was Tolman. His work and theories made me think about a lot of things and variables that might affect my behavior. It has me wondering about a lot of things now about what causes me to act the way I do. I would like to learn more about him because he is the most interesting to me. His work with molar and molecular behavior will be most useful me to understanding the history of psychology because he separates the two types of behaviorism through these two words. This chapter has a lot to do with behaviorism which relates to previous chapters. A lot of the chapters we have already read have talked about behaviorism. This chapter furthers that examination and allows people to turn their attention to molar behavior. This allows people to expand their knowledge of behaviorism.
Three things from the chapter I found interesting included Tolman's cognitive maps, because in a way they subverted the ideals of behaviorism (at least Skinner's radical behaviorism) by positing an essentially cognitive explanation, even though it could be measured through behavior. I also enjoyed reading about Skinner's inductive approach to doing science, which is really different from the scientific method we usually think of, the latter being closer to positivism.
Skinner's approach is interesting, because it doesn't involve theory, at least not heavily. He just went out and collected a lot of data and tried
to make sense of it. I'm really conflicted on how to view this kind of methodology. On the one hand, I've thought for a long time that scientists should formulate their work in hypotheses and theories in order to produce critical experiments. The Popperian in me thinks that Skinner didn't do enough to try to falsify his observations, and that by not laying out hypotheses and theories, he could get away with shifting the goal posts on the effectiveness of conditioning. On the other hand, science is often inductive, and if we dig deep enough, it's *all* inductive. How many times do you have to observe the rat pressing the lever before you can infer that it is conditioned to do so? It will always be an induction at bottom, and the same is true of sciences such as physics and biology.
Finally, I was interested by Skinner's irreverent attitude, which I read as similar to Thorndike's: "During the defense of his doctoral dissertation, when the noted personality theorist Gordon Allport asked him to describe what he thought to be the shortcomings of behaviorism, Skinner replied that he could think of none" (pg. 344). Skinner's unapologetic rejection of an established approach is inspiring, even though he did turn out to be wrong about some aspects of behaviorism.
I was less interested in Clark Hull, because his theory is difficult to grasp in a few pages, and I don't think I came away from the reading with the slightest clue what he thought.
I definitely thought Skinner was the most interesting, because his operant conditioning really brought behaviorism to a new level. I think the very last section, "Behaviorism in Perspective", will be most useful in helping me understand the history of psychology. It really helps to put into perspective the fact that as much as behaviorism was wrong, it was not a failure in any meaningful sense. Conditioning is a real part of our nature, and an important one, even if the reductionism inherent in behaviorism was insufficient to explain the complexity of human behavior.
The natural chapter to pair with this one is the previous chapter about Watson and early behaviorism. I thought it was really cool to read about how the behaviorist paradigm evolved over time from Watson to the neobehaviorists. I'd definitely like to learn a bit more about Skinner, I really think he's a pretty fascinating character.
The first thing in chapter 11 that I found to be interesting is Molar Behavior which originated with Tolman. Molar behavior referred to patterns of behavior that will eventually get someone, or something at their destination. In all, this behavior is them working towards a goal. A student of Tolman showed that in an experiment that taught rats to swim through the maze, were later able to memorize this and run through it accurately. The explanation for this could not be thought of as individual kinesthetic responses, but rather the rat came to a general understanding of the pattern of this maze. I thought this was interesting because have heard many different terms for goal directed behavior, but I have not heard the term Molar behavior.
The second thing that I found interesting in chapter 11 is the idea of operationalism coined by Bridgeman. This idea claimed that certain scientific concepts were to be defined in terms of the operations that are used to measure them. The book gives an example that the concept of length would be defined by agreed-upon procedures. This part of the chapter then takes us into what Bridgeman calls pseudo problems...These are types of questions that are very interesting and many people wonder about, but in no way they would ever be answered by scientific observation. As an example, the question could be something like whether or not time has a beginning or an end. I found this interesting because I think that Bridgeman is a very intelligent person and fun to read about as well as research further.
The third thing that I found interesting in chapter 11 is the concept intervening variables introduced by Tolman. According to the book, intervening variables are hypothetical factors that are not seen directly but are inferred from the manner in which independent and dependent variables are operationally defined. These hypothetical factors are thought to "intervene" between stimulus and the behavior in a way that would influence the learning of a certain person or animal. For example, the feeling of thirst can be an intervening variable that would keep something from completing a learning task. I thought that this concept was very interesting due to the fact that I know what it is like to have an unseen variable take my concentration away from something else. It is just interesting to finally have a label to that certain behavior.
What I found least interesting in chapter 11 is Clark Hull's study of the processes involved in learning new concepts. Hull presented his subjects with the stimuli of Chinese characters. Each character he presented had a common feature that was referred to as a "radical." Over time subjects would then recognize what the character looked like and would be able to pair them up with the sound that they made. Eventually, the subjects were able to do this with symbols that they had not seen before. This learning of the symbols and their sounds was called "habit strength". I thought this wasn't as interesting because it is hard for me to grasp that someone could easily and successfully remember these Chinese radicals.
The psychologist that I found to be the most interesting is Edward C. Tolman. I really enjoy how he uses mazes for a lot of his research. His maze research is primarily on rats, and it is fascinating to read what he has observed from these studies. Tolman has the strong belief that all behavior acts as goal directed behavior. This refers to Molar behavior. He also owns the concept of intervening variables. This is a factor internal to the animal or human in which intervenes between the certain stimulus and response.
What I read in this chapter that I think will be most useful in understanding the history of psychology is Neobehaviorism. This is a movement in psychology in America from about 1930 to 1960. The neobehaviorists believed that learning was central to an understanding of behavior or evolutionary aspects. In a way, our environment shapes our ways of behaving. Such neobehaviorists in this chapter such as Skinner, Hull and Tolman also help to understand the history of psychology.
I felt that this chapter was one of the more difficult chapters to read in this book. This book talks about past psychologists that have been discussed in other chapters, but talks about them in more scientific terms. The people and some concepts in this chapter is what relates it to past chapters.
I would really like to learn more about is Clark Hull. Even though it was somewhat difficult for me to read about him and understanding some of the terms that he has made, I think it would be fascinating to better understand this person. His studies of habit strength and reaction potential are worth researching a little more in depth on. I would also like to learn more about his similarities and differences that he has with his fellow neobehaviorists.
The first interesting part about chapter 11 is B.F. Skinner. Back when I took intro to psychology I think he was one of the first people we learned about. So I’m excited to see that he finally made an appearance in the book. After reading the introduction for him I learned something that I didn’t know about him. I didn’t know that he wanted to be a writer. One thing that I noticed with most of the guys that become famous psychologist is that they first start off as doctors or went into the field of philosophy. I guess the reason I find that to be interesting is because he didn’t follow that pattern and how he didn’t get into the psych field until he read a few articles on behaviorism. What I liked the most about him was that he took two of the things that he liked to do and put them together. And that would be his first book. Skinner finally got to write a book plus it was about his research on behaviorism. There is another pattern that I have found. Skinner, along with two others in the past two chapters, died right having something to do with the APA. I just thought that was interesting since the last two people I researched had the same fate as Skinner…
You can’t talk about Skinner without talking about the Skinner Box and operant conditioning. This is the second thing I found interesting. With his Skinner Box he made a place where he could control the environment. In this case it was built for a rat. In the box was a lever for the food that the rat could push. It had either an auditory or visual devices used for stimuli and bars across the bottom of the box that carried an electric current. The shocks were used as a negative reinforcer and the food being the positive reinforcer. With the box he used a cumulative recorder to keep track of the behavior going on inside. This rated the number of times the lever has pushed by spiking to the top of the paper then quickly going back down. Through this experiment Skinner found something called extinction, which he found by accident. This happened when the dispenser for the food jammed and the rat continued to push on the lever. If I were that rat I’d pretty mad that I wasn’t getting my food. I’d probably do the same thing and just keep hitting the lever like the rat did. The rat knows where its food source is coming from and when it doesn’t receive its food the rats going to continue that motion until it gets what he is looking for. However, over time the rat is going to give up, and the response to the lever will go down until it eventually stops. Skinner also used a light. When the light turned on that was the sign to the rat to get its food, when it was off the rat would not get any food if it hit on the lever. This trained the rat to only press the lever when the light was on.
The last thing that I found interesting was Moral Versus Molecular Behavior. It’s also a little confusing. I get the molecular part. The example from the book is of the rat swimming through the maze then being able to run it without a problem. What Tolman found for this was that it’s not just the learning of a series of responses but the understanding of the patterns itself. Moral behavior has to have some kind of goal to it (right?). A rat running through a maze was the first example Tolman stated. The goal is to get out of the maze. I’m not really sure why I found this to be interesting but I just did.
I can’t say I found Tolman to be all that interesting. I think the reason being is because I was excited to see that Skinner was in the chapter and was most interested to read about him than Tolman (and Hull). So because of that I had no interest to learn about Tolman. I’m a bad person; I’m sure, for having favorites. Sorry Tolman!
I think Skinners Box is something that is useful in understanding history. I’m sure I say this every time but behaviorism is about learning behaviors. The Skinner Box not only recorded rats behaviors it’s also but gave us extinction, which is something that is useful. So it is an important part of history because of the break through that it gave us.
Both chapters ten and eleven dealt with behaviorism. Last chapter it was with Watson and this chapter its Skinner and Tolman. Chapter ten was more about the start and upbringing of behaviorism and this chapter is going more in-depth with the research and the articles.
The person I would choose to write/learn more about is Hull. It’s only fair. I did talk mostly about Skinner and mentioned Tolman. Maybe by doing this I’ll find something that I like about him.
The initial thing from chapter 11 that I found interesting was Tolman’s goal-directedness. I had never thought about the concept more than figuring out what I want and trying to reach it. To me, a goal is something that is expected of me by various people, but I had never wondered anything more about it. I found it interesting that Tolman took a concept that is so basic and tried to figure out its origin.
I found it interesting that Hull’s dissertation became a well known-study. This was interesting to me because we generally don’t hear details about dissertations, just the date that they were completed and perhaps a very general explanation of what topic was covered. I actually found the entire concept of his dissertation to be interesting. I found it interesting, but not surprising, that Hull actually came up with a study that covered the effectiveness of memorization. Reading about his dissertation got me interested in reading about his learning theory.
Another thing I found interesting from Chapter 11 was the background of B.F. Skinner. I love learning about well-known people’s upbringing and family history. I found it very interesting that he actually took time off of school to be a writer (which didn’t fan out well). I also found it interesting that his parent put a lot of pressure on his success. This is something that I, and I’m sure many other students, can relate to.
I found the topic of operationism to be uninteresting. The description of the concept seemed to be slightly complicated, and it just didn’t raise my interest.
I found B.F. Skinner to be the most interesting applied psychologist. I think that this is true because, of course, in many classes we have talked about B.F. Skinner and his studies. However, while reading about him I learned something new that sparked my interest in learning more.
This chapter relates to previous chapters in that the individuals covered took the ideas of previous individuals discussed and either built on them or challenged them. The field of psychology is founded by people doing this exact thing. I feel that this is important in understanding the field of psychology. By trying to support or by trying to disprove someone’s idea, new concepts in psychology are formed.
I would like to learn more about Hull. He's gotten a pretty bad rap due the uninteresting aspects of his section. I would like to see if his life is more interesting than it is described in the book.
The first thing I found interesting was Neobehaviorism. I found Neobehaviorism to be intersting because it is a different movement of experimental psychology, and has the laws of animal behavior.
The second thing I found interesting was Tolman's latent learning with cognitive maps. I found that Tolman's experiment with coginitve maps with rats being able to go wherever to get through the maze. I found this theory to be interesting about the rats going through the maze because instead of letting the food be given them to them, the rats had to figure out how to get through the maze themselves.
The third thing I found interesting was B.F. Skinner of radical behavior with operant conditioning. I find Skinner's operant conditioning to be very interesting because operant is what is in the environment with adapting to the behavior, and when the response happens it produces an outcome. For example, when a child throws a fit in the grocery store.
I found Clark Hull to be very boring and dull, and his theory didn't understand what he was trying to prove.
I thought Skinner was the most interesting because his operant conditioning brought experimental psychology and the term "behaviorism" to have predictable outcomes from an event. The Behaviorism in psychology will be very useful in understanding the history of psychology because most of behaviorism was wrong on what perspective people thought of it to be. It is just a type of human behavior.
This chapter relaters to an earlier chapter because Watson was briefly introduced with behaviorism, and this chapter went into more detail. I want to learn more about Skinner, and his operant conditioning.
This chapter inclused more indepth and detailed information about behaviourism.The first thing that i found interesting in this chapter was reading about Edward C Tolman.I liked reading about him because this is the first time i am reading about him and to be specific i liked reading about Tolmans concept of cognitive Maps.Tolman's argument that rats learnt to complete the maze through specialized mental spatial maps rather that stimulus response relationships.He also conducted a series of studies to prove his concept that it was through overall sense of space that was responsible for the rats being able to follow the right path in order to complete the maze.
The second thing that i found interesting in this chapter was reading about Clark Hull's work.Hull's research and work on testing procedures ie,the development of Aptitude Testing and the machine that he developed in automaticalle calculate correlations was interesting to read about.Hull's work on hypnosis which challanged the effectiveness and argument about hypnosis not being radically different from concious ness and instead being a state of hypersuggestibility induced by relaxation was interesting and a new topic to read about.
The third interesting thing in this chapter was the topic of explanatory fictions by BF Skinner.This concept states that the hypothetical assumptions about internal factors responsible for observable behaviour are not always correct.Skinner argued that there are various other mental factors or a combination of factors which might be responsible for the obsevable behaviours.
The thing i did not find interesting was reading about operant conditioning simply beacuse i have read about it several times before and it was a mere repetetion and was not novel.
I found Clark Hull's work on hypnosis interesting and reading about him inspiring because of the amount of success he attained despite suffering from a major physical disability.
There is no doubt that BF Skinner's operant conditioning is most useful in studying the history of psychology beacuse of the fact that the concepts stated in operant conditioning make up a foundation for a series of other theories in psychology.
This chapter is a further continuation of the previous chapter and the behaviouristic concepts are related to the previous chapters.
I would like to learn more about Hull's work on hypnosis and how it relates and is relevant in the field of psychology.
“The evolution of behaviorism” (chapter 11) was spine blowing! This Skinner fellow was some sort of control crazy “radical.” Operant principles are very interesting to me. The close-up on page 392 was awesome, I love those sections. I would like to pursue “operant freedom” or maybe “obligatory freedom.” I’ll be free if I must. Who controls the fish tank earth? Master Splinter? Who’s the boss? Two girls and a boy? Ranch style living, no stairs, eventually I will not be able to climb them.
Along with operant principles, I was very interested in operant [environments.] Rats are controlling us. They live in sewers with all my unmentioned grief and behavior. They know all the stuff I do not talk about. They would eat me, they are honest, me pleasure-center cobbler. I like to think of operant [environments] as analogies which a super amount of applications. Self-predicted, mother approved.
I feel Skinner is most influential to my understanding of psychology due to his methods and process. Wow dude Wow. I need to clean my room.
I would like to gather more insight on Clark Hull. He looks like such a sweet “hearth” on page 379. Habit strength is so interesting to me. I like to acknowledge effort in habits as well, so I dunno if I can get through all the math variable speak and all that rocket science. I am not interested now but I am trying to compel myself to be, so we shall see.
But I would like to study Jim Thorpe who is mentioned in the chapter’s timeline. He won so many diverse medals and awards, he could predict and control himself and his competition. He is a brutally athletic beast psychologist, of sorts. Thanks!!!
I definitely found this entire chapter to be pretty interesting! Behaviorism is one of my favorite things about psychology to read about, and there were a lot of interesting sections in this chapter. One of the specific parts that pulled me in was the part about neobehaviorism. That term is not one that I remember ever hearing before, so it was really fascinating to read about. It was basically just a continuation of what we recognize today as behaviorism, but it brought us some of today's most well-known psychologists, including B. F. Skinner!
The second thing I found interesting in this week's reading was, of course, the section on Skinner. He has always been one of my favorite psychologists to learn about, and this portion of the reading did not disappoint! His extensions on Pavlov's work and the introduction of operant conditioning are really cool to read about; I loved reading more about his studies with rats and reinforcement.
The final thing I enjoyed about this chapter was the technicalities of conditioning. I already knew pretty much all the information given on reinforcement and operant conditioning, but it was definitely fun to revisit it nonetheless. The different terms are interesting to me: stimuls control, generalization, and differentiation.
The part I found to be not at all interesting was the section on Hull. Bleh, no thank you! It is possible that his theories themselves had some interest to them, but the textbook gave it to us in a way that was just not at all fun to read. It was wordy and too complex for me, and I was bored with it.
Without a doubt, I found Skinner to be the most interesting psychologist discussed in these pages. He is one of the best-known psychologists today for a reason; the impact he had on today's research is profound. I also think the portion on Skinner was probably the most beneficial to know when studying the history of psychology. He is a necessary person to learn about in this field.
This chapter relates back to last week's chapter, when it discussed Pavlov's work and classical conditioning. Skinner was largely influenced by Pavlov (as well as Thorndike), and without Pavlov's research, Skinner might not be as well-known today.
I would like to learn a bit more about the experimental psychologist S. S. Stevens. He was only mentioned in passing toward the beginning of the chapter, but his research on operationism sounded fascinating. Not enough information was given on Stevens; I'd like to know more.
Overall this chapter was not my favorite and I did struggle with the reading at times. However, for me the most interesting things in this chapter are Skinner, Tolman, and Neobehaviorism.
Skinner was interesting to me because I have heard some about him through previous courses but never got to deep into the topic about him. I knew about operant and classical conditioning but I never knew about the Skinner boxes, which was an experimental chamber where the rate of response is recorded continuously by a cumulative recorder. I was also interested in Skinner's views on a technology of behavior to improve child care, education, and society.
Tolman interested me because of his use of mazes. He researched the general reliability of the maze and the manner of how rats learned in mazes. I was also interested in his belief that all behavior was goal-directed and the reinforcement was not necessary to learn.
Finally I was interested in Neobehaviorists. The word itself intrigues me for some reason possibly because I have never heard of it before. The beliefs of neobehaviorists was that continuity among species allowed for general rules of behavior to be derived from nonhuman species, understanding behavior required a thorough knowledge of how the organism learns, and research should have practical applications.
The least interesting thing to me was Clark Hull. The section on his seemed to be the most dull and I had the most trouble understanding fully.
For me the most influential and important person in this section for psychology for Skinner. He helped to define others ideas further and create a better understanding of behavior that could potentially be applied to real life.
I would like to learn more about Tolman and his mazes. Any experiments with animals seems to be interesting to me and I want to know further on the creation of this form of testing.
Chapter 11 included a lot of ideas that I have been learning about this semester, so I was able to connect with most of it. Something I found interesting was the phrase converging operations because my Research Methods class this semester uses this term frequently to describe a study’s validity. I did not know this was such a modern idea before reading this chapter either.
I also liked how the author portrayed B.F. Skinner’s personality. He seems like one of those little kids that always has to prove the teacher wrong even if they themselves are wrong. I guess that’s the kind of person it takes to get his or her own ideas out there, and Skinner was definitely successful in doing that. He is the only person from the chapter that I remember hearing about, and part of it probably has to do with his own actions to be heard.
I enjoyed reading about Tolman’s ideas on forming a cognitive map using the rat mazes. The example in the book using the two different apparatuses was really interesting to me because I did not expect the outcome that occurred. In the sunburst apparatus with the original entrance blocked, I figured that the mouse most likely try the next entrance over. It was the same thought that an S-R behaviorist had. Instead, the mouse mainly entered the area close to the general location of the food. This was a good experiment to illustrate the cognitive map that the rats formed to get through the maze.
One thing I did not find very interesting was how Hull used mathematical equations to explain his theories. They were a little confusing with all of the abbreviations, so I did not want to read more about it or try to figure it out.
I thought Clark Hull was the most interesting psychologist in this chapter because he came from such a poor background. It just gives a great example of someone who can overcome adversity and become successful. I would want to research him further to learn more about his troubled background, how he was able to get out of it, and what some of his ideas were.
This chapter is basically a continuation of chapter 10, so there are a lot of ideas and people that are mentioned and referred to in both chapters. Watson from chapter 10 was mentioned many times, as he was the “founder of behaviorism.” Many of the psychologists in chapter 11 used his ideas to build off of or challenge to create their own theories.
I think knowing about operationism and using operational definitions are important ideas in the history of psychology because they are still drilled into our heads today. I know personally my Research Methods professor has talked about operational definitions for the entire semester, making sure we understand the concept. They are very important concepts to understand, and to know they came from behaviorist thinking helps shape this understanding.
The first thing I found interesting in this chapter was operationism. I found this interesting because I talked about this concept a lot last year in my research methods class. In that class I learned the importance of these operational definitions. Without them some research done would not matter at all. Another good thing about operational definitions is that they make replication of experiments possible.
B.F. Skinner has always been a very interesting person to me. The work that he has done is very cool. I have seen videos on some of the Skinner box work so that is always the first thing I think about when he is brought up . the concepts of positive and negative consequences are really cool. I also like that he really wanted a lot of application to come from his work.
The second thing I found to be cool was molar behavior. Molar behavior means that the sum is greater than the stimulus. The example was of a rat swimming through a maze, and then later on being able to run through it accurately. I really just find it interesting that researchers where thinking so in depth about things like this.
Reaction potential and intervening variables was what was uninteresting to me. It was not interesting to me because I did not really understand it.
The psychology that I believed to be the most interesting was Edward Tolman. I found him to be the most interesting because he did his work but, he understood that people would do work that would discredit or surpass his. The book says that he was a man who had values and stood for them and that is what make me like him. I do not think many people would have chose to stand up for freedom and fair treatment like he did for professors in California. Far too many people let themselves be changed by success but, I am glad that he did not.
In terms of understanding the history of psychology I think it is essential to know that behaviorism is not all about Watson. I think that many people get that thought in their minds because it is taught that way. I think more people should note how big a role Pavlov played in behaviorisms popularity. I think that more people should learn about operationism.
An earlier topic that was talked about in this chapter was the concept of the mind being a blank slate. In the earlier chapters this was talked about John Locke. By using this concept behaviorist we now able to connect themselves to empiricist train of thought. The main point of saying that the mind was a black slate was the emphasis that we only know as much as we experience.
The person I would like to learn more about is Clark Hull. I would like to learn more about his learning theory. Postulate 4 for example seems really interesting to me. I would like to spend more time talking about the subjecting and acting grasping it. Also I would just like to know about what happens when the reinforcement are manipulated.
One thing that I found interesting was Tolman’s idea of latent learning. One thing that I continue to like about these psychologists is that they aren’t afraid to disagree with other opinions and they do something about it, by testing their hypothesise to discover new information. They do not just accept the information given, but they search out and find what they believe. Tolman believed that in order for learning to occur it had to be reinforced. He tested rats in mazes giving one rat a reward and the other no reward and tested them for a little over 2 weeks. Both rats had learned the maze, the rat with the reward performed better, because he had motivation, but the rat without the reward still learned the maze. This proved Tolman’s point that learning is latent and does not need reinforcement to occur.
The second thing that I found interesting was Skinner and his Skinner box. This is a really ingenious way to learn a lot of things about animals. He started off basic and was able to see in the rat would learn how to get food by hitting a lever. This concept grew to different lights signalling when it would give it food or if it would shock the rat. This tested whether or not the rat could perceive color. He also made a cumulative recorder to record when the rat hits the lever, so that he did not need to be observing them at all times, but could still collect the data. Skinner was criticized for his ethics, but he was able to discover a lot of new information about behavior.
The last thing that I found interesting was Skinner’s work with behavioral technology. He had the idea of using pigeons to get missiles to their targets using operant conditioning to get them to peck and control the direction. Although, this project did not happen, it was a good idea on Skinner’s part to try and apply his research to something useful in the world. His work and students work also helped train chimpanzees for space which helped out our space endeavors.
One thing that I did not find interesting was Hull’s reaction potential. This just seemed very scientific and mathematical, which is not something that particularly interests me. I am a psychology major, which I know is a social science, but I like the clinical aspects of it which are less “sciency” and more focused on helping individuals.
I found Skinner to be the most interesting psychologist, because a lot of his ideas were more “out-there” and he was criticized for it, but his work is still looked at today. I think what I learned about operant conditioning will be most important, because it is beneficial to understand how people learn and how to improve their learning. Skinner’s work with animals related to Kohler and his work with monkeys, and using that to apply it to humans to understand how they learn. I would like to learn more about Hull, because maybe I could find some research of his that I find interesting.
Project Pigeon. Horrible name (I’m scared of birds. Yes. I’m cool) but great concept. Project Pigeon was developed by B.F. Skinner as behavioral technology. He basically turned pigeons into warrior machines. He trained them to peck in order to aim missals. Unfortunately, the military cancelled the project. This somewhat created a failure for Skinner, something you don’t always hear about in popular psychologists. That’s what made it interesting to read about. And the fact that someone found something useful for birds to do.
Molar Behavior was another interesting topic I read about in this chapter. I love it because psychology does such a good job of explaining common sense things. We take these concepts for granted without really understanding them, and I like how psychology explains them. Molar behavior states that you do certain behaviors in order to reach the end goal. This makes complete sense, but I like how Tolman went on to do research on the topic (even if it was with gross rats).
Along with that train of thought on how psychology explains the common sense, I liked B.F. Skinner’s Extinction theory. This is when at one point in time there was a behavior that was reinforced, but now the reinforcement has stopped and so has the behavior. This was also discovered by mistake, which I LOVE those things. So many good things come out of mistakes! Like sticky notes and chocolate chip cookies.
One thing I didn’t find interesting was the Skinner Box. A lot of this has to do with just hearing about it over and over. Though it is not interesting, I do still see the importance of repetition. If were hearing about a certain study or psychologist in multiple classes, that means he or she or it must have been pretty important to be mentioned 345,094 times.
I think I found Tolman to be the most interesting applied psychologist, though I find B.F. Skinner to be the most important. Tolman is not a well known name to the public, which is sad because he came up with so many important things. This makes me very curious on what other studies and research he did that goes unnoticed, and makes me want to learn more about Tolman. As stated earlier, I loved his theory on molar behavior. I also found his work on latent learning very interesting as well. Yet because Skinner is such a popular and famous behaviorist, I do believe he is the most important contributor to psychology from this part of the text.
This chapter focused on a lot about Behaviorism and Behaviorists and other chapters have mentioned these concepts, psychologists, theories, etc. I feel like I’m a broken record in this blog, but repetition, though boring, is good. So its nice to read multiple chapters and recognize names. It helps create a better understanding for the history of psychology as a whole.
One thing I found interesting about this chapter was the hypothetical-deductive system and Hulls work on his theory in his book, "A Behavior System" or what can be found now, the "Principles of Behavior". It interests me because there are these 16 postulates which are statements about behavior based on accumulated knowledge from research and logic that are assumed to be true, but cannot be tested, persay. It seems almost mysterious-like. There are also so many things about the human brain and body that we don't know about, almost just a whole world, waiting to be discovered. I know this theory was developed many years ago, but technology is developing more and more now a days, and maybe these things that we have been wondering about for years will one day be unveiled.
The second thing I found most interesting about this chapter was operationism. Operationism means that scientific concepts were to be defined with reference to the operations used to measure them. In other words, they needed to hype up psychology and convince people that it was indeed a science, to be taken seriously. This was interesting to me because it seems in these earlier years in psychology they spent a lot of time trying to find data to show people that it was indeed not just some fluke science, that it was real stuff.
The third thing I found interesting about this chapter was Tolman's lab by Elliott on latent learning. They did a study on changing the food that rats received after finding it at the end of a maze. One group of rats got bran mash for several days in a row and when the reward was changed to sun flower seeds, their behavior was disrupted. I find this interesting just because it is so related to humans. You give a little kid one reward for several days, and if you change it up, you know that child wont be happy. Change for humans sometime just isn't a good thing. Repetition is safe, and everyone enjoys it, usually.
One thing I didn't find very interesting about this chapter was all the different talk about experiments that I already have learned and don't find very interesting. For example; reliability, primary reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, reaction potential. These things I know are important, but just not too interesting.
One psychologists I found very interesting was Clark Hull. He was an extremely bright guy and did so much in his time here. Very important in the psychological world with all of his studies and discoveries.
I am going to go with one of the most useful things in learning history would be Clark Hull. He was such a hard worker in the psychology world, he put so much into it and is very important to know about.
Topic related from previous chapters... I would say that the development of the science of psychology is extremely prevalent from chapter to chapter as we progress.
I definitely want to learn more about Clark Hull. He seems like such an interesting worker. He did a lot of things, and I feel like I just go the start of it from the book.
While reading chapter 11, I was initially a little confused about the difference between Operant Conditioning and Classical Conditioning, which I read about in chapter 10. After going back through both readings, I came to the conclusion that Classical Conditioning is an association between two stimuli, the primary stimuli and the secondary stimuli. In the case of Pavlov's dogs, these two stimuli would be the bell and the food. I couldn't help but think of the stimuli that affects us all as students, assignments and grades. In the case of Operant Conditioning, the association lies between a behavior and a consequence. Operant Conditioning can produce four responses. These are Positive Reinforcement, in which something good can start or be presented and a behavior increases. In the case of Negative Punishment, something good can end or be taken away therefore a behavior decreases. In Positive Punishment, this is when something bad can start or be presented and a behavior decreases, and Negative Reinforcement, in which something bad can end or be taken away therefore a behavior increases. I think that of these consequences, I was most interested in Positive Punishment. This almost sounded like an oxymoron to me, but it does make sense. I immediately thought of Positive Punishment in relation to pets. This reminded me of the day our cat suffered from some emotional distress, while already probably feeling some separation anxiety. Patches the Pussycat was new to our home and since she was hiding all the time, we weren't really sure of her habits and honestly, not too sure of her patches either. When leaving for the day, we noticed a cat on our front porch. Our neighbor's cat continually runs away and we knew this couldn't be Patches because of the lack of accessories (aka the bell around her neck). As we opened the door to leave, the neighbor's cat ran inside the house and hid under the bed. We ran after it, grabbing a broom and trying to fish her out. The cat probably thought we were going to use the broom as a weapon, which if I was a cat, I would have thought this as well. We got the cat out from under the bed, picked it up and I heaved it outside. (To be clear, this isn't animal cruelty, cats always land on their feet, right?) The cat did land on her feet and as soon as those paws touched the ground, she used the momentum to dart back into the house. This time the cat found a much better hiding spot, so good that I was using a coat hanger to (gently) poke her behind and try to coax her to come out. This probably wasn't the best idea, but I was in a hurry and couldn't think of much else that would fit into a small space. Not only did I need to get to where I needed to be, but I was also factoring in some time to knock on the neighbor's door and tell them to keep their feline out of our house. We ran out of time. Deciding that we would look for the cat when we got home, we left the house feeling that we were out of options (and out of breath). Later that day, my friend and I got home looked for the cat and all we saw was Patches. Without a bell. It actually took quite a bit of time for me to put it all together but it turns out it was our cat the whole time. She must have gotten out of house and lost her bell. Anywho, the point of this story is that chasing the cat with the broom must have been punishment enough, because she hasn't gotten out again. This was Positive Punishment because something bad was started, the wild goose Patches chase, and the behavior, running away, decreased. I guess for me, the incident would represent Negative Reinforcement. Something bad was started, but because I found her once in this manner, my behavior increased when it happened again and I used the same horrible method of cat coaxing. So this is how I applied the chapter to my life and I found it interesting to apply all of these consequences to my life. I would like to learn about the term "Freedom as an Illusion." This makes sense, but is also a lot to wrap my pleasure center around. In order to learn more about this, I need to get better acquainted with Ron Paul. A part of the chapter that I was not thrilled with was reading about Tolman, only because its late in the semester, I am burned out, and I spent a lot of time thinking about Patches and feeling guilty that she will probably need kitty counseling.
I can appreciate that the behaviorists wanted to take a more ‘scientific’ (observable, repeatable, quantifiable) approach to psychology. But with this in mind, it is hard to understand why Skinner was so adverse to the hypothetical model. Saying that he “preferred a purely inductive approach to research, studying samples of behavior and looking for regularities” while being “contemptuous of the idea that actual scientists operate according to a set of rules dictated by… hypothetico-deductive logic” (HMP, 388) makes it sound as though he was unaware of his own thought processes. While I think that behaviorism plays a part in psychological process, I do not believe that it explains or accounts for all behavior/cognition.
I did think it was interesting that Skinner maintained his faith in his own theories to the very end. Way to stick to your guns, B. F.
I thought it was interesting that Tolman (who “did not pursue a career in [electrochemistry]… partly because he did not wish to compete with his talented brother” [HMP, 364]) -- had one of his own projects (Project Pigeon) shot down by that selfsame brother -- because (according to Skinner) of the brother’s “lack of respect” for the profession that Tolman did decide to pursue (HMP, 391). What cheek! Makes you wonder what sort of issues were going on in that family.
I also thought that this was an interesting line: “Parents, unless poor and/or nonwhite, had every reason to expect great opportunities for their children” (HMP, 383). How times have changed, huh?
This was also good: “the Protestant values of hard work and a constant concern about ‘what other people might think’” (HMP, 383). What kind of 'stimulus/response' effects have these qualities had on our society?
I thought that Clark Hull sounded like an interesting person. He overcame so many barriers (e.g., poverty, rural background & education, typhoid, polio), yet went on to become a respected scientist at Yale. And “dying of a second heart attack just three weeks from retirement” (HMP, 378) must suck! I’d be curious to know more about him.
I’m not very interested in behaviorism as a whole, actually; but I do think that the role of behaviorism in the development of modern psychology will be the most useful thing I get from this chapter. I understand stimulus/response, and I can see that this is an important factor; but I think that the behavior of sentient beings is more complex than that reduction. I don’t think that behaviorism alone has the tools to really get at the core of underlying issues.
While reading chapter eleven I found many things interesting due to the chapter still being about behavior. I found behavior to be very interesting because it explains why people perform the actions that they do. Behavior is something that is very easy to observe and measure.
First off I was very interested in neobehaviorism which talked a lot about the neobehaviorist and their beliefs. I enjoyed the belief about that learning was central to an understanding of behavior. I found it to be interesting about the second belief that they had. That was the fact that the neobehaviorist believed that learning was central to understanding behavior. They learned towards and argued that knowing why people do what they do require a thorough analysis of the basic principles of how things are learned. I then found it very interesting that Watson used these guiding principles and also the motivation for the study of Little Albert. I was just amazed that small principles grew to be something so big and evolved into a great study.
Next I thought that Edward Tolman childhood and growing up stages of life were interesting. I found it interesting how he was able to learn about perseverance and hard work from his father and the need for a reflective life with a strong moral foundation from his mother. This shows that one is able to learn great values from their parents if interpreted right. While I continued to read I found that even then children and young adults never wanted to compete with their siblings. He did not per sue chemistry or physic due to his brother. However while reading more about Tolman, I found it very boring and not very interesting!!
Next I liked reading about someone I had already known about, which was B.F. Skinner. Skinner was well known for his Skinner box and operant conditioning. Operant conditioning was the behavior that was emitted and followed by another sequence. The Skinner box was there a rat would press a lever and depending on the light signal. If a certain light was presented the rat would receive a shock through the floor. But if the proper light showed and the lever was pressed the rat would receive a treat. However at times the rat would not receive anything due to the fact that was what the light meant. Eventually the rat was able to understand when to press the lever and when was the improper time to press the lever. It was like the rat was being rewarded or reinforced for the proper behavior. Eventually one would witness extinction, which most time only happened when there was an issue with the machine!
Over all I would say that Clark Hall was very boring, I say this because I started to read it and I instantly became bored with it. Therefore I skipped over reading the rest of his section. I felt that he clearly was not someone who needed much attention if his information came off as completely boring!!!
This section relates to the previous chapter due to dealing with behavior. And many times Watson and Skinner had items in common!!!
I would love to continue to know more about behavior and why we’re make the choice that we do through life.
The first thing I found interesting was Edward C. Tolman’s background. Tolman was born in an upper-middle class environment in a suburb of Boston. His parents had a very positive influence on him; his father was a successful business executive which showed how hard work can be beneficial; his mother with a Quaker background shared the importance of having a reflective life with a strong moral foundation. Toleman graduated from MIT with a degree in electrochemistry. However, he did not pursue a career in this degree for the simple fact that he did not want to compete with his talented brother, Richard. I was surprised to learn that Tolman’s interest in psychology didn’t develop until he enrolled at Harvard. Here, Toleman took an introductory course on psychology taught by Robert Yerkes. Having this course with Yerkes led Toleman to enter graduate school at Harvard where he eventually earned his doctorate. Toleman, like many others in the psychology field, was trying to figure out the different perspectives in the field as well as trying to pick one out that he could identify with. While visiting Germany, Toleman was introduced to Kurt Koffka. A final important influence on Toleman during his Harvard years was another one of his teachers, psychologist Edwin Holt. Toleman had a good group of individuals to influence him and the development of his unique form of behaviorism.
The second thing I found interesting was the section over Clark Hull. Unlike Toleman, Hull was born into poverty. He was educated in a one-room schoolhouse and grew up under “pioneer conditions.” After facing death and eventually becoming partially paralyzed, Hull’s dream of becoming a mining engineer was put to rest because it would be impossible for him to meet the physical demands of that career. Once gaining back his health, Hull decided to pursue a career in psychology. Hull had a “strong ambition and his talent with design and construction of experimental apparatus.” During his polio, Hull designed his own leg brace. Like many other aspiring psychologists Hull worked with John Shepard, who had previously worked with some of psychology’s most honorable psychologists such as Watson and Walter Pillsbury, a doctoral student of Titchener’s. Hull earned his PhD at the University of Wisconsin. Most doctoral studies are often pushed away but Hull’s eventually became a well-known study of the processes involved in learning new concepts. I liked learning about the way he used Chinese characters for stimulus material in his concepts learning. What Hull found to be very fascinating was the shape of the learning curve; performance improved gradually but steadily. I never knew that Hull created the Aptitude Testing and even built a machine to automatically calculate correlations. To read about where Hull came from and then to read about all of his accomplishments, it would be hard to tell that he came from poverty. Although Hull was poor, he found that he was rich in many other ways.
The last thing I found interesting was B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning. This section caught my attention right away because of the statement that Skinner made: “I had the clue from Pavlov: Control your conditions and you will see order.” Skinner’s box included a positive stimulus and a negative stimulus and overall represents a controlled environment, in this case given, for a rat. There is also a similar case with pigeons having to peck at a circular disk for the lever. For Skinner, he referred to the box as an operant chamber; however, Hull referred to it as a Skinner box, and that is where the name came from. By being able to measure behavior through the slope of the line on a cumulative recorder, Skinner was now able to examine operant conditioning in depth. An example used in the book: With a rat that had been conditioned to bar press because the behavior had resulted in the immediate consequence of a food reinforce, for instance, Skinner could demonstrate extinction by withholding the reinforcement. Come to find out, Skinner’s demonstration of extinction appeared by accident. Extinction was just one of the many conditionings that Skinner could demonstrate; which we discover that Skinner did.
The section that I did not find very interesting was logical positivism and operationism. I found myself getting lost in this section and really did not find it important enough to take up two pages.
I would have to say the applied psychologist that I enjoyed reading about the most was B.F. Skinner just because I never knew much about his background or to the extent that he took his work. I have learned about Skinner multiple times, but never so in dept. I really enjoyed that throughout the whole chapter, just getting to know the psychologists more in depth rather than just talking about the same old topics.
This chapter is very beneficial in understanding the history of psychology because it is starting to bring in new theories about understanding behaviorism. We are seeing new studies being done in order to explain these theories and how they can be used in the real world. These are all important ideas to take into consideration.
This chapter relates to other chapters in the way that psychology is expanding. Now that we are getting closer to the end of the textbook, it is really neat to see how the whole book and all of the ideas from the chapters before continue to be expanded on. Overall, we see that new psychologists have formed their opinion because of the psychologists before them; so it is important to know them and everyone else in between to understand why psychologist’s theories are the way they are.
I would like to learn more about B.F. Skinner. Even though the book did a good job talking about his work, I feel like I did not get a good idea of his background. I also felt that some of the studies that were listed could have had better, maybe even extended, information. Overall learning more about Skinner’s background and more about his work would, I think, be beneficial.