Reading Activity Week #12 (Due Monday)

Blake Wedeking

1) I found terms such as operationism, operational definitions, replication, and converging operations to be interesting to read about because they were all related. I thought these terms were important because they lied down the foundation for measuring given results and what to do with these results. Operationism is not defined in absolute terms but with reference to the operations used to measure them. The example of length was shown in which the definition would be agreed upon prodecures. Operational definitions are simply definitions involving precise descriptions or procedures for measurement and for specifying the variable in a given experiment. Replication was argued by Hilgard so terms could be defined more precisely and if defined clearly enough, other researchers could repeat a particular study. Converging operations refers to the idea that our understanding of psychological phenomenon is enhanced when several studies each using different operational definitions “converge” on the same basic conclusion. When reading about these terms I found them interesting because psychologists should agree upon the degree of measure and able to apply it to other studies.

2) I found Tolman’s concept of intervening variables to be quite interesting to read about. I thought it was interesting to think about that an intervening variable can come into play. 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 variables are said to intervene between stimulus as well as behavior. The example of thirst was given in our book in which thirst would present itself if an animal went 12 hours without drinking anything. This could hypothetically skew the results of the experiment in such a case. I thought these variables would play a key part in any experiment and that’s why I found it so fascinating to read and learn about through the text.

3) I found the concept of latent learning to be interesting read about because it separated performance from learning in a way that they could be tested. Tolman believed that food discovered by a rat at the end of the maze did not affect learning directly but merely influenced the animal’s motivation to complete the maze as quickly and accurate as possible. He concluded that learning needed to be separated from performance and reinforcement affected the latter. Learning occurred automatically even if no food was presented at the end of the maze box. Tomlan’s evidence showed that learning was occurring but not directly reflected in performance. He also concluded that reinforcement was not necessary for learning to occur.

4) I found Clark Hull’s contributions to be the least interesting to read about, besides intervening variables, because it seemed to be repetitive knowledge of what was already being discovered at that time. Although, he is unique for discovering such theories such as drive reduction, he just wasn’t as interesting as Skinner to read about. It was very hard to find something in this chapter that was uninteresting so I will just place Hull in general in the spotlight. I just felt that the book maybe did a poor representation of him as a person so maybe if I researched myself about him I might find interesting subjects that he studied that I could relate too.

5) I think that Skinner’s distinction between classical and operant conditioning is very important in understanding the history of psychology. Without the differentiation, we would not have the knowledge we know today about rewards, consequences, and conditioning. I think it is also important to note that Skinner rejected formal theories of Tolman and Hull and argued for more inductive, descriptive behaviorism. With the understanding of operant conditioning, we can better control kids that throw tantrums or animals that are too loud. Skinner believed that any behavior could be conditioned in such a way to make it favorable or unfavorable. His contributions to psychology are amongst the greatest so understanding his life in general would provide a great background to the history of psychology.

6) In the previous chapter, Pavlov uses classical conditioning with his experiment with dogs and their saliva. This chapter builds on that concept and differentiates it from operant conditioning. Type S conditioning or classical conditioning as Pavlov would say that an identifiable stimulus elicits an identifiable response through the procedure of pairing two stimuli, one that initially elicits the response and one that doesn’t. It is called Type S by Skinner because an association between two stimuli are formed producing the same response. Type R or operant conditioning sets out to control behavior in which reward is presented to those of desirable behavior but those with undesirable behavior are given consequences that are undesirable. With this being set the behavior is either strengthened or weakened depending on what behavior is desired. Skinner did choose the word operant because behavior operates on the environment and when the behavior happens, it produces a predictable outcome.

7) I would like to learn more about Skinner’s experiments and see where they took him in his research. I already know of his famous experiment using the Skinner box but would like to know some others that could have potentially affected his work. I would also like to find out more information on the experiment I already know of his so that I can apply them to the others that I will research about. I feel that Skinner provided great enhancements to the field of psychology so he would be the most interesting to read about to me. I would also like to learn more about Skinner’s life in general and how he started becoming interested in the field other than what the book proposes.

8) While reading about Skinner’s idea of operant conditioning, I remember doing tests in high school to demonstrate his actions. When someone produced a behavior that was positive then positive consequences would occur but if someone produced a negative attitude that was not wanted, negative consequences would be presented. Rewards would be presented for positive behavior and negative behavior was weakened with a negative consequence. I found it enjoyable to be able to relate to Skinners work in which we tested children’s behavior in classroom settings in high school to determine what teachers did in order to correct their behavior with certain rewards or consequences. I find operant conditioning interesting because it has been around so long even before skinner but yet is still a new concept to think about that he put into perspective.

9) Operant conditioning, operant, latent learning, intervening variables, converging operations, replication, operationism, operation definitions, B.F. Skinner, Hull, Tolman.

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
Neobehaviorism was interesting to me because it was a particular movement in psychology that consisted of experimental psychologists. Many unique psychologists were considered in this psychological era. Their work and variety with the topic are what made this an interesting topic because their worked meshed together to form this movement.
2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found Edward Tolman’s system to be interesting because it was about his theories and writings. His particular research consisted of the differences in empirical research and theorizing the tradition of logical positivism. Theories make predictions that are testable and those testable predictions lead to research and studies. Once you have conducted research, it adds on to the theory which then leads to more studies and research. It is a huge cycle that could go on and on.
3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found B. F. Skinner to be interesting because I have learned about him in previous psychology classes and was able to relate what I learned to the topic in the book. I mostly found his study about operant conditioning to be interesting. His study was conducted by designing a box specifically for rats. In the box, there was a lever and when pushed by the rat, a small portion of food would appear. I thought this study was interesting because it reminded me of when you take a dog outside. If your dog goes to the bathroom, and you reward them with a treat they eventually realize that just by using the bathroom outside, they will get a treat every time.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
I did not find the section about Clark Hull to be too interesting. He is an interesting man, but his studies were very similar to other studies. It was mundane and repetitive to me and I could not get interested in his research.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I believe that B. F. Skinner and his study about operant conditioning would be important in psychology because there are many ways operant conditioning can be researched. He also determined the difference between classical and operant conditioning, which will be useful because once we understand the differences we can easily relate them to every day occurrences and future studies.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
Watson was mentioned quite a few times in this chapter. This chapter uses Watson’s knowledge in behaviorism and builds on it with new experimental psychologists. Classical and operant conditioning was also mentioned again and new psychologists were mentioned as studying these topics.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?
I would like to learn more about B. F. Skinner and his differentiation with classical and operant conditioning. Because once you understand the two, you can use them in real life. I would also like to learn more about neobehaviorism because it was an interesting movement that consisted of many different experimental psychologists. I think understand what each one of them did during this era would help to better understand the era and the movement.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I thought about all the different ways someone or an animal can be conditioned to do something. I immediately thought about dogs and how they are conditioned to learn tricks, use the bathroom outside and much more. I also thought about kids and how in a way they are conditioned to follow directions/rules and they know what happens if they do no listen. I felt that this chapter was relatively easy to relate to everyday life.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Neobehaviorism, B. F. Skinner, Edward Tolman, classical conditioning, operant conditioning

J.P.

1a) I found learning about operationism and how it bridged the gap between behaviorism and introspection to be interesting while reading chapter 11.

1b) It was interesting because it seems to be the healthy medium between the two radically different views in the scientific study of behavior. This line of thinking was developed by a select group of people well-schooled in fields of math, science, and philosophy. They termed this thought as logical positivism. It basically states that an abstract idea could used to help define a measurable idea only if the two were closely related to an observable event. I feel like this idea of operationism helped to form a balanced approach to observing and defining behaviors and various events. Even researchers, and scientists can become limited in their pursuit of knowledge and learning when they allow a specific train of thought to dominate their philosophies especially if there are other ideas out there that would help to rationally explain an idea, theory or concept. Operationism that came out of the logical positivism thoughts definitely played a role in doing this for psychology as it relates to the study of behaviors.

2a) I found the movement in psychology of neobehaviorism to be interesting.

2b) The neobehaviorism played a significant role in promoting the use of animals as research participants within the research areas of psychological studies. They firmly believed in the ideas based on evolutionary concepts of continuity among species. This idea that all species are somehow interconnected allowed them to apply research done on animal subjects, to humans without having to do the studies on them. Often these studies would include unethical treatment of its subjects. Having animals as the subjects has been commonly accepted because at least the tests are not being conducted on human beings. While I would not be able to do some of the research that is done on animal subjects, and I don’t really like the idea of doing scientific studies on animals in general, I am a realist and understand that in order to further science, there needs to be applied research. Since there is not really another option to testing on animals, it is understandable that this method has been used since the neobehaviorist introduced it as an idea. Their promotion of this method of running more controlled tests on animal subjects carried over into every area of experimental psychology.

3a) The last idea that i found to be highly interesting from this chapter had to do with the idea of latent learning that Tolman showed through a study with rats to be true.

3b) This topic is interesting because we often focus on the rewards that are involved in directing a species behavior. Tolman was able to show in his study that reinforcement is not needed for learning to take place. His study included three different groups of rats that were given the task of learning a maze. One group never received any rewards for working through the maze. The second group was rewarded at the completion of the maze each time. The third group was initially not rewarded during the maze training. However, after the 10th day, these rats were then given the same reward as group two on the successful completion of the maze. The study showed how even the rats that were never given a reward at the completion of the maze during the 22 day trial, still were able to learn the maze and slowly work toward being able to complete it with fewer mistakes than when they initially started. Tolman was also able to show how the concept of reinforcement decreased the amount of mistakes that were made by the rats while working through the maze. He labeled this concept latent learning because it did not affect the rats in their ability to complete the maze. Rather, it influenced their behavior later on when they were rewarded for completing the maze.

4a) I did not really enjoy learning about Hull’s hypothetico-deductive system.

4b) I have never been interested in the research side of psychology. I will be using the concepts I have learned in studying psychology in an applied field such as social work. Therefore, learning about postulates and reaction potentials are ideas that lose themselves in my mind as I read through this chapter. I understand how Hull’s ideas that he presented to the field of psychology are vitally important to the research side of this field of behavioral sciences. However, for me and the direction I am choosing to go with the education that I am working towards, it didn’t come across as super interesting to me.

5) After reading chapter 11. I feel like learning about post-Watson behaviorism was the most useful. I believe that understanding the direction psychological research started taking with the introduction of behaviorism is vital to understanding where the modern psychology is today. The reason I feel this way is for other thoughts were inspired by Watson’s approach to research study. The ideas of logical positivism and operationism all have ties to Watson’s theories., They played an important role in guiding modern psychology.

6) This chapter builds off of previous chapters mainly by showing the progression of behaviorism and the direction research and scientific studies took as a result of this form of thinking. As always, the chapter also built off of the other chapters by showing good time-order of events. This book always does a good job of progressing through the history of psychology in a manner that give an accurate description of what events inspired other events as a result.

7a) I would like to learn more about Tolman’s purposive behaviorism approach to the field of psychology.

7b) I was really interested in the theories he developed based on Watson. I feel like learning more about his studies would give me better insight into what I feel is a more balanced approach to behaviorism.

8) I thought a lot about how research is conducted on animal subjects. As I already stated, the idea of conducting harmful research on animals is repulsive to me. However, there isn’t too many other options for determining through research studies what influences behaviors and reactions in humans. I thought about what the future holds for these types of studies with the hopes that someday there will be ways to test hypothesis without having to do them on animal or human subjects. I think that with the advances within the medical and technological fields this will someday be a reality.

9) Terms: Operationism, behaviorism, introspection, neobehaviorism, continuity among species, evolutionary concepts, experimental psychology, reinforcement, latent learning, hypothetico-deductive system, postulates, reaction potentials.

1. Something that I found to be interesting was the operational definitions or definitions involving concepts that cannot be observed directly. I thought this was interesting because earlier in the section there was the discussion about operationism and there was a problem with measuring some sensations like hunger and other things that cannot be clearly observed. I thought that the operational definitions was interesting because there was claim that this was the problem solver and that it was able to measure things that were not supposed to be able to be measured. I do not know how effective this was into measuring the sensations, but just the thought that psychologists try to go above and beyond and basically trying to prove something that is not to be able to proven right at all. Just the measures that they are willing to take to have their name out there and to try to make their ideas right is interesting because they are not willing to take no for an answer.

2. Another thing that I found to be interesting was Molar behavior and the field theory approach. I found this to be interesting because it was talking about patterns and behaviors that are directed to certain goals for different organisms. This could be summed up as the normal, like the drive home from work, it has been done over and over that it has become a molar behavior that the driver would be able to give an approximate time to how it even takes and other details that they are able to pick up on. Field theory then stated that the brain is a map control room and the animal is the controller of what to fill the map with. The environment that would be able to fill the map is directed to the goals of the controller, this is also known as purposiveness. I thought this was interesting because it is something that just about everyone is used to without even noticing it. Some actions or places we go have because so normal that we no longer even think about it due to repeating the action over and over that it is drilled into our brains, or the map control room. I think that things that I am able to relate to, or things that I am able to relate to without knowing that I am relating to them are interesting just because there is a relationship with the term there.

3. Another thing that I found to be interesting was the part of Edward Tolman and his students when they were doing the experiments about rats and mazes. The section can be summed up into latent learning or the connection between if the rat was going through the maze faster to get to the food or if the rat just wants to get through the maze. I found this to be interesting because in a lot of chapters we keep seeing the maze experiment, and the problem with it is it sounds the same from chapter to chapter. How this chapter is different is that it takes the same concept, a rat going through a maze, and puts a twist to the experiment, have one rat rewarded and the other does not get a food reward. The results showed that there was progress made for the rats that did not receive a reward but not as much as the rats rewarded, but shockingly rats that were not rewarded then rewarded after a few runs made the fastest progress. I think this was because it made the rat believe that they were rewarded the faster they could get through the maze, since it was given to them when they were already memorizing the maze and they decreased the time and errors, then this would push them to perform the best they were able to. I think the most interesting factor of the experiment though was how different ideas can be expanded into almost a full new field of study.

4. I thing that I did not find interesting because I did not agree with the section was the section on neobehaviorism. I did not like it because it was saying that what can be applied to one species can be applied to others as well. I did not agree because not every species is the same, every species acts different to different things which makes me not agree with neobehviorism. A main example that I was able to think of while reading this section is medicine. Just because it is able to be used to cure one species of infections and is safe for that species does not allow it to be safe to all species, so it would not agree with the statement that what applies to one species applies to all species.

5. A valuable thing that is brought up in this chapter was that psychologists tried to find any way possible to prove their ideas right. What I meant by this is that there was a problem in the chapter that had to do with things that had unobservable measures, and instead of ruling them out entirely of experimentation there were alternative routes to try to make it possible because the psychologist believed in the ideas of the field and believed that there was more to expand on. This is important to history of psychology because this is where problems arise among the different psychologists, when they are trying to prove their points right conflicting with other psychologist proving their points which creates conflicts in the history.

6. This chapter focused on building off of the behaviorism idea from Watson. It related because it was just building off of the idea and expanding the field. Ideas that were added were the ideas that everything can be observed upon even if they are not measureable. Also there were ideas that were added such as Molar behavior that stated that the things that we begin to memorize are put into the brain’s map because it is towards the goals that we would like to achieve as individuals.

7. Something that I would like to know more about is Molar behavior and the brain activity during it. I know that it is said that actions repeated are then just a natural habit of the organism, but that does not mean that the brain is not thinking about the action, it could be just minimized. I also would like to know steps that the brain takes and how long it takes for a behavior to become a Molar behavior.

8. Something that I was wondering while reading this chapter was how exactly can you classify a measurement of something such as hunger? I know that the operational definition was said to make it so they were able to measure with measurements such as time, but there are different levels of hunger that increase with time, so is there a way to classify those into measurements?

9. Operational definitions, operationism, Molar behavior, field theory approach, neobehaviorism, purposiveness, Edward Tolman, latent learning

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?

One thing I found interesting was B. F Skinner. I found Skinner interesting because I learned about him in Behavior Modification but did not know any history about him. I found out that Skinner was a skillful writer who didn’t take well to authority. I also read that he wasn’t fond of Boring and his work. I found Skinner interesting because I already was interested in him but this chapter went into greater detail in regards to his personal beliefs and life.

2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?

Another thing I found interesting was schedules of reinforcement. I found schedules of reinforcement interesting because I find it pretty cool that if you reinforce a behavior at a fixed ratio or a fixed interval it can change the behavior. Once again I learned about this in Bmod and enjoyed it. The idea of reinforcing a behavior to manipulate the consequence is super interesting to me. Schedules of reinforcement are another way that changes the way a behavior is emitted as well as the consequences.

3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?

I also found skinners ideas regarding behaviors and how they’re not all equally condition able interesting. I found this interesting because Skinner found that all behaviors can not be conditioned the same. Skinner and his assistants found that animal’s instinctive behaviors could limit the conditioning of those animals.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? 
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?

One thing I found least interesting was when the chapter talked about neobehaviorism. Neobehaviorism is such a broad topic and I have already learned about it so it was probably the least interesting topic I read about in this chapter. It was also the least interesting to me because I found so many other things in this chapter that was interested in, therefore it was one of my least few not interesting topics.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?

One thing I read about in this chapter that I think will be most useful to my understanding of the history of psychology is B. F Skinner and his ideas regarding conditioning. Skinner had several great contributions to the field of behaviorism with his ideas involving conditioning and his rat in the box experiments. I also think I will take from what Skinner did because of his interest in writing.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?

This chapter builds on the previous chapter because this chapter and the last both discuss the concepts of behaviorism. Watson and Pavlov are discussed throughout the chapter as they are in the previous chapter.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about? 
7b) Why?

I would like to learn more about Skinner because I liked reading about his life before he became known for his ideas regarding behaviorism. I would like to know more about his dark year as the text puts it. As well as find out what he all wrote about during that year. I think it would be pretty interesting to read some of the stuff he wrote about while taking a year off from school and work.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?

I thought about where behaviorism would be today without B. F Skinners ideas. How would conditioning be different? Where would we be today without his reinforcement concepts? Would schedules of reinforcement be around or would it not exist if Skinner hadn’t came up with it?

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.

Terms: behaviorism, reinforcement, B. F Skinner, Watson, Pavlov, schedules of reinforcement, conditioning, and neobehaviorism

1)What did you find interesting and why?
I liked that the chapter focused on the fact that Watson was not the only behaviorist. Yes, we do have the eponym “Watsonian behaviorism” and he is probably the most well-known behaviorist, but he was not the creator of behaviorism or the only advocate for it. The chapter focuses on three other behaviorists that contributed a lot in the field of psychology: Tolman, Hull, and Skinner.

2)What did you find interesting and why?
I found the subject of neobehaviorism pretty interesting as well. First of all, neobehaviorists believe that laws of behavior that apply to one species to apply to other species as well, to some degree. They also believe that learning was central to understanding behavior, and they tended to believe more in the nurture side of the argument than the nature side.

3)What did you find interesting and why?
I found Tolman’s experiments with lab rats and learning in the mazes to be pretty interesting. He studied latent learning, which means that the animal was learning without it being apparent in the animal’s performance. One study that exemplifies this is his study in which he had three different groups of rats: a rewarded group, a not rewarded group, and a group that started off not being rewarded and then started being rewarded halfway through the experiment. With the not rewarded group, the performance of the rats was not really good, and only improved a little as the experiment went on. In the rewarded group, there was a steady improvement from the beginning in performance. The surprising part to Tolman was the third group. He did not believe that learning was taking place in the first ten days of the experiment, but, once the third group started being rewarded, their performance improved dramatically. This added motivation to their actions, and showed that they had learned they maze, they just needed reinforcement to perform well.

4)What did you find least interesting and why?
I think it was good to learn more about Skinner’s academic history, because I have never learned about that before, but this section was a lot of review because we learn a lot about Skinner and his experiments in every other psychology course. I did not feel as though I learned as much about him as I did about Tolman and Hull, the two other behaviorists that we learned about in this chapter.

5)What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think it was important to learn about the different aspects of behaviorism that were developed during this time, such as schedules of reinforcement. This is something that we still talk about today that was developed at this time, so it is important to remember the different schedules of reinforcement.

6)How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter builds on the previous chapters by progressing into the 20th century and discussing in detail the development of behaviorism and what different psychologists did to contribute to the field and develop new theories.

7)What topic would you like to learn more about? Why?
I think I would like to learn more about neobehaviorism because I thought it was interesting, and also I think the book should have spent a little bit more time defining what it is because I was a little confused about it when I got done reading the section.

8)What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I was interested for most of the chapter, like when reading about Tolman and Hull, because (for the most part) it was all new information because I had never learned about those individuals before. However, when I started reading about Skinner, I was more skimming the sections because a lot of it was review, so I did not read as in depth as I had the rest of the chapter.

9)Watson, Watsonian behaviorism, eponym, Tolman, Hull, Skinner, neobehaviorism, laws of behavior, nature vs. nurture, cognitive map

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found the Neobehaviorism movement to be very interesting. This school of thought led the way for the increase in the testing of animals. It was thought that the laws of behavior that apply to one species can be applied to others. Thus, the behavior of rats and monkeys could be used in explaining the behavior of humans. This is not something I personally believe in but it is an interesting theory. If we go back and look at Watson’s study on rats and mazes we quickly realize that these studies could not be done on humans. Some of his studies with rats were borderline unethical anyway. I think in some ways there is some validity to conducting animal studies but I don’t believe everything that is discovered about a species’ behavior can be assumed true of other species.

2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found Edward C. Tolman’s Latent Learning phenomenon to be interesting. In his study he had three groups of rats. The first group would learn a maze with no food or reinforcement at the end of the maze. The second group was always given food at the end. The third group was not given food until the eleventh day. Tolman observed that the rats with no reinforcement never learned the maze. The rats with reinforcement mastered the maze quickly and the rats that were introduced to reinforcement on day eleven learned the maze immediately on that day. This is important because it showed that the rats in the third group were learning the maze even without reinforcement because with it they mastered it faster than the rats with constant reinforcement.

3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found the rat boxes of B.F. Skinner to be interesting. By pressing a lever the rat would retrieve a reinforcing piece of food. The rat could also receive a small electrical shock if it pressed the lever when the light was not on. Skinner was able to show generalization by dimming the light. This would cause the rat to slow his responses of pressing the lever. The rat was eventually conditioned to only press the lever when the light was on. This shows differentiation. I believe this is important because it takes the work of Pavlov and pushes it forward. Skinner was also able to show extinction, mostly by accident. The food dispenser got jammed and the rate slowly stopped pressing down on the lever.

4a) What didn’t you find interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
Clark Hull’s Postulate 4: Habit Strength was something that I thought would be interesting but it was not. In this, Hull is explaining the conditions needed for learning to occur. I found this hard to read and hard to understand what information was being conveyed. The graphs that were used to represent his studies were just as confusing and hard to read.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I remember reading about Skinner in some of my other Psychology classes. I believe he is a key person to know when trying to understand the history of psychology. With his Skinner Box he helped us understand that a behavior is more likely to be repeated if reinforced. Of course, the opposite is true also. He was able to control the behavior so that he could have the desired behavior repeated and the non-desired behavior not repeated.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter builds nicely on the previous chapter because it is forwarding our knowledge of behaviorism. It also shows that even when researchers are studying the same thing they can have disagreements on certain aspects of the material. Skinner did not agree with the theories of Tolman and Hull, but all of them were able to expand on the theory of behaviorism.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?
I would like to know more about neobehaviorism and what impact it had on psychology. This movement had the belief that an animal’s behavior could be applied to that of a human. So, many of the studies done on animals could be used to understand the behaviors of humans. I would like to know more on this line of thinking and if it is valid or not.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I guess I go back to the animal testing that was being done during this time. I believe that the researchers in this chapter were a bit more ethical when it came to the studies they conducted with animals. I realized there were tests or studies being done on animals that could not or should not be replicated on humans, but it seems that some studies went to the extreme (Watson).

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
• Edward C. Tolman
• B.F. Skinner
• Clark Hull
• Neobehaviorism
• Latent learning
• Skinner Box
• Generalization
• Differentiation
• Extinction
• Postulate 4
• Behaviorism

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
The first topic that I found interesting in chapter 11 was neobehaviorism. This chapter starts by talking about neobehaviorism, and also ends by summing up all the information we learned in this chapter and stating how it relates to the topic of neobehaviorism. Neobehaviorism is a movement in psychology in America from around 1930- 1960. Neobehaviorism was brought about by experimental psychologists based on a few different points. The first one is that nebehaviorists “took for granted the evolutionary assumption of continuity among species.” This basically means that neobehaviorists thought that laws of behavior that work for one species should also apply to other species. The second thing that all neobehaviorists believed was that learning and conditioning was essential to studying behavior. Knowing how someone learns a task or idea is what neobehaviorists thought was central to behavior. This means that they highly believed in nurture over nature. I thought that this was a very interesting idea considering what we believe today about nature versus nurture. These two ideas were the main points that neobehaviorists agreed on. Outside of these two boundaries, the psychologists that worked with neobehaviorism varied widely in their ideas relating to this topic. I think it is also interesting that the basis for neobehaviorism was learning about how people acquired information. I think it is a really interesting topic to look into because I think that learning about how someone else learns something, or how a species in general has learned something would be really fun to look into. I think that the topic of neobehaviorism interested me because it was so huge and lasted for so long. The ideas that came along with this topic were thought for many years and the progress that came out of this field of science were very important to where psychology stands today. I think it was interesting to read the whole chapter and see how it all relate back to this one idea, over a span of many years, of neobehaviorism.

2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
The second topic that I found interesting in this chapter was all about Clark Hull. Clark Hull was born into poverty in New York, later moving to Michigan farmland and attending a one-room schoolhouse. Clark Hull suffered from polio at the age of 24 and was left partially paralyzed. But he persevered through this illness and came out one of the best psychologists of his time. Hull became well-known because of his dissertation that had to do with how something new is learned. I thought this study and information was the most interesting part of Clark Hull and his work. The part that caught my eye about this research was the diagram on page 360 of our book, the one that shows the Chinese characters. This picture made me want to learn more about what it was and how it was used because it seemed really interesting to me. Through this research, Hull found that learning occurs gradually but steadily. This means that people learn slowly but by habit, they learn more overall. I thought this was a really interesting and revolutionary idea, one that many other people thought so as well because this research and idea is still being talked about today. Another thing that I found interesting about Hull was that he was very interested in and practiced hypnosis. Hypnosis has always been an interesting topic to me, because I have always wondered how it works. I would be interested to learn more about this idea and what Hull all did for his work with hypnosis and how it helped further his career or the information we learned about concerning behaviorism.

3a) What did you find interesting?
b) Why was it interesting to you?
The last topic that I found interesting in chapter 11 was about Burrhus Frederick Skinner, better known as B. F. Skinner. Skinner was born in Pennsylvania and he was a hard worker throughout his whole life. Skinner was known for his ability and willingness to dispute many topics with those older or higher up than him. After a not-so-successful career as a writer, Skinner became very interested in psychology, especially the topic of behaviorism. I feel like this is a really good thing because of all the work that Skinner did for psychology and behaviorism. Skinner did a lot of research regarding behavior and is also credited with making the distinction between Pavlov’s classical conditioning and his own operant conditioning. I remember learning a lot about Skinner before and also about operant conditioning but I still find it an interesting topic to read about and learn new information about from this chapter.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
The topic that I found least interesting to learn about in this chapter was about Edward C. Tolman and his research, work, and ideas. For some reason, this section of the chapter was just not interesting to me. I think that his ideas seemed to science like for me, rather than psychology related, which isn’t very interesting to me because I was never very good at science. A lot of his work that was talked about in this section dealt with thinking of behavior at a molar versus molecular level, which wasn’t as interesting to me as the work Skinner and Hull did, even though it is as important to the history and science of psychology.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think that the most important information in this chapter that is useful to understanding the history of psychology is the work that B.F. Skinner did with conditioning. I think it is important for psychology to have both classical and operant conditioning and the fact that Skinner was the psychologist to distinguish these two ideas is a big asset to learning and understanding the history of psychology. Without these ideas and the work Skinner did to detail operant conditioning, psychology would not be the same science that it is today.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter relates to previous ones in many ways that the previous ones related to even earlier ones. Many of the psychologists in this chapter related to or were taught by previous ones that we learned about. For example, B.F. Skinner learned a lot about Watson and Pavlov, which heightened his interest in behaviorism and psychology in general. Watson is important to this chapter as well because without his initial ideas in behaviorism, there would not have been the time of neobehaviorism. It is always interesting to see the different ways previous chapters affect the current one that we are reading about.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?
The topic that I would like to learn more about from chapter 11 is the close-up about the IQ zoo and the “misbehavior of organisms.” Reading all the information about this topic in the close-up was really interesting and different from what we usually learn about in these chapters. I thought the idea was really different and fun and I would be interested in learning more about the details of this IQ zoo and the “misbehavior of organisms.”

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
One of the things I thought about while reading chapter 11 was how the habit strength of Clark Hull. I found that this information related a lot to what I have learned about in my motivation and emotion class, concerning drive, drive reduction, and reinforcers. It was interesting to be able to make that connection and be able to relate something from this class and this chapter to another one where I have learned the same ideas.

Terms: neobehaviorism, Clark Hull, hypnosis, B. F. Skinner, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, Edward C. Tolman, molar versus molecular behavior, Watson, Pavlov, habit strength, drive reduction, reinforcers

1a) What did you find interesting?

Tolman’s system of behavioral psychology
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
Tolman’s influence and addition to Watson’s work is amazing. He built off of Watson while gracefully disproving and improving other aspects of Watson’s ideas. One of Tolman’s problems with Watsonian behaviorism is the idea that all behavior can be derived from small muscle movements or glandular responses called molecular behavior. Tolman believed that behavior was larger than these small responses. The large scale response is defined as molar behavior. A rat completing a maze is molar behavior. Watson would argue that the rat is just following a series of kinesthetic steps that compiled to finishing a maze. Tolman disproved Watson by filling a familiar maze with water. Rats were able to complete the maze without error even though they kinesthetic motion was different between swimming and walking. Tolman also included the idea that behavior was driven by goals. The goals could be simple like finding food or water or complex like trying to finish graduate school. He defined this drive as purposiveness.
2a) What did you find interesting?

Tolman’s research on cognitive maps
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found this interesting probably because I am in a cognitive psychology class and we sometimes discuss cognitive maps. It is a little ironic that a behaviorist made some of the earliest advances in what we would consider a cognitive psychology topic. Tolman believed rats would learn a maze through exploration and the mental construction of a cognitive map without the help of a stimulus-response relationship. He described this kind of learning as latent learning because it occurred below a conscious threshold. How he decided it was below the conscious surface is beyond me. Tolman’s experiment to prove his theory was genius. He had three groups: a group that was rewarded for completing the maze, a group that was never rewarded, and a group that was initially not rewarded but was rewarded halfway through the experiment. Per usual the reward group outperformed the control group, but the truly interesting group was the group rewarded halfway through the experiment. This third group performed about as well as the no reward group until the mid-point where they found food at the end of the maze. The third group’s number of mistakes dropped immediately after they were rewarded with food. Their number of mistakes were even better than those in the reward group. This shows that they had learned the map without a stimulus-response relationship but lacked the proper motivation to complete it properly.
3a) What did you find interesting?

Skinner and operant conditioning
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I would have liked to discussed the advances made by Tolman and Hull in experimental procedures and statistics but did not in fear of looking as if I read only the first half of the chapter. So I decided to do the easiest section of the chapter in stead. Skinner was of course aware of Pavlov’s kind of conditioning, and even though Skinner’s entire view style of psychology was based on Pavlov’s findings he continued to make a distinct difference between types of conditionings. Pavlov’s conditioning is that an identifiable stimulus is paired with a condition stimulus in hopes that usual response to the original stimulus is transferred to the conditioned stimulus. Skinner named this type s conditioning which is different to his type r conditioning. Type r or operant conditioning requires a more active role from the organism. If an organism emits a behavior that is rewarded it is likely to repeat the behavior. Skinner used rats as his primary subjects. He would put them in a box with two levers. One lever released food while the other lever released a mild electric shock. As predicted Skinner found that rats initially pressed both levers at equivalent rates, but they quickly began to favor the food lever and avoid the shocking lever.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? 

Hypotheico-deductive system
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
It was interesting as was most of this chapter, but if I had to pick a least interesting this is the winner, or loser, however you want to look at it. I think it lacks some of the wow-factor that surround Hull and his theory. It also was not followed by the most entertaining material that is his postulates.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
Understanding behaviorism as a whole would be really important for me. Since I completed the psychology degree in less that a year a half I did not have the opportunity to learn about behavior modification so this could the most I get in a school setting.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
Finally a chapter without Leipzig! All these guys were influenced by Watson’s introduction of behaviorism and all were aware of Pavlov and his findings.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about? 

Anything about Hull
7b) Why?
I feel like Tolman and Skinner stole the show of this chapter. I think if Hull did not have to share a chapter with these two he would be more interesting or his work would be more resounding.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
How could Skinner still question cognitive psychology so aggressively in 1990? There was plenty of evidence by then that the brain was capable of more than what behaviorists originally thought. Did he not keep up on literature? Was he afraid to lose prestige by going back on a lifetime dedicated to behaviorism? Was he too old and stubborn to accept that psychology has room for cognitive and behavioral branches?
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.

Tolman, molecular behavior, Watson, molar behavior, purposiveness, Skinner, operant conditioning, type s conditioning, type r conditioning, hypothetico-deductive system, Hull

1) What did you find interesting? Why?
Tolman was really interesting to me. He read into different subjects and through this discovered William James and became interested in Psychology. He tried to combine both Gestalt and behaviorism. He did a lot of research with animal mazes and was another psychologist who again tried to find a way to make maze research repeatable and create a standard. He found that it is much easier to remember something when you are making whole body movements or are using molar behaviors. So in the maze mice can also do things such as using cues to find out when their prize lied, this is called sign-gestalt. He found it’s more accurate to measure using error scores than it is using completion scores.

2) What did you find interesting? Why?
I found the Hull system interesting because it was inspired by Isaac Newton and he tried to convince graduate students to read Newtons work, Hull really wanted to share his inspiration with others. I think that Hull worked on his theory up to his death was something that showed his dedication. Hull was inspired by Newtons viewed the universe (something I have always found interesting to think about). Newton viewed the universe as “a giant machine controlled by precise mathematical laws”. Hull started to think that the understanding of human behavior could only occur if a certain machine was built just like a human. Hull was also influenced Newtons beliefs about progress in science, Hull used hypothetics-decutive system to study, test, and modify his theories. This system was also used my Tolman (my previous post)

3) What did you find interesting? Why?
Neobehaviorism was a significant role in promoting the use of animals as research participants within psychological studies. They firmly believed in the ideas based on evolutionary concepts of continuity among species. This idea that all species are somehow interconnected allowed them to apply research done on animal subjects, to humans without having to do the studies on them. Often these studies would include unethical treatment of its subjects, having animals as the subjects have been commonly accepted because at least the tests are not being conducted on human beings. While I would not be able to do some of the research that is done on animal subjects, and I don’t really like the idea of doing scientific studies on animals in general. However, I understand that in order for us to better understand some things and to make things safer for humans we need to use animal test to help us.

4) What one thing did you find the least interesting? Why?
I just found the section over positivism and operationism to drag on, so I was looking forward more to learning about the people in the chapter than I was about learning the history or the concepts of this chapter. I just felt that a lot of the concepts were just basic knowledge and were things we had covered before and weren’t that interesting. It was nice to get a little refresher on concepts such as operational definitions and converging operations which is great, however I just didn’t like how the information was given.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I believe that B. F. Skinner and his study about operant conditioning are important in psychology because there are many ways operant conditioning can be researched. He also determined the difference between classical and operant conditioning, which will be useful because once we understand the differences we can easily relate them to everyday life as well as other studies.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate to the previous chapters?
This chapter related to the previous chapter because they both discuss behaviorism. The previous chapter discussed the origins of behaviorism and this chapter discussed the evolution of behaviorism. The previous chapter discusses how behaviorism was found. This chapter builds on to the discussing why we behavior a certain way.

7) What topic would you like to learn more about? Why?
I would like to learn more about Skinner and his differentiation with classical and operant conditioning. Because once you have a full understanding of the two, you can use them in real life. I would also like to learn more about neobehaviorism because it was an interesting movement that consisted of many different experimental psychologists. I think understand what each one of them did during this era would help to better understand the era and the movement.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?
I was wondering in this chapter was how can you classify a measurement of something such as hunger? I know that the operational definition was said to make it so they were able to measure with measurements such as time, but there are different levels of hunger that increase with time, so is there a way to classify those into measurements?

9) Terms: Operational definitions, operationism, Molar behavior, neobehaviorism, Edward Tolman, B. F. Skinner, Newton,

1a) What did you find interesting?
Operationism
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
It is based on the intuition that we do not know the meaning of a concept unless we have a method of measurement for it, so scientific concepts were not defined in absolute terms. It also allows for questions Percy Bridgman called pseudoproblems, questions that might be interesting but were just not answerable by means of scientific observation.
2a) What did you find interesting?
Neobehaviorism
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
Neobehaviorism was interesting because it acknowledges the importance of also understanding elements that are internal to an individual. Whereas classical behaviorism is only concerned with the environment as a factor of behavior, neobehaviorism stresses the interaction of the individual and environment.
3a) What did you find interesting?
Cognitive map
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I was interested in this because it had to do with memory and they first began studying cognitive maps on mice. This is a type of mental representation which rats or people use to acquire, store, recall, and decode information about the locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday environment. The concept was introduced by Edward Tolman in 1948 because he didn’t believe rats were learning the maze from responses to stimuli but rather this cognitive map.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
Skinner
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
While I have very much enjoyed learning about Skinner and all the things he has done for psychology, I feel like I have covered him in every class an know a lot about him already.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
This chapter was all about the behaviorist approach to psychology and how that dominated the field for most of the last century. This section is important because the behaviorism is still a very relevant field of psychology today and learning about how these people developed their research could help us further understand how to modify and improve upon it.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
In chapter 10 we were learning about the origins of behaviorism and where it came from, whereas in this chapter we learned a lot about the people who made it famous and brought it into the fold.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
Edward Tolman
7b) Why?
I went through his section a bit fast and would like to know more about him because I enjoyed reading his section about cognitive maps.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I kept thinking about my behavior modification class and how the things these men were studying and developing are many of the things we are still studying and developing today.
9) Terms: cognitive map, behaviorism, operationism, neobehaviorism, Edward Tolman, B.F. Skinner

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
The topic of Skinner and operant conditioning sparked my interest because I have always found this topic to be interesting. I have learned about both in previous years, but I don’t seem to get bored by it. I got to know a little bit more about Skinner and his life history and I have never read about that kind of information before. I also found it to be really interesting that he built off of another person’s research and created something different and useful as well. He built off of Pavlov’s conditioning concept and came up with operant conditioning. This information was somewhat of a refresher but it was good to read about it again and understand it in a better manner.
2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found molar behavior to be really interesting because it is interesting how the brain works and I love the brain. It is almost like our brain programs after a certain time and we subconsciously do things on a daily basis. A perfect example for me personally would be snowboarding and doing tricks. I know do tricks without even thinking about it because it is programmed into my brain of how to do these things without even thinking. I would be able to explain how to do a trick without even thinking as well. Another example would be driving home, after a while it’s just a habit no thinking involved. And directions to someone else would be a piece of pie to tell a person as well.
3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
Clark Hull was extremely interesting to me because this was a name I was not familiar with or at least I don’t remember him. I think it was so crazy that he contracted so many health issues at such a young age and was partially paralyzed at the age of 24. Even with all of this he managed to make/design his how brace to help him because of his polio and I find that to be extremely amazing.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
Edward Tolman was probably my least favorite topic in this chapter, not because I don’t find him interesting but because I found everything else really interesting so this was my least favorite. I’m also not a huge fan of the rat mazes because it is information that is really repetitive in psychology and we hear about it often. Yes, I think they are important but they don’t spark my interest as much.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I personally think that Skinner and his concept of operant conditioning is the most useful in this chapter because it has seemed to carry throughout the history of psychology. This idea of conditioning is something that is used in many research studies. It is an important tool that allows psychologists to understand why humans and animals act in certain situations.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
Chapter 11 builds on from the other chapters by showing how behaviorism created research and scientific studies further and further. It also did a great job of showing the important theories and theorists who have shaped the history of psychology. This chapter also touched based on topics that were briefly mentioned in previous chapters as well. The connection that is made is with the important people and their concepts that they contributed to which has progressed into the history of psychology; there was repeats of these people in previous chapters.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?
I think that I would want to know more about Clark Hull because he really caught my interest in many ways. I didn’t know anything about him before I read this chapter and once I did read about him, he seemed like a pretty amazing person even if it was short lived. He studied how to reduce behavior which has a correlation with my major of a special education teacher. I want to know if any of his studies were considered when creating structures and strategies for reducing behavior in the classrooms. I myself have health issues, not as extreme as his, but I feel like there is somewhat of connection personally because he was still be able to overcome obstacles and I hope to do that as well.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I kept thinking about how Clark Hull had so many health struggles but still managed to be successful in his young life. I relate because of my health struggles and wanting to be something amazing someday. Another thing that I related to was the idea of reducing behavior. This is something that I will have to do in my classroom on a daily basis and I just wonder if any of his ideas carried on through today.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
B.F. Skinner, Pavlov, Operant Conditioning, Conditioning, Behaviorism, Clark Hull, Edward Tolman, Behavior, Molar Behavior

A.S

1a) What did you find interesting?
Operationism

1b) Why was it interesting to you?
Instead of relying solely on observable measures, the idea of operationism provided a connection between scientific concepts in relation to the operations used to measure them. This helped to describe concepts such as hunger and gravity. They used operational definitions to describe procedures for measurements to bring out the differences in the ideas of hunger and gravity, based on varying levels of their measurement.
It is an interesting idea because at the time measuring objects or ideas that were not observable was probably considered farfetched.

2a) What did you find interesting?
Field theory

2b) Why was it interesting to you?
Field theory is interesting on its own. Influenced by Gestalt psychology, Lewin developed a theory that emphasized the importance of individual personalities, interpersonal conflict and situational variables. Lewin's Field Theory proposed that behavior is the result of the individual and the environment. This theory had a major impact on social psychology, supporting the notion that our individual traits and the environment interact to cause behavior. This is a sound theory and I believe it to hold true.

3a) What did you find interesting?
Edward Tolman and his rat mazes

3b) Why was it interesting to you?
Edward Tolman was a Cognitive Behaviorist who believed that animals had the ability to learn things that they could use later in a variety of ways. He is well-known for his theory on Latent Learning, which states that learning occurs even if there is no reward. He demonstrated this in an experiment where rats were trained to run a maze without a reward. After a few days, a reward was introduced. The day after the reward was introduced; the rats began to run the maze faster. This showed that the rats developed a mental map of the maze when they were going through it without a reward. Upon introducing the reward, the rats demonstrated their learning by being able to run the maze faster in order to get the reward.
This was interesting because the rats were able to form a cognitive map, which humans do on regular basis, whether they realize it or not. For example you go to a certain store, like Walmart, you’ve never explored the section where the bicycles are and you’ve never paid any mind to it, put you have passed by there many times on your way to buy food, or video games, ect. One day you decide you want to buy a bicycle and you go to Walmart. You will head towards the section knowing exactly where it is, never having actually been in the section, explored it, or paid any mind to it.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
Hull

4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
Clark Hull was an interesting man and led the majority of his life struggling. Everything that was thrown at him he fought through. The not so interesting thing about him was his hypothetico-deductive system. The system has been in use before hull, but he was the one to point out certain aspects, and tweak them improving on it as a whole. His postulates, which make up the theory, lead to experiments which support the theory. To me it sounds like circular reasoning, but I’m not completely clear on the theory.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
To understand the history of psychology you must understand where the critical points were, and what changed, the new ways of thought are. This chapter captured one of those moments where behaviorism leaped forward, a new way of thinking or reasoning was introduced and radical behaviorism came into play.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter continues after Watson and his discoveries took place. It goes further into behaviorism, which Watson was. It introduces new theories and new ideas about behaviorism.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
Skinner

7b) Why?
He was a major character in leading behaviorism to where it is now. I would like to know more about any other experiments he may have performed, and more about parts of his life that were left unmentioned.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I was really fascinated by how much behaviorism was propelled forward due to Watson and skinner. Behaviorism didn’t really take hold till the 1930’s but only because of Watsons constant propagandizing.

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Operationism, field theory, latent learning, hypothetico-deductive system, operational, cognitive mapping, generalization, behaviorism,

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?

Drive Reduction: Drive reduction has two reinforces, a primary reinforcers that connect directly with survival, like food and water. The secondary reinforcers are things that are associated with the primary reinforcers. A tone every time you eat lets your animals know it is time to eat, like a cow bell. The primary drives are reduced when the individual receives the primary reinforcers.

2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?

Cognitive Map: I thought cognitive map was interesting because it seems to use our perception initially and then we obtain the memory of our perception from our previous experiences with the environment we have been at. I wonder if the defa vu feeling is just a memory we sense and cannot fully remember where the experience is from or if it happened or not.

3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?

Instinctive Drift: I thought it was interesting how Keller and Marian Breland were able to teach many different types of animals to do different types of tasks. For a long time and still today most people believe that we are different from animals in order to keep our rank on top of the food chain/ feed our egos. One main distinction is that we claim that animals only do things within their instinctive behaviors, or they have a lack of conscious ability or to be able to self-identify themselves as the type of animal they are. When Keller and Marian found a way to teach animals things that these types of animals don’t normally do or instinctively do in the wild, but then found certain things they were trying to teach to the animals that eventually the animal instinctively take over and do what they normally behave.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?

Operant Conditioning: I find Operant Conditioning because I already learned about it in many of my classes. It makes sense why something we do not like or have the uncomfortable sensation to not do again. I am interested in how this is wrong. When someone is a drug addict they themselves don’t like it but cannot stop, so when does this become irrelevant? I think generally Operant Conditioning is correct, but under certain conditioning like drugs and law does not seem to work in the same way.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?

I think what was most useful in understanding the history of psychology was the bull shit way our political government which is capitalist at the time, now so called “welfare state” made our citizens think that communism is bad. I would have to agree that there are some flaws in communism but it is mostly that you have to trust the government with that much power. We can’t really trust our government either but in this government we have the right to own private property which is mostly looked on as businesses. This is why there was a lot of misconceptions on communism because the big corporations that like use the people to feed their own addiction aka money and power, didn’t want to give it up. So in a sense this is most useful to understand how one political group tries to deceive the people in order to get the things they personally want aka more money and power. If we learned about this in general for the mass population maybe all wars would stop. The deception of what communism was because of Stalin ruining it in practice started the cold war which now we have the capability to destroy the entire planet with one push of a button for no real apparent reason other than the fear of losing our ability to stick to our own old ways and fear of loss of power is apparently greater than losing everything.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?

Pavlov Classical conditioning and B. F. Skinner’s Operant Conditioning seem to be pretty similar. Pavlov Classical conditioning results from an unconditioned reflex, when Pavlov looked into it he found what the factor was that made an unconditioned reflex, which is a conditioned stimulus to make a conditioned reflex. Pavlov also noticed the reflex eventually became extinct. In Operant Conditioning Skinner mainly looked at how people respond in certain conditioning behaviors. He believed there were two different consequences a positive and a negative response. A positive response makes someone do the behavior more often and the negative response makes the behavior decline. They are similar because Pavlov looked at what stimulus’s makes a person do a particular behavior and Skinner noticed two types of things that can influence one to do are not doing a behavior.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?

I would like to learn more about Instinctive Drift, because I wonder if we humans also have this ability as well. I can see a particular situation where we feel instinctively to do certain behaviors when we get into the routine of things. An example could be if you are used to drinking a couple beers after work then sometimes when you feel like you shouldn’t drink anymore beers every night your natural instinct to drink a beer starts when you pick up the beer and are more likely to start drinking it like you normally do. This would also be an example of stimulus control. Getting done with a hard day’s work can make you want to have a drink of beer to calm down after work.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?

I was wondering how law enforcement uses operant conditioning. Some crimes you are able to get probation or a couple years in prison. In a since prison is the condition where we want to avoid the types of behavior in order to get in there. When one becomes alright with prison then there personality has probably changed from the influence of the people in there. That in of itself seems like it can hinder this conception of operant conditioning within the prison example. If there was such a way to treat so called “criminals” like people in psych wards, I wonder if that would be any better? At least psychologist would be able to supervise them and not just prison guards who can care less on what goes on. At least they are more naïve in the psychological spectrum.

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Instinctive Drift
Drive Reduction
Primary Reinforcers
Secondary Reinforcers
Stimulus control
Operant Conditioning
Cognitive Map
Unconditioned Reflex
Conditional stimulus
Conditioned reflex
Extinction
Classical Conditioning
Operant Conditioning

a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
Learning about logical positivism was interesting because it looked at a whole new perspective of things. It didn’t just look into the observable side of things, but it looked into deeper thing that we can’t see. I think it is really cool because it can open up a whole lot more research which can lead to new findings. It was a great way of thinking outside of the box. Operationism provided the link to being able to study this way because it was the idea that scientific concepts shouldn’t be define in absolute terms but instead with reference to the operations used to measure them.
2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
Neobehaviorism was also an interesting concept to me. Neobehaviorists believed that learning was central to understanding behavior. Basically that knowing why people do the things they do require a thorough analysis of the basic principles of how things are learned. I just find it interesting to learn about the different ways psychologists can study one thing and all their different perceptions on how to study it.
3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I liked reading about all the different types of behaviors that Toldman came up with. The easiest one to understand was goal-directedness behavior because that is something we do every day, I am doing this homework because I have a goal of getting a good grade in the class.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
I didn’t not really have any interest while reading the reaction potential formula. It was just the idea that different factors could influence someones reaction. I just think its obvious that there are different factors and I didn’t care to read an entire paragraph about it.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think reading about the different types of behaviors that Tolman listed will help us understand the history of psychology because it breaks up behavior into different categories so each category could be studied differently and that will help us understand why we do what we do.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter is continuing to describe the development of behaviorists thinking, which was talked about in the previous chapter. This chapter just focuses more on the work of three psychologists.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
While reading about the idea that rats had a cognitive map it made me think about this blind girl study where there was a 2 ½ year old blind girl who was in a room where the was a pillow on one wall, a table one another wall, and a desk on another. She stood at the wall with nothing on it and she was led to one object and back to where she started, then the next object and back, and then the next object and back. After that she was told to walk to the objects by herself and she was able to walk from one object to the next creating her own pathways so it makes made me wonder if that was kind of like a cognitive map In her head.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Logical positivism, operationism, neobehaviorism, Tolman, goal-directedness, cognitive map, reaction potential

1)
I found it interesting how the text discussed that to a certain extent the development of behaviorism as a force in American psychology had derived from an optimistic public belief that a way had been found to raise their children efficiently, to improve their marriages, their businesses, their education and in general to help them lead more productive lives. They seemed to buy into it a lot and were depending on it for many areas within their lives. I also always find it interesting to see who these individuals influences were. Hulls was Isaac Newton and in the past it has been people like Albert Einstein. Its cool how such intelligent people sparked the interest and impacted these psychologists ideas and theories. I also found it interesting how we hear about Skinner in so many of our classes and he seemed like such a powerful person within psychology but the text discussed things like how he was never elected president of the APA and his research is seldom referenced in APA journals like the Journal of Experimental psychology for example.

2)

It was interesting how Tolman did not pursue a career in electrochemistry as he was trying to avoid competing against his talented brother Richard who became a well known physicist and even contributed to the development of the atomic bomb during World War II! I always find it interesting linking history with psychology and seeing how what was going on in the world at the time and how this affected the field. Wars seemed to have a great impact. In the previous chapter we saw someone get dismissed from the University for speaking out about his opinions regarding what was going on in the world. Now in this chapter Tolman protested the country’s involvement in World War I and was dismissed from Northwestern in 1918. During World War II he was motivated to write Drives Toward War, where he combined some of his ideas along with those of Freud in order to explain things such as what leads to warfare and to make some recommendations to eliminate the problem.

3)
Another thing I found interesting was when the chapter discussed Iowa. Kenneth Spence who got to know Hull while studying at Yale made contributions significant enough for Hulls theory to become known as the Hull Spence Theory. At the University of Iowa, he even perpetuated the Hullian legacy by producing about 73 PhD students between the years of 1940 and 1963. I was surprised to see that at Yale only eight psychology doctorates were given out between 1903-1921. It seems like such a big time gap for more not to be awarded at such a prestigious school which we’ve heard a lot about so far throughout the chapters.

4)
The section on molar versus molecular behavior was really uninteresting and confusing. It discussed things like muscle movements, glandular responses and kinesthetic responses. One sentence read, “the whole behavior is more than the sum of its stimulus-response units.” It was all way over my head and I could not get into reading it. I enjoy hearing how history affects psychology, like mentioned before, but the section titled Evaluating Tolman went way too into depth for me when discussing the Cold War, Soviet Union and Communists. The section about Postulate 4 was extremely confusing to me as well, especially when it included a portion of it discussing things like effector activity, receptor activity and temporal contiguity. It started to make a bit of sense when discussing habit strength and drive reduction but overall I was overwhelmed when reading it. Finally, I did not find the schedules of reinforcement section interesting as it was as well very confusing.

5)
This chapter was useful in explaining Watson’s role within behaviorism. The New York Times even wrote that Watson’s behaviorism, “marks an epoch in the intellectual history of man.” This chapter taught us as well about the origins of logical positivism. It mentioned philosophers meeting known as the Vienna Circle which promoted this positive thinking. It was also useful knowing how behaviorism came about. It discussed this area being influenced by Pavlov’s conditioning studies and the acceptance of operationism and logical positivism. This movement became central to American experimental psychology and lasted thirty years from 1930-1960. Another useful topic within the chapter concerned Bacon and how he provided the prototype of what psychologist-historian Laurence Smith has referred to as the technological ideal.

6)
As mentioned in chapter 10 we saw again a bit about Watson regarding behaviorism. It mentioned terms we have seen in the past as well such as imageless thoughts and introspection. This chapter also discussed how after World War I many psychologists became interested in applied psychology which we read over in chapter eight. It also brought up gestalt psychology and Freudian psychology which we’ve read about so far. It discussed quite a bit about Pavlov’s role to behaviorisms rise to power. We saw him throughout most of chapter ten. Koffka was mentioned who we saw before in chapter nine concerning gestalt psychology. It as well mentioned Willard Small and his hampton court design which we read about in the up close section of chapter six. It mentioned too Woodworth’s famous text The Columbia Bible which we saw in chapter seven. Titchener was mentioned as well who we have seen in several previous chapters, along with James Angell from chapter seven who was one of the leaders of the Chicago functionalists. Thorndike was mentioned too from chapter seven, along with his argument with Wells over laboratory methods. It mentioned E.G. Boring who we have seen before along with Bacon from chapter two and his argument that understanding nature required making systematic observations of it without a preconceived theoretical framework.

7)
An up-close section mentioned some of Skinners student going on to make a life for themselves using what they learned of operating conditioning to train animals. They created a business called Applied Behavior Enterprise. I couldn’t believe they landed a contract with General Mills, Inc. training chickens in advertisements for one of their products. They even wrote the first training manuals for conditioning dolphins, developing scripts for early dolphin shows. The text mentioned how the best known Breland Bailey ABE program was bird brain where a chicken could play tic tac toe and never lose to a human. I had never heard about any of this before so it was a really cool piece to read. It might be interesting to do some more research on the company and see all that they have done.

8)
I always see how there are so many connections between all of the individuals we read about. In this chapter for example S.S. Stevens was a doctoral student of E.G. Boring who we’ve continued to see throughout the chapters. Many of these individuals we’ve read about so far seem to have grown up with money and went to prestigious schools, receiving higher education. Hull however was born into poverty on a farm and was educated in a one-room school house. It was interesting to see this change. Great illnesses as well seemed to affect many of these individuals as well. In this chapter it discussed Hull almost dying from typhoid fever and later contracting polio which left him partially paralyzed at only 24! I was surprised to see that between 1941-50 about 70 percent of all research articles published in areas of learning and motivation referred to and referenced Hull’s work. It seems like such a huge chunk, showing how great of an influence he really was.

9) Terminology: Logical Positivism, Operationism, Neobehaviorism, Molar Behavior, Latent Learning, Habit Strength, Drive Reduction,

What did you find interesting?
Neobehaviorism
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found this interesting because it was something I don’t think I have learned or heard about in my other psych classes. It was movement in America that began from 1930-1960. It was extended from behaviorism and Pavlov’s work. In this movement, it was believed that behavior could be applied to all species, so many researchers used non-human subjects when conduction their research. Animal behavior studies were being conducted. It was also believed that conditioning was vital to understanding behavior. From this it was believed that nurture was more important than nature. All of this applied to the America people because Watson wanted to use this in education.

2a) What did you find interesting?
Purposiveness
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
This was brought about Tolman and this term can be exchanged with “goal-directedness”. Purposiveness was considered a widespread feature of the behaviors that we learn. Tolman used the example of the rat in the maze to explain this. The rat has to get through the maze but the main reason for getting through the maze is getting the food at the end. I think that this can be applied to real life. We act and do things for an end result.

3a) What did you find interesting?
Skinner and the Project Pigeon
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I think I found this to interesting because he was using a different type of animal and it seems most studies were being done with rats. In this study he trained pigeon’s to peck at target, and then the missile would change dierectuion until the target was in the “crosshairs of the screen”. He built a well-developed prototype but the project was killed by the military. This project on operant conditioning would be picked up again but not with Skinner.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
Types of conditioning
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
I remember briefly learning about these in a previous psych and I find the information to be more dry. Also these terms are more technical and I like learning more about Skinner’s experiments then the actual technicality of theories.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think that it is important how behaviorism is changing and how more people are continuing to contribute to this field of psychology. It shows that there is no end point and contributions are being made all the time.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
I think that this chapter really build on the previous on where behaviorism is being introduced. Many of these psychologist mentioned in this chapter build on the work of Pavlov and many others. Also they build on the different types of conditioning and how we learn.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
Watson and behaviorism in education
7b) Why?
Since I am education major I always find it interesting how this relates to education. I want to find out how Watson used neobehaviorism in education.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I was thinking a lot about how this could be used in education and also the nature nurture debate. I think a lot of it is the nurture aspect and I think that it would be neat to look at different studies that explore this topic.

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Neobehaviorism, Watson, Pavlov, behaviorism, Tolman, purposiveness, Skinner, conditioning

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?

The first thing I found interesting was Edward Tolman. He graduated from MIT with a degree in electrochemistry, but did not pursue a career in the field. Tolman’s brother was a highly achieved physicist who contributed to making the first atomic bomb in World War II. It was rumored that Tolman did not want to compete with his brother, so to avoid conflict, Tolman began to pursue another subject. Tolman was another person who became enthralled with William James’s book. He began to try and combine Gestalt and behaviorism. He studied the learning behaviors of rats learning mazes. He learned that a lot of animal research with mazes was not reliable, so he examined ways to yield more consistent data. Tolman decided to look more at the whole body movements of the rats rather than the completion of the maze. He found it more useful in studying the errors the rat makes while in the maze. As the rats became more familiar with the maze, they picked up indicators and environmental cues that helped them through it. These cues were what Tolman referred to as sign-gestalt.

2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?

Another topic that interested me was Clark Hull. He was interesting because he shows that perseverance can pay off in the end. He was born into poverty and was raised on farm in Michigan. He was educated in a one-room schoolhouse. He almost died from typhoid fever just before he started college. After his second year at Alma College, he contracted polio. He was partially paralyzed at the age of 24, and ended up giving up his goal of becoming a mining engineer due to the physical demands of the job. His most memorable course in his college career was in experimental psychology. While trying to receive his doctorate in psychology, Hull’s dissertation became one of his best-known studies. It involved learning new concepts. He used Chinese characters and divided them into radicals. He paired each radical up with a nonsense sounds and had participants learn to associate the sounds with the radicals. His findings suggested that the idea of learning was the result of a gradual increase in “habit strength.”

3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?

I found operationism interesting. This concept is based on the idea that scientific concepts were to be defined in absolute terms in order to measure them. It allowed researchers to measure things like hunger and anxiety. This concept of operational definitions defines concepts that could not be observed directly. It opened up windows in psychology and allowed us to focus on broader spectrums, and a wider variety of topics.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? 
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?

I found neobehaviorism to be the least interesting topic. This is a behaviorist movement that emerged in the 1930s. I felt like this section talked in circles, and did not provide me with substantial information. I believe this section could have been omitted from the chapter, and it would not have affected my understanding of the evolution of behaviorism.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?

I believe that B.F. Skinner’s concept of operant conditioning is the most useful in understanding the history of psychology. Operant conditioning is a behavior that is shaped by consequences. If the consequences of the behavior are positive, then the behavior is more likely to be reciprocated; but if the consequences are negative, the behavior is less likely to be reciprocated. B.F. Skinner called this type of conditioning Type R conditioning. He also referred to Pavlov’s type of conditioning as Type S conditioning. He called it this because the behavior is associated and formed between two stimuli. The concept of operant conditioning is one of the two main points associated with behaviorism.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?

This chapter builds on the previous chapters because it took the previous topic of behaviorism from the last chapter, and showed how the concept evolved overtime. It also showcased how Gestalt psychology was combined with behaviorism by Hull to examine a different perspective of things. It also took the ideas of Thorndike, and other previous researchers that studied rat mazes, and improved their studies. It made the results more consistent and helped establish a better understanding of behaviorism.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about? 
7b) Why?

The idea of the “Stroop Effect” was briefly mentioned in the section under neobehaviorism. This is a problem in which the color naming is hindered by interferences. For example, it is hard to read the word purple if the font is green. This concept is intriguing, because it can become quite frustrating.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?

While reading this chapter I thought about my psychology of gender differences class, and how this subject matter intertwined. My gender differences class talked about positive and negative reinforcement. I did not think the book touched base on this subject, and I believe that it was a major part of behaviorism. It goes along with operant conditioning, and shows how certain behaviors can force a response due to reinforcements, whether they are positive or negative.

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.

Sign-gestalt, Tolman, Hull, Habit strength, neobehaviorism, operationism, operational definitions, replication, william james, pavlov, type s conditioning, type r conditioning, operant conditioning

1a&b) Neobehaviorism. Since this is a term that is tossed around in a lot of psychology classes I thought I would take the time to learn a little bit about it. The popularity of behaviorism in the psychology community continued into the 1930’s and beyond as the neobehaviorist school of thought emerged. The unifying characteristics of this movement included the belief that the study and analysis of the behavior of animals could be applied to human behavior. Another of the chief components of the discipline was the strong belief in conditioning and its importance to the study of behavior. The neobehaviorists focused on learning and conditioning so much so that this subject became a point of contention within the movement.
2a&b) B. F. Skinner. Skinner is a name that you hear in psychology almost as often as Freud, and since his name is so well-known I thought I would benefit from a more complete understanding of his experiments and history. Burrhus Frederick Skinner may not be as familiar to us as ‘B.F. Skinner’ but this is only one aspect of this man’s life that is not as well-known as his reputation; during his undergraduate career he was dedicated to becoming an author and only after coping with a “dark year” did he come to be interested in psychology and behaviorism. After attending Harvard for graduate research he wrote many books on behaviorism and conducted experiments on operant conditioning but what I found most interesting was his individual philosophy. Contradicting many of the prominent behaviorists at the time, Skinner suggested his own method of observing behavior then drawing conclusions afterword, instead of the model of theorizing, testing, and then adjusting the hypothesis.
3a&b) Tolman’s mazes. I was drawn to the complex diagrams of mazes found in the section about Edward Tolman and was curious to see what he was studying using these apparatus. Tolman conducted numerous experiments in comparative psychology with rats and their learning of maze environment, these mazes ranged from simple to very complex systems that were equally varied in design. The thing that interested me upon reading the section was the fact that Tolman realized and adapted to the negative opinions on the credibility of mazes in research; instead of abandoning the apparatus as an instrument of research Tolman refocused on standardizing maze- learning and working to improve the reliability of the data gathered.
4a&b) Hull’s postulates and research. I didn’t really connect with any of Clark Hull’s research for whatever reason. I understand that his postulates and theory significantly advanced American psychology, but somewhere the book’s presentation of his history and work I got a little lost in the noise. It could be that I was preoccupied with the big names like Skinner or multiple other reasons but it would be difficult to pinpoint.
5) The most important take-away from this chapter in understanding psychology, to me, was the evolution of behaviorism into neobehaviorism and just how extensive the movement was in America. The text book states the dates for neobehaviorism as being from the 1930’s to 1960’s, which is a very significant amount of time in respect to previous movements. The enduring quality of the movement alludes to the fact that psychology’s improvements in that this school of thought was able to stand the test of time while staying relevant and credible.
6) This chapter was a bit more obvious than others on how it builds on previous chapters in that we are directly presented this chapter as a follow-up to the one before it. I think that this chapter brings the reader a good perspective of the repercussions of the popularization of a certain school of thought, like behaviorism, in the large number of psychologists who adapted to researching conditioning and comparative psychology and further shaped the discipline by their respective contributions.
7a&b) After reading this chapter I found myself wanting to learn more about the other areas of psychology that were occurring at the same time, but were pushed to the periphery of the discipline because of the vast popularity of behaviorism. I was interested in this because it was something that I didn’t really consider until it was brought up in class last week, but after hearing it I realized how easily we can be made to look over whole aspects of psychology just because it isn’t mentioned in the text.
8) The thoughts that I had while reading this chapter mainly revolved around being surprised the American preoccupation with behaviorism lasted as long as it did. While I understand that this movement did a lot to further and legitimatize the field, it didn’t really strike me as revolutionary or particularly noteworthy in respect to the previous schools of thought outlined in the text. I suppose the zeitgeist would have a good deal to do with the popularization of behaviorism, and it makes sense that since this wasn’t really explored in the chapter to a great extent I would be a bit confused.
9) *terms*neobehaviorism, conditioning, B. F. Skinner, behaviorism, Edward C. Tolman, maze-learning, Clark Hull

1a) One thing I found interesting is Skinner’s schedule of reinforcement. Using reinforcement is an effective tool at increasing a behavior. Skinner found using reinforcement at different times worked in different ways. There were many different types of reinforcement schedules. A fixed ratio schedule would be reinforcing the person/animal every so many times. Like say after every 10 pushups you get to drink a soda. Fixed interval schedule is another type, this having more to do with time. A paycheck would be an example of a fixed interval schedule if you are paid say once a week. You are being reinforced for working after a specific time.
1b) I just think it’s neat how reinforcing at different times is effective in different ways. By knowing which schedules work better we are able to better reinforce people/animals to get the wanted results. Since we know fixed ratio schedules tend to work better than fixed intervals, we know to use fixed ratio schedules with small children.
2a) I found the idea of operational definitions to be interesting. Operational definitions started so variables had an exact meaning across the board. That way when conducting or reading a study everyone had the same meaning for the variable. For example, being extremely tired meant being up for two days straight to everyone. That way information about the study was easier to interpret, and the studies could be duplicated without high amounts of error.
2b) What’s more interesting than this term is what they did before it. It’s crazy to think that up until then this wasn’t discussed. Weren’t people trying to duplicate studies and getting different results, how was replication even possible? Wasn’t it hard to interpret studies when they were unsure what some of the variables were? How were people able to know what things meant without them being clearly defined? I read that it was a constant argument how to define these terms and many researchers had problems with it.
3a) Another interesting topic in this chapter is Latent Learning. Latent learning refers to learning taking place even when there is no reinforcement. It was created by Tolman using rats in a maze. They showed they remembered what was where without being reinforced, which proved reinforcement wasn’t a key in learning.
3b) This caught my attention because we’ve been learning about conditioning over and over in behaviorist’s sections and Tolman believed that learning was more a cognitive process. An opposing view always catches my attention.
4a) Probably most of the information on B.F Skinner.
4b) Since this isn’t an introductory course, most of us have read about him multiple times throughout our college carreers. It was nice to see his full name though, and not just B.F Skinner, before this I didn’t know his real name. We’ve just gone over his operant conditioning and famous Skinner Box so many times it seems less interesting than other things in this chapter.
5) The behaviorist movement played a huge role in understanding psychology. There are different components in understanding psychology, and behaviorism is one of those. Without understanding how behaviorist played a role in the development in psychology we would be missing a large chunk of understanding. We simply cannot leave everything up to biology and cognitive areas, there is room for behaviorism as well.
6) This chapter progresses into the center of the behaviorist movement and the main figures that occupied it. While last chapter focused on Watson who was known as the father of behaviorism, this chapter moved into what happened after he left his mark on the understanding of psychology and how the behavior side went along with the cognitive.
7a) I would like to learn more about the IQ zoo.
7b) I love animals and am fascinated by animals doing tricks and such. As much as I hate seeing animals locked up in zoo I just love them so much I like to go to them to see them up close.
8) While reading this chapter I thought a lot about other classes I’ve taken. Terms that I’ve covered in my behavior modification classes came to mind, along with historical figures I’ve read about there. I thought back to earlier chapters in our text and how they related. A lot of information made me think of my social psychology class that I took last year, because a lot of the terms and people were discussed in that class as well.
9) Terms: schedule of reinforcement, operational definitions, replication, Latent Learning, Operant Conditioning, Reinforcement, Skinner Box, IQ zoo

1a) Molar Versus Molecular Behavior
1b) This was interesting to me because it is something that you can actually relate to. The fact that when you repetitively do something it becomes engrained in your mind, you begin to be able to do it without even thinking about it. The example that they use is interesting because even when rats are made to swim through a maze over and over again and then they are pulled out and made to walk through the maze; even though the environment of the maze has changed they are still able to navigate the maze efficiently. This is found in the field theory, the idea that the mind is mapped out through repetitive motions and through those repetitive motions we learn our surrounding and how to get to what we need. So the rat being put through the maze over and over until he just knows which way to go, it’s just like humans when they move somewhere new, after so long of going to the same place you begin to know how to get there without need direction anymore.
2a) Latent Learning
2b) This was interesting to me because it shows that there can be things learned no matter what, latent learning, but with having it reinforced with something positive helps the learning to occur more quickly. Again the rats were used and the fact that the third group who was rewarded in the end with positive reinforcement was interesting. The fact that there tends to be a more quick and precise learning when there is a reward in the end is something that again can be shown with humans. The reward and punishment come into play. When they knew that there was a reward at the end they were more likely to go through the maze faster, while the group that had no incentive tended to give up. The group that were rewarded no matter what though had almost the same reactions as the ones that were not rewarded at all. But the group that was rewarded for completing the maze was much quicker to memorize the maze.
3a) Postulate 4
3b) This was interesting to me because it was about how habits are started, which is basically by taking what your body wants and pleasing it with something. Once that pleasure has been found, the stimulus, the habit is created in order to continue to try and get to the pleasure again. After the reinforcement of getting the need met has occurred a habit of the same results is brought about. So therefore when the rats would go through the maze they would form a habit of getting to the pleasure, the food, by going the same routes because they knew that there would be food there. They were stimulate by the food to get through the maze and a habit of taking the same route was then created.
4a) Neobehaviorism
4b) This was not interesting to me because it didn’t really bring anything new into play, it just went back to what brought the behaviorists in. This section just seems to be a repeat of previous chapters and didn’t really tell you anything that we haven’t already discussed and so therefore was just rereading what we already learned.
5) I think the part of this chapter that helps to understand psychology is the part about operationism. This part has to do with how finally there was a way to measure sensations in a means to understand them. In previous chapters there was just taking what people reported and trying to understand them and measure them. Operationism was able to actually record the events and use statistics to show how they actually occur, when and the causes.
6) It builds on the previous chapter because it is going back into stimulus and response which is what the previous chapter was about with Pavlov. This time though it is more in-depth with beginning to measure the reactions which wasn’t possible before. Memory also comes into play which is something that has been discussed in previous chapters, how memories are formed but what is new is the reinforcement being a part of memory. While using the rat mazes continues to be a recurring event.
7a) B.F. Skinner
7b) I would like to learn more about Skinner and his different approaches to behaviorism. The fact that he went out and did more with conditional responses and became recognized and well known while others in this chapter a merely in this book and not know as well. What set Skinner apart from everyone else to make the impact that he did is psychology.
8) What came to mind was the parts about when the rats were continuously put into the same maze over and over, after a while the began to know their way around the maze very quickly instead of struggling. It just made me think of how humans are the same way, that after so long you just memorize things. This whole chapter goes back to how things get memorized after doing them so many different times. The fact that the brain begins to map things out over time and how they relate the brain to a map itself. Memorizing things can be done in so many different ways but it is something that takes time it is just not instant, repetition is something that no matter what the species it will happen to them over time, having a routine helps this process.
9) Operationism, Field Theory, Latent Learning, B.F. Skinner, Neobehaviorism, Postulate 4, Conditional Response, Conditional Stimuli

1) One topic that I found interesting from this chapter was B.F. Skinner and operant conditioning. I found it fairly interesting because I was already previously familiar with it. I was surprised to learn that Skinner was very averse to authority. I did not however know that operant conditioning is sometimes referred to as Skinnerian conditioning because I had not ever heard it referred to by that name. Skinner was under the belief that not all behaviors could be conditioned the same way. Instinctive behaviors, as Skinner observed in animals, played a large part in conditioning.
2) Another interesting topic was the neobehaviorism movement. Neobehvaiorism was a school of thought that helped lead the way for the increase of animal testing. It came from the belief that attributes of behaviors that apply to one species could be applied to others. This is the reason that much testing was done on animals such as monkeys or rats. Neobehaviorists thought that what they learned from these animals could be translated to explain the behaviors of humans. This was an interesting theory that, even though I don’t personally agree, led to the justification of some unique experiments.
3) I also thought that Hull and his approach to learning were very interesting. Through his research, Hull came to believe that learning occurs at a slow but steady pace. This was very interesting to me because it is still the belief of many today. This is why professors advocate for studying early as opposed to cramming the night before an exam.
4) As in most chapters, I found the least interesting part to be the lengthy background on the psychologists mentioned. These sections are usually long and monotonous and I have a hard time paying attention while reading them. For example, I don’t think that it benefits my understanding of the history of psychology to know that B.F. Skinner “was unhappy in the fraternity/sorority-dominated atmosphere of Hamilton, but he soon found his niche and developed a passion for creative writing.” I do not see how this played an impact on B.F. Skinner’s development of the idea of operant conditioning or anything else that may be important to understanding the history of psychology.
5) I think that the most important thing to learn from this chapter is that Watson and Pavlov weren’t the only well-known behaviorists. It is important to remember that even though Watson is known as the father of behaviorism and we have phrases like “Watsonian Behaviorism,” he is not the only behaviorist that should be noted.
6) This chapter builds on the previous chapters by continuing to explain the concept of behaviorism. The last chapter introduced the main developers in this area of study and this chapter talks about some other influential people.
7) I would like to learn more about Tolman and his cognitive maps. Tolman believed that rats, as in relation to humans, had a knowledge of their maze’s structure and pattern which allowed them to quickly navigate it. I thought that this was a very interesting theory and I couldn’t help but apply it to my everyday life. For example, tonight I went to dinner with my roommates as Panchero’s. If somebody was new in town and asked how to get there it would be very easy to give them directions because I can picture to route in my mind.
8) While reading, I thought about why these psychologists researched what they did. Why did Hull use Chinese characters as stimulus material? Why was Skinner interested in finding out the way that behaviors were learned when Watson’s method was reasonably sound? Why did Tolman believe in cognitive maps?

Terms: B.F. Skinner, operant conditioning, Skinnerian conditioning, Watson, Neobehaviorism, Hull, Tolman, cognitive maps

1a) What did you find interesting?
The first thing I found interesting was Edward C. Tolman.

1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found Tolman interesting because he took much of what was already researched in the past and pushed it a step further. I also found myself to agree with many of his beliefs, such as, molar behavior, purposiveness. Adding the idea that that behavior is goal directed is something I find to be very true and think Tolman had connected dots that to further the research that came before him. I also thought that it was interesting that even through the same idea of studying rats in a maze, he could come up with a who new way to look at behavior.

2a) What did you find interesting?
Tolman’s term of expectancy.

2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I also thought this was interesting because so much of our behavior today is based off of expectancy. Whether that be studying for a test with the expectation that it is going to be hard, working to save money with the expectation that you will need it in the future, or attending class because you expect that the teacher will take attendance.

3a) What did you find interesting?
Skinner’s theory of stimulus control.

3b) Why was it interesting to you?
Even though I have previously learned about Skinner and his contributions to psychology, I still found his research to be very interesting. His work with rats in his operant chamber reinforced the work of Pavlov but to a more extreme level. The addition of stimulus control, resulted in finding that where a behavior takes place has the power to change and differentiate what behavior is performed in the first place.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
Although I don’t find schedules of reinforcement to be uninteresting by any means, I did find it to be repetitive.

4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
This was the only part I seemed to skim over a bit, only because I have been exposed to it previously in behavior modification and did not find anything new in the section.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think it will be most important to realize that no matter how many times an experiment is done, each person or researcher may focus on something completely opposite than the person who came before them. Building off of one another is not a bad thing and I think learning from those before you is very useful in continuing to develop knowledge in the future.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
The rat and maze studies that have been discussed in the previous chapters were again mentioned in this one with the work of Tolman. He built on the work of others before him like Watson. He took a new look at the way behavior is seen within the maze studies and believed that behavior occurred in direction to a specific goal or expectancy.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
I would like to learn more about Tolman and his latent learning.

7b) Why?
I would like to learn more about this because I am interested in what further work he did with latent learning and how it is viewed today.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
While reading this chapter I thought about how many of behaviorists of this time had intentions of studying something completely different than psychology or behavior, but still ended up making some of our greatest contributions today.

9) Terms: Edward C. Tolman, molar behavior, purposiveness, expectancy, Skinner, stimulus control, operant chamber, latent learning

1a. The first topic I found interesting was the section on logical positivism and operationism. These ideas arose from some of the great philosophical and logical thinkers of Vienna who casually met up to discuss the logic of science. These people came to be known as the Vienna Circle. The text talks about how the Vienna Circle began to speculate on the positivist belief that science must take a purely empirical stance where collecting data and theorizing were all products of distinct and measurable observations. A belief of this sort can be attributed to the instilled behaviorist beliefs of such psychologists as Watson, who believed that psychology needed to be a science of observable behavior in order to establish psychology as scientific field of study. The concept of logical positivism comes from the belief that it is near impossible to discuss the function of observable events without discussing the unobservable. The example the book gave is that we can observe the behavior of a person when he or she is hungry but we cannot observe the concept of hunger. One can see then how it would be increasingly difficult to develop empirical theories of behavior without discussing unobservable concepts. Well, from this problem came an ingenious solution. If one could set boundaries and limits and create definitions that incorporated the processes used to measure them, then unobservable behavior would then be measurable variable in research. This line of thinking evolved in the movement of operationism. Scientists could now make logical operational definitions of unobservable events in such a way as to make it experimentally measurable. For instance one could now operationalize the unobservable concept of hunger as the amount of hours since eating last. This gives hunger an empirical quality that can measured.
1b. I found this interesting because in my research methods class we are often working with operational definitions. Operational definitions seem to be relied upon in a lot of areas of research, and before reading this chapter I never thought about how useful and revolutionary the concept could be to science. By using operational definitions we can still carry out credible research that allows us to theorize about the unobservable. This in many areas of psychology. For instance, in clinical psychology a lot of times they deal with constructs such as depression, anxiety, and aggression that rely upon an operational definition to make them measurable.
2a. The next section I found to be interesting was the section on Edward C. Tolman. Tolman was a neobehaviorist whose unique approach brought together empirical research and logical positivist theorizing. Like many pioneers of psychology at the time, Tolman’s initial collegiate background was not in psychology. He graduated from MIT with a degree in electrochemistry but because he wanted to avoid bumping heads with his talented older brother, who also graduated from MIT, he decided to switch directions. He encountered William James in his senior year of school which influenced him to return back to school upon graduating to study psychology. Soon into his studies he began to be intrigued by Watson’s behaviorist apporach as it provided Tolman with a fresh perspective against the introspective ideas he was dealing with in his work at the schools lab. However, at this point he was not completely sold on Watson’s idea that behavior was the result of finite stimulus response mechanisms. Later on, while in Germany, Tolman encountered Kurt Koffka who taught Tolman the ideas of Gestalt psychology, which would later impact his own ideas on behaviorism. The final influence that crafted Tolman’s later ideas came from his years at Harvard while studying under Edwin Holt. Holt introduced to Tolman the idea of goal directed behavior in learning. All of Tolman’s influences melded together to produce his own take on behaviorism that he would go on to pioneer. Important to Tolman was the idea that learning behavior was not just the result of physical stimuli and muscular or glandular responses, but it was more a result of purposive, goal directed behavior. He called this distincition molar versus molecular behaviors. Rather than focus on the smallest unit that produces a behavior, he wanted to look at the whole of the behavior (a gestalt idea). For example, in the book it says that one of Tolman’s students showed that a rat who learned to swim through a maze could also navigate the maze later by running through it. This showed that the rat’s learning was not just a series of physical responses but rather a broader understanding of the pattern of the maze. The rats seemed to form a cognitive map of the maze. Tolman called his theory a field theory to distinguish himself from the molecular approach of behaviorists like Watson. From this he expanded his theory on molar behavior to include that purposiveness is a major driving factor of behavior. He noted that hungry rats almost always seemed to navigate the maze correctly, unlike the well fed brethren, so he concluded that the rat’s purpose for navigating the maze must be a driving force in influencing its behavior.
2b. I found this interesting because Tolman found a way to bridge the gap between many different realms of thinking in psychology to come up with his own unique, and equally valid, take on behaviorism. It was interesting to read about how he was influenced by all these different areas of thought because it seems as if most the people we read about are so rigidly encompassed in one school of thinking or another. It appears that the people who meld ideas and take a little from here and a little from there are the same ones who push scientific fields into a new realms of study which broadens the scope of the field and widens the discoveries that are possible.
3a. Probably the next most interesting section in the text was the section on B.F. Skinner and his rise into radical behaviorism. Skinner was as passionate student from the start. He grew up in a time progression in the U.S. just after the victory of the Spanish-American War when middle class America was full of optimism. His parents tried to instill him the virtues of hard work and respect for other peoples’ opinions. While Skinner definitely learned the value of hard work he did not care much what others thought of him. It is said that he always questioned others even his teachers. His highschool principal wrote him a very strong letter of recommendation to Hamilton College but he also included that Skinner was, “passionately fond of arguing with his teachers”. Interestingly enough Skinner’s first passion was creative writing. He explored this option for awhile initially in his early collegiate career. He met the likes of Robert Frost who actually praised Skinner’s writing. This put the nail in the coffin for a young skinner, he was going to make a career out of his writing. That is, until he went to his parents and told them this. Skinner wanted to take a year out of school to simply write, and his parents were far from alright with this. His parents became very concerned of what people would think of them if they let their son stay at home apparently jobless. Over the next few years his parent’s concerns mixed with his own self doubts about the strength of his writing. This was Skinner’s “dark year”. But, these were the events that eventually led Skinner to enroll in graduate studies in Psychology which was the start of his foray into radical behaviorism.
3b. I found this section interesting because it is refreshing to read about the life and backgrounds of the big names in psychology. It gives perspective and makes learning about the research a lot more interesting. It makes it easier for me to associate Skinner with his brand of behaviorism because I now know more about him.
4a. The one thing I did not find interesting was Hull’s postulate 4: Habit Strength. Hull’s 4th postulate attempts to logically and mathematically explain the conditions necessary for learning to occur. The text attempts to first explain the theory mathematically but it was far too complex for me to understand. Apparently, the main facets of his theory have to do with contiguity and reinforcement. Hull espouses that learning occurs best when there is contiguity between a stimulus and response. Also, on top of the afore mentioned, there also needs to reinforcement to make learning permanent. Hull considered reinforcers anything that reduced drive. The book gives the example that if hunger were a drive then food would be a reinforcer since it decreases the drive of hunger.
4b. I did not find this section interesting because it was really complicate to understand. Once I read on about drive reduction, contiguity, and reinforcement it became a little clearer what Hull was trying to get it but the initial mathematical explanation was enough to make me queasy.
5. The most useful thing going forward is to understand the concepts of Tolman, Hull, and Skinner. They are the big names of neobehaviorism and their idea revolutionized the ideas of classic behaviorism to encompass a larger perspective.
6. This chapter continues to build on our knowledge of how psychology as a whole evolved over the years. A common theme among all the chapter is obviously the history of psychology but more than that we are beginning to see how the past has influenced our current understanding of psychology.
7. I would like to learn more about some of Skinner’s specific research topics.
7b. I would like to learn more about them because I once read that Skinner trained a chicken a to play yankee doodle on a piano by his reinforcement techniques. I have always been intrigued to look more in depth at how he accomplished feats like this.
8. When I read the chapter I thought about how I have read a lot of these ideas before in other classes but they were never fleshed out. In this chapter I got to look deeper into the lives of these famous researchers and read more in depth into their concepts. I feel like I now know a great deal more about behaviorism just from reading this chapter and the last.
9. Logical positivism, operationism, operational definitions, neobeahviorism, molar behavior, field theory, purposiveness, habit strength, drive reduction.

a) What did you find interesting?
Latent Learning
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
The idea of latent learning was developed by Edward Tolman after he looked at how learning developed ‘below the surface’. He tried to show that even through reinforcements, we are still looking. They showed this through rats and rewarding them with food if they did a maze. They found that the rats still did the maze even after food was not given to them. This means that the mice were still interested in learning the maze even if there was no physical reward for them.
2a) What did you find interesting?
Type S conditioning and type R conditioning
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I have not heard of these types of conditioning prior to this class, so I found it interesting to read about. Type S conditioning is when one stimulus causes a reaction to another. An example of this would be Pavolv and the dog experiment. While type R conditioning is when our behavior is modified due to experiences we have undergone. I feel as though both of these types of conditioning naturally occur in life.
3a) What did you find interesting?
Clark Hull
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
This guy had a really hard early life. He was a child that was struck with sickness and even contracted polio at the age of 24 becoming paralyzed in one leg. On top of all this, Hull had financial issues. It amazes me that he continued on to receive his PhD in psychology; even becoming a well-known psychologist of his time.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
Neobehaviorism was something that I did not enjoy that much. This was not due to me finding it boring; it is just something that I have already read about. I found it repetitive for me to have to read over it again.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I feel as though the sections on B.F. Skinner will be useful to understand because everybody has heard of B.F. Skinner. You have might hear about him even if you are not taking psychology classes. I feel that he is a prominent role in psychology and is important to learn about
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
We have discussed Watson and behaviorism in previous chapters. This chapter more or less just talked more about different behaviorists.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?
I think I would like to learn about latent learning a little bit more. I found the concept to be interesting and I would like to better see how it relates to everyday life.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
While I was ready this chapter about all the different psychologists, I was thinking how it is interesting to understand how they all got their inspiration to get into psychology in the first place. All of these psychologists built off of previous psychologists.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Latent learning
Type S Conditiong
Type R conditioning
Clark Hull
B.F. Skinner
Tolman
Pavolv
Watson
neobehaviorism

1a) What topic did you find interesting?
I found Neobehaviorism very interesting.
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found Neobehaviorism very interesting for many different reasons, I also found that it was important to the development of ethics in psychology. Neobehaviorism interested me because in the reading it said that the movement only lasted a short amount of time, but made a huge impact. One of the largest impacts I can see today is in regard to ethics, at this time there was a huge movement away from doing research on humans and more on animals. You see this applied in the rest of the chapter with most of the experiments they do being done on animals. This is a topic I would also like to learn more about because there wasn’t a lot in the chapter about it.
2a) What person did you find interesting?
I found Edwin R. Guthrie interesting
2b) Why were they interesting to you?
Guthrie was different from a lot of the psychologists that we have studied up to this point. Unlike others he didn’t spend a lot of time doing research and ironically was very confident in his theory, the one-trial learning theory. I found it interesting that he believed based on his research that it took one time alone for one to learn a response and would then continue to practice it. I also liked the fact that this theory that contained contiguity, which we covered in previous chapters. I also liked learning about him because I was able to evaluate his experiment for possible third variables as to why it worked. Shortly after the textbook goes on to describe another possible third variable they thought of which was that the cats behavior in the experiment he performed was much like a behavior the posses as part of their nature.
3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?
This chapter tells us about how structure within a theory can change. In the last chapter we looked at just what behavioralism was in psychology, but the message of this chapter helps us see the effect of the original behavioralism and how it changes over the next years. Like other chapters we are able to see that change isn’t made by just one person but by multiple people these people being Tolman, Hull, Skinner, Guthrie etc.
3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?
This chapter was less interesting to me than the last. I did not feel as connected to the experiments performed. The works done in this chapter for example Tolman’s experiments with rats and learning were harder for me to apply or seem to apply to myself, even though I know they are relevant.
4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
What I read in this chapter that was most helpful was probably Latent learning, this is a theory that is prominent in not only psychology but also in education. This is learning that occurs below the surface. Also learning about Guthrie and that his theory was evaluated to see if it was accurate, helped me see that even then theories were evaluated closely to see if they were accurate.
5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?
In other classes I have learned a lot about operational definitions, this chapter built on what I knew and gave more in depth explanations such as hunger and how it’s not only the feeling of lightheadedness with a stomach ache but as an operational definition it could be what happens after an hour of hunger. Before this class I had also heard of latent learning this chapter tied that in as well. I also was able to learn more about behaviorism which we learned about in many other psychology classes, but through this chapter I was able to learn more about how it evolved.
6a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
I would like to learn more about Hull’s theories with secondary and primary reinforcers in the drive reduction theory.
6b) Why?
I would like to learn more about the reinforcers because there are few examples in the textbook, and while I understand the difference between the two, I would like to learn more about drive education theory experiments in general. I have also heard about this theory previously and would like to learn more.
7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?
8) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Behavioralism, One trial learning, latent learning, Neobehaviorism, Drive reduction theory, Secondary reinforcers, Primary reinforcers, variable.

1) I found cognitive maps to be interesting. Though Tolman, used rats to create this concept, I think it can be greatly applied to humans. As Tolman stated, “We must, in short, subject our children and ourselves to the optimal conditions of moderate motivation and of an absence of unnecessary frustrations, whenever we put them and ourselves before that great God-given maze in which is our human world…” I believe that life is a maze. From the very beginning we have to map out way round our environment, learning by baby steps. For example, a kindergarten must map his way as he walks to his elementary school. Each day he learns the good and bad ways of his maze to school. This concept is interesting to me because of how highly applicable the concept is. I could think for days about this concept and how it has been and still is applicable to my life.
2) I found Edward Tolman to be interesting because of his concepts of latent learning and cognitive maps. These two ideas are something that stimulates my mind. I can think about them and apply them to my life. I find them interesting. I think that Tolman’s belief that behavior was goal directed and purposive was important for the advocacy of behaviorism.
3) I think the overall message of this chapter was to show the change in psychology and behaviorism that happened post-Watson. It shows a path from the quasi science of consciousness to the true science of behavior. This in interesting because you get to see the shift in thinking and how applicable behaviorism is. Many of these concepts are used today and that is interesting to me because I can directly relate.
4) The most useful thing from this chapter was the section on cognitive maps. This section really made me apply what I read to my life. It challenged me to think about my cognitive maps.
5) This chapter did not build on a whole lot that I have previously learned. The only thing it built on was Chapter 10. It allowed me to learn more about behaviorism.
6) I would like to learn more about Tolman and his works because he was most interesting to me.
7) I want to know how cognitive maps have been applied to humans. I was curious about the operationism of today and which operational terms exist today.
8) terms and terminology: cognitive maps, Edward Tolman, latent learning, purposive, behaviorism, operationism

Chapter 11
1) I found the topic of goal-directedness or purposiveness to be most interesting. I found it to be the most interesting topic because it can be seen in daily life, yet most people completely overlook the matter. The chapter made me realize that goal-directedness is a universal feature of behavior. It was interesting to learn about the evolutionary aspect involved with the behavior being adaptive and how it holds significant survival value for species and that is why it is able to stand the test of time.
2) I found Edwin Holt to be the most interesting because of how he infused the notions of goals and purposes into behaviorism and how he viewed behavior as a more complex matter than Watson did. Holt believed that behavior could not be reduced to simple physical stimuli and responses and behavior was more complex. I liked how he applied this idea to his theory of learning.
3) The overall message of this chapter was behaviorism evolving from just a theory and ideas to a form of experimental psychology and how it was able to be tested. It showed the development of things such as operational definitions and how psychology had to evolve into more accurate ways of measurement with more precise descriptions and specifying variables, and other measures along that nature.
4) The most useful information information from this chapter was how psychology was able to evolve into a creditable and experimental science. I found it very interesting when I learned about the impact that introspectionsim held and how it prevented psychology from being an objective science. It helped me realize how psychology developed and what caused it to build into the field it is today and how psychology was able to move away from its subjective nature.
5) This chapter built a lot on of the information I knew about behaviorism. In a majority of the classes I have taken, I have only learned about the very basic factors of behaviorism. I enjoyed when the chapter went into greater detail about the lesser-known people such as Tolman, Hilgard, Stevens, and how their thinking was able to help evolve behaviorism to what it is is currently.
6) I would love to learn about the pseudoproblmes that were involved in beavhiorism and if they still exist today. Neobehaviorism is another topic that was new to me within this chapter that I would love to learn more about.
7) Why did American psychologist originally reject behaviorism and what caused behaviorism to finally take hold within America?
8) Terminology Used: goal-directedness, Tolman, Hilgard, Stevens, behaviorism, purposiveness, adaptive, evolutionary, experimental psychology, introspectionsim, operational definitions, variables, pseudoproblems, Edwin Holt, stimuli, responses

1a) What topic did you find interesting?
I found Hull’s habit strength to be interesting.
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought it was interesting because it showed how precise and how he wanted to measure peoples actions with equations. He showed that learning occurred when contiguity and reinforcement accrued closely together. He found that both were needed for learning to occur. Hull referred to the reinforcement as drive reduction and his theory is sometimes referred to as drive reduction theory. He also though that there were both primary reinforcers and secondary reinforcers. Primary reinforcers were things like food and water. Secondary reinforcers were stimuli that occurred with the primary reinforcer.
2a) What person did you find interesting?
I found B.F. Skinner to be interesting.
2b) Why were they interesting to you?
I thought he was interesting because of his work with operant conditioning. I thought it was interesting how he took Pavlov’s work and made his own theory based off of Pavlov’s. I think it is interesting that he was the first to come up with the theory. I think that the theory is a basic principle now and it is hard to think that no one was able to think of it before him.
3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?
I thought the overall message of the chapter was interesting.
3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?
I thought it was interesting because of all the different people and experiments that it referenced. I enjoy learning about different experiments and the results that people gained from those experiments. I think it is interesting to see how theories advance from a simple idea into a complex theory. I think you can see that by how the scientists do their experiments.
4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think learning about how behaviorism evolved over time will help in understanding the history of psychology. It is important to know where a theory began so you know what others have tried. It is important to know what others have done so that you don’t make the same mistake. I think it is important to understand where a theory stated so that you know why it is like it is today. It also helps to appreciate all the different steps and revisions a theory has to go through to become a good theory.
5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?
This chapter builds on what I already knew by including new information on new people I didn’t know about before. Before this chapter I hadn’t learned about Guthrie or Tull before. I think it was important to learn about these guys because they made some contributions that others built off of.
6a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
I would like to learn more about operant conditioning.
6b) Why?
I think operant conditioning is an interesting concept. I also think that operant conditioning has a lot of real world applications. I think that if you can understand how operant conditioning works you can condition people to get responses that you want them to have.
7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?
The ideas that I though of while reading was what do people use operant conditioning for. Can people use operant conditioning with bad intentions?
8) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
- Hull, Skinner, operant conditioning, habit strength, drive reduction, primary reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, Pavlov, Guthrie, Tull.

1) I thought that the topic of goal directedness was interesting. I thought it was interesting because it is something that can be applied to pretty much any situation. Goal directedness or purposiveness was Edward Tolman’s idea that a behavior always has the characteristic of getting to or from a specific goal. The chapter gave the example of a rat running in a maze. The rat doesn’t do this for no reason. Its goal is to find the food that is hidden in the maze. The book also pointed out that this is an adaptive trait, which means it has survival value. Take the rats for example again. Rats in times past may not have been able to eat if they hadn’t taken long amounts of time to search for it.
2) I thought that Edward Tolman was interesting. I thought he was interesting because he was one of the people mentioned in this chapter that I had never heard of before. I find that odd considering he seemed to have a pretty big impact on psychology. I also thought he was interesting because he had a lot of interesting theories. I especially liked his theories about goals and behavior. I didn’t know that he was the one who came up with the concept of intervening variables. When first reading the chapter I thought that intervening variables were the same as confounding variables. Intervening variables are different because they are hypothetical variables that cannot be measured. I also didn’t know that he came up with latent learning. Latent learning is something I have heard about in many previous psychology classes, but I never knew who came up with the concept. Latent learning basically means learning without reinforcement. Tolman did a very interesting experiment with rats in a maze that proved that latent learning exists.
3) I thought that the message of this chapter was to expand on last week’s reading on behaviorism. This chapter basically showed how behaviorism has changed since it was first started. I thought it was interesting because I have always enjoyed learning about behaviorism.
4) I think that the different types of conditioning are beneficial to know. If you know about the different ways that people can learn, it can be a benefit for many different jobs.
5) I have learned about many of the aspects of behaviorism before. This chapter and the last chapter definitely gave me more details about it though. It helped me to fill in the blanks between the things that I had learned about before and showed me that there is more to behaviorism than just conditioning.
6) I think it would be interesting to know more about latent learning. It is an interesting concept, but I can’t think of examples of how it applies to people today.
7) I wondered why I hadn’t really heard of some of the psychologists in this chapter before.
8) goal directedness, purposiveness, Edward Tolman, adaptation, survival, behavior, intervening variables, confounding variables, latent learning, reinforcement, behaviorism

1a) There were a lot of important and interesting topics to read about in this chapter. I was amazed at how long it took for Watson’s behaviorism to get noticed and to take over past ways of studying psychology. One man stood out to me, Edwin Guthrie. He thought that contiguity was the key to learning and also to be conditioned. This means that we experience things together, and that there must be a combination of stimuli accompanied by a movement. I liked his ideas about this because I could associate this with some familiar things. When we go to the doctor and they check our reflexes by hitting us on the knee with an instrument, we have a stimulus and reaction or movement. This is related to Guthrie’s point of contiguity because a stimulus is accompanied by a movement. His theory of contiguity puts new ideas into my head that maybe I haven’t thought about before. I never thought that we learned so much by experiencing things together because we don’t really think about it in this way, but really we can’t really learn as much without association.

1b.) Another thing that caught my attention in this chapter was Guthrie’s ideas about one-trial learning and his experiment with cats trying to escape a puzzle box. I thought this idea was really interesting because these cats would get out of the box just by doing what they naturally do. The cats got out by hitting a pole with their rear end and rubbing up against it. This might them seem very smart since they got out in the first try, but in reality cats do this all the time in their lives. Called “flank rubbing,” cats do this naturally to greet something or someone. I don’t think that one-trial learning actually works, it might seem like it does because of the movements we use that we have been conditioned to do or that are biologically encrypted in us. I don’t agree with Guthrie’s idea of one-trial learning, but it was still interesting to learn about.

1c.) Lastly, Edward Tolman was found to be an interesting man. What surprised me was the fact that his brother, Richard Tolman was also a man of major contributions. But, his brother steered towards technology, and Edward did not. His brother worked and contributed to the atomic bomb during World War 2, and this was a fun fact to learn. Edward didn’t want to be like his brother so he started to learn about psychology. He even took classes with Yerkes. I just thought this was interesting to learn that so many famous psychologists can be associated with each other in some way or another.

2) Although, neobehaviorism is important to note, it didn’t really interest me at all. For one thing, the concept of this was only around for 30 years, it didn’t last long. They didn’t consider evolutionary aspects of species, which I think is very important. I just think this movement of psychology didn’t last long because they failed to acknowledge aspects that were important in order to study psychology.

3) Reading chapter after chapter, we get to associate things we have learned in past chapters to the topics we are currently learning. The more we associate, the more we understand what we are learning and I think that by associating these psychologists and the work they have done will help me to understand the history of psychology in general.

4) This chapter is about the evolution of behaviorism. We can relate this to the last chapter and Watson’s idea of behaviorism. We can thank him for getting his word out about this so that more psychologists like Guthrie and Tolman to name a few, could do more work with this idea and contribute to behavioral psychology.

5) I would like to learn more about Edwin Guthrie. I think it would be interesting to learn about more of his studies, because the ones mentioned in the book are quite important and interesting, I would like to find out what else he was done to contribute to psychology, even though he often does not perform experiments.

6) I really enjoyed learning about Edward Tolman’s work. He had a lot of great ideas about learning. His idea of a cognitive map was really interesting. He claimed that rats did not get through a maze by trial and error learning, but by this cognitive map.

7) Neobehaviorism, Edwin Guthrie, Contiguity, One-Trial Learning, Edward Tolman, Cognitve Map, Trial-Error learning

1a) I found the topic of contiguity interesting.
1b) Edwin R. Guthrie said that if stimuli and their subsequent response were contiguous, they would have a fully formed bond. I thought it was interesting because Guthrie said that if they had a fully formed bond, the stimuli and response would only need one trial to be learned. I also thought it was interesting because he said that rewards weren’t meant to strengthen the behaviors, but to preserve the connection. Punishment happened if a new behavior was the result, and if the animal forgot, they had replaced the connection with another.
2a) I found Clark Hull interesting.
2b) I thought Hull was interesting because he is known mainly for his animal studies. However, he also studied humans and their learning habits. I also thought it was interesting that he modeled his hypothetico-deductive system of behavior after Newtonian physics. This system of behavior involved the development of a theory in which experiments tested hypotheses theorized from formalized postulates.
3a) The overall message of this chapter was the advancement of behaviorism after Watson.
3b) I thought it was interesting because first it countered the popular belief that behaviorism was immediately accepted in the United States. It then went into more descriptions about how different people approached behaviorism in different ways. An example would be that Tolman used behaviorism in a purposeful way. I thought it was interesting to see the different ways to approach behaviorism.
4) The thing I thought would be most useful in understanding the history of psychology wasn’t a specific idea in the chapter, but rather the concept of looking at an approach in different ways. The fact that the book highlights the different ways to approach behaviorism tells me that the author wants us to learn to look at things in different ways and to keep our minds open to other viewpoints.
5) This chapter related to previous classes by talking about B.F. Skinner. It built upon Skinner by going in more depth about his explanatory fictions and his thoughts on other theories. This chapter told us that he was critical about the nervous system explanations of behavior. It also told us how he wanted to improve child rearing, education, and society.
6a) I would like to learn more about Guthrie’s theory.
6b) I would like to learn more about his study, and if he had any other studies that lead him to believe his one-trial theory.
7) Why did Skinner reject formal theories as he did? I also wondered what drove Tolman to believe that rats don’t learn connections by running in a maze, and instead learn a map of the maze?
8) Contiguity, Edwin R. Guthrie, stimuli, response, rewards, punishment, forgetting, Clark Hull, Tolman, B.F. Skinner, explanatory theories.

1a) What topic did you find interesting?
The topic that I found to be the most interesting was one-trial learning

1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found this interesting because I feel like it is not very often that I learn things on the first try. However, it amazes me that our minds can work in such a way that after only being reinforced once that we have already made between the stimulus and the response that occurred after the fact.

2a) What person did you find interesting?
I found Guthrie to be the most interesting to me.

2b) Why were they interesting to you?
I found him interesting because of the work he did with one-trial learning. I also find it very interesting that he was more interested in theory rather than research. I am impressed by the fact that he only produced one research study in his career and still made a significant contribution to psychology.

3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?
I think the overall message of this chapter was to inform the reader that there are many other psychologists that made a contribution the behaviorism movement in psychology.

3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?
This was interesting to me, because I did not know about any of these other people and the research studies that they did.

4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
The thing that will be the most useful in understanding the history of psychology is operationism because it helps to better explain the scientific concepts that were/are being studied.

5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?
This builds onto what I have learned about behaviorism, because I did not know about all of the other contributions and research that was done by other psychologist other than Watson and Skinner.

6a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
I would like to learn more about neobehaviorism.

6b) Why?
I would like to learn more about this topic because I feel that there is much more to how it has played a role in the field of psychology than what the book tell us.

7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?
The biggest question I have is why did Tolman think rats learned better from using a map of the maze rather than actually being in the maze itself?

Terms: Tolman, neobehaviorism, Watson, Skinner, operationism, behaviorism, psychology, one-trial learning, stimulus, response, reinforced, Guthrie

1a) The topic I found to be most interesting was Guthrie's theory of one trial learning and the cat box he used.
1b) I found this to be most interesting because this was a theory about learning just from trying something once. He talked about having cats escape rom a puzzle box and there was a diagram that helped show how it worked. The cat could move anyway at all and if it hit the pole then it would free it from the box. Guthrie said that this showed that the cat had learned how to escape the box simply from doing it one time because all the times after that the cat would still know how to escape and would do it correctly. Guthrie also had some interesting ideas about punishment and reinforcement that were definitely different from other psychologists at the time.

2a) The person I found most interesting was Guthrie.
2b) I found him to be the most interesting just because his ideas were so different from anything else we've learned about up to this point. It seemed like he went against everyone else at the time. I also thought it was really interesting to read about all the criticisms of Guthrie as well. The book talks about him not using any research and how a lot of the things he said were really vague and his theories weren't described well at all.

3a) I thought the overall message of the chapter was to talk about how behaviorism was changing and the new psychologists involved in it. A lot of people think only about Watson when it comes to behaviorism but this chapter helped show the people who came after and how behaviorism developed and changed.
3b) I thought this chapter was interesting because it talked a lot about people who I hadn't learned much about in other psychology classes. I feel like a lot of the time only Watson and Skinner and a few others are talked about the most involving behaviorism but this chapter helped show other experiments and psychologists as well.

4) I think what will be most useful to be in understanding the history of psychology would be seeing the way behaviorism changed and developed and the key players involved with that. I think there were a lot of experiments and researchers I knew little about before reading this (such as Guthrie and Tolman) and this chapter really helped me see how they fit in and related with behaviorism and psychology in general.

5) This chapter builds on what I have learned in other psychology classes because I had learned a little about some of the psychologists in this chapter before. I had learned a lot about Skinner previously in other psychology classes so this built off that a lot and it also built off of it in terms of adding new psychologists I didn't know much about and talking about some of their experiments and research.

6a) I think the topic I would like to learn more about is Skinner and the problem with explanation as well as his idea of technology of behavior.
6b) I think that this sounded interesting in the book and was something I did not really know much about beforehand. I thought that this would be something interesting to research since it's not a topic I know a lot about or an aspect of Skinner that has been talked about much in previous classes.

7) The question I had while reading this chapter was why a lot of my psychology classes have completely skipped over Guthrie and Tolman?

8) Tolman, Watson, Skinner, behaviorism, Guthrie, one trial learning, cat box

1a) What topic did you find interesting? 1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found neobehaviorism interesting because I found their belief on learning interesting. The text explains that neobehaviorists believed more in the nurture side of the nature-nurture continuum and they argued that to know why people do what they do you need a detailed analysis of the basic principles of how things are learned. I found this interesting because I had never thought of analyzing why someone does something a particular way based off of how they learn, but I can understand where they are coming from now that I think about it.
2a) What person did you find interesting? 2b) Why were they interesting to you?
I found Edwin Guthrie interesting because of his work on contiguity. Guthrie was able to form a coherent theory on contiguity based off of one principle. That principle was that if a stimulus is followed by a movement, the movement will be likely to occur again the next time the stimulus occurs. The stimulus and the movement have occurred contiguously, and that is all that is needed. Guthrie believed that contiguity was necessary and sufficient for learning to occur.
3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter? 3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?
I believe a good message from this chapter is that even if someone has researched and established a theory or idea about a certain concept, that doesn’t mean the learning is done on that subject. It’s actually the complete opposite, most of the information, if not all, builds on what people have already learned. In some cases it might be proven wrong and replaced with a new theory, but throughout all of it we are continuously learning, and that is a good thing. I think that this was interesting for me because it can be applied to my life not just a super smart scientist.
4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think this question kind of goes hand in hand with number 3. I learned that you don’t have to be a super smart scientist to learn from others and build on what they have already learned to apply it to your own life.
5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes? Each chapter is building on the previous chapters, we are learning how certain concepts were researched and established and then how they were either furthurred or disproven. It is all interrelated and it is becoming more clear as I read each chapter.
6a) What topic would you like to learn more about? 6b) Why?
I think it would be interesting to learn more about drive-theory so that I may apply it to my own life.
7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter? Overall I was able to form a better picture on each of these people and the different topics as the book went more in depth than any other class that I have ever learned about this people in.
8) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
neobehaviorism
learning
nurture
nature-nurture
contiguity
stimulus
drive-theory

1a) What topic did you find interesting?
I found the topic of cognitive maps interesting.
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found them interesting because it was a competing theory with the stimulus-response model of learning. Instead of the S-R model, Edward Tolman believed that animals, rats in particular, created a mental, spatial map that they used to solve mazes. I found it most interesting that he connected it to the human need for viewing as the world as a large maze. I feel that this is applicable in the sense of a student. There is a maze of school—finding one’s way through elementary, middle, and high schools and possibly to college. There are many turns and pathways in life and at times one can come to a halt, reevaluate, and take a different path; perhaps Tolman meant for it to be evaluated as a metaphor.

2a) What person did you find interesting?
I found the topic of the IQ Zoo with Keller and Marian Breland interesting.
2b) Why were they interesting to you?
The fact that the Brelands created a zoo to showcase the power of behavior modification is fascinating. Instead of academia they chose to pursue a more applied path in animal entertainment. I thought it was also interesting how they created the first animal training model for using the principles of conditioning on dolphins. I found it interesting that they discovered, or at least named, the principle of instinctive drift. If an animal was trained to perform a certain behavior that interfered with a natural instinct, the animal would not be able to perform the trick that the Brelands, and other animal trainers, tried to condition.

3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?
I thought the overall message of the chapter was to give insight on one section of psychology: behaviorism.
3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?
I am extremely interested in behaviorism and behavior modification because I feel that it can be a useful therapy. I also like the idea of transferring behavior modification to educational settings to benefit future learners.

4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think that understanding the variety of behaviorism techniques (purposive, hypothetico-deductive, and radical) could help further the most successful form of therapy, CBT.

5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?
I am actually enrolled in a behavior modification course at the moment and there were a few crossover terms that I noticed, yet still enough new content that I was not bored. The S-R model is one of the crossover terms that I can recall. As well as B.F. Skinner and a few of the other behavorists.

6a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
I would like to learn more about how cognitive maps are applicable to humans.
6b) Why?
I want to know if there is any applicability in a work setting or educational setting.

7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?
I would like to learn more about the technological ideal. Is it really a good thing to control every aspect of nature? Part of the allure of nature is the uniqueness of every person, plant, creature living in their own habitat.

Terms: IQ zoo, Brelands, animal training model, instinctive drift, condition, S-R model, Tolman, cognitive maps, behavior modification

1a) What topic did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?

The topic that was the most interesting to me was habit strength. I found this interesting because it not only deals with behavior but also deals with motivation and how his drive reduction theory is connected with primary reinforcers and secondary reinforcers. Both primary and secondary reinforcers are motivating factors in humans and can cause a formation of habits.

2a) What person did you find interesting?
2b) Why were they interesting to you?

I found Clark Hull interesting because of his back story. He went through a lot starting from poverty and then getting polio and kind of being forced to choose something else other than what he wanted to be which was a mining engineer. I also find it interesting that at the end of his section of the chapter, they tear down his theory. If it was so easily criticized, why is it in our history book?

3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?
3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?

I think the overall message of the chapter was how behaviorism expanded to what we know today. B.F. Skinner and operant conditioning is something we can still use today and I feel like that was a big part of the chapter too. I didn’t think this chapter was interesting because I am just not that interested in how behaviorism came about. I have learned a lot about it in all of my other psychology classes and know that it is important but since I was forced to learn about it since high school, I’m tired of it. I feel like the last chapter talked a lot about this too.

4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?

I think the most important thing in this chapter was how important Skinner is to the history of the behaviorism field and how relevant his research still is today. He did a lot in the field and what he did find can be applied to a lot of different things in the psychology field.

5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?

This chapter builds onto my previous knowledge because now I understand why Skinner was so different from the other behaviorists. I also know now that there were other behaviorists like Hull, Guthrie, and Tolman. We learn so much about Watson and Skinner that it was interesting to learn about other theories and people who were doing work in that field. Skinner just made a bigger footprint in the field and that is why we spend a lot of time learning about his research.

6a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
6b) Why?

I would like to learn more about Edward Tolman’s cognitive maps. I want to learn more about this because I have a hard time understanding it and I want to know what kind of research has branched off of Tolman’s findings.

7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?

If it was so easy to tear down Hulls theory, why was it in our history book?

8) Terms: Edward Tolman, habit strength, drive reduction, primary reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, Clark Hull, B.F. Skinner, operant conditioning.

1a) I found the topic of operant conditioning to be very interesting. It’s always been a topic of interest to me, learning about it in many of my psychology classes. 
1b) It’s interesting to me because there are a lot of aspects that go into this broad topic. There are also many researchers and scientists that made some engaging discoveries, especially when it first started to develop. According to this idea, our behavior “operates” on the behavior. This concept is intriguing to think about. Our outcomes are a product of a behavior and that outcome can be predicted depending on that behavior.
2a) B. F. Skinner was the most interesting to read about for me. 
2b) I also thought his experiments were beneficial to learn about. Learning about his life was interesting too because it I hadn’t learned some of those things in my introduction class. Reading that he thought there were two goals to psychology was surprising. To think that the point was to either predict or control behavior was kind of startling. He also differed in his way of research, he studied behavior and tried to find generalities, rather than focusing on a theory and trying to disprove that theory. He also made his own
3a) The overall message of this chapter was really good. It brought more of a light into neobehaviorism, Skinner, and Hull. 
3b) This chapter was really interesting. Like I said before, I really enjoy reading about these types of psychologists. Operant conditioning and how that theory came to be was really interesting.
4) It connected really well with the chapter before this. It shows who Watson’s ideas have developed, changed and advanced. It shows how other ideas and theories came from previous researchers.
5) It really shows the connection between previous researchers and ideas. It shows how these concepts have developed and in a sense evolved into what we know now. The history kind of gives us a connect-the-dots key and shows the progress that psychology has been through.
6a) I would lie to learn more about “Misbehavior in Organisms.” 
6b) The short close up didn’t give enough information. The raccoon experiment was really intriguing. It explained that behavior in animals can’t always be conditioned when instinct steps in. It doesn’t rule that out and I find that to be compelling to read about.
7) How did they train “Bird Brain” to play tic-tac-toe so well?
8) TERMS:
Behavior
Watson
Skinner
neobehaviorism
psychology

1) What topic did you find interesting? Why was it interesting to you?

I found neobehaviorism interesting. It was interesting because it involves teaching.

2) What person did you find interesting? Why were they interesting to you?

I found Edwin Guthrie interesting because of his concept of contiguity. He developed the idea that if a stimulus is followed by a movement, the movement will repeat if the stimulus is repeated.

3) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter? Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?

The overall message of the chapter was to develop the previous chapter on behaviorism. It was interesting to me because it elaborated on the topic of behaviorism, which I find interesting.

4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?

I think understanding the development, the idea that everything builds upon something else, is vital to understanding the history of psychology. Neobehaviorism, Guthrie, and Skinner, all grew from previous ideas.

5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?

This chapter built on the previous chapter about behaviorism.

6) What topic would you like to learn more about? Why?

I would like to know more about behaviorism in relationship to education and learning. Several portions of the chapter discussed this relationship, but I would like to know more because education is one of my interests as a potential career.

7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?

When looking at many of the studies throughout the semester, I wonder how relevant animal studies are to human behavior. For example, in Tolman's "Cognitive Maps in Rats in Men," he tries to show the relevance.

8) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.

Neobehaviorism
Guthrie
Skinner
Behaviorism

1). I think Tolmans system was very interesting.
This topic really interested me because I didn’t know much about it and learning about Molar behavior was very interesting. I enjoyed reading about all the topics involved in Tolmans system such as goal directedness and intervening variables. I think maze studies are interesting and it is something I would like to know more about.

2). I thought Tolman was the most interesting person in this chapter.
The work that he did with rat mazes interests me like I mentioned above and reading about research is more interesting to me that reading about a persons background. I think it is very interesting to read about what he did with the results found from the studies and how he got to those results.

3). I thought the overall message was good
I found the chapter to be quite interesting in many ways. Such as neobehaviorism, and rat mazes, and the hypothetico-deductive system. There were a lot of topics that I didn’t know much about before I learned about them in this chapter. I enjoy the easy way this chapter reads and it isn’t to over whelming with new information and big words.

4). I think understanding Neobehaviorism is going to be very useful to me in understanding the history of psychology because behaviorism is a very large part of psychology and understanding everything that goes into behaviorism is very important.

5). This chapter relates to many topics that I have learned about in previous chapters, I learned about Skinner, Rat mazes, operant conditioning. These topics have all been discussed in my other classes and through out the courses I have taken within psychology. We have talked about behaviorism in History in psychology before and it relates to this chapter because we learned about neobehaviorism and skinner.

6). I would like to learn more about Skinners research and the methods he used.
I think we learn about the basics of his most famous research and I want to learn more details about the research and find more research that he has done.

7). I think Hulls system and Tolmans systems are very interesting why aren’t they talked about more in other psychology classes?

8). Tolman, maze studies, molar behavior, goal directedness, intervening variables, neobehaviorism, hypothetico-deductive system, Skinner, behaviorism, operant conditioning, Hulls system.

1a) What topic did you find interesting?
A topic from this week's reading that I found interesting is latent learning.

1b) Why was it interesting to you?
This topic interested me because of the experiment and how Edward Tolman discovered this. It showed that although the rats were learning he maze, there was no reward so they didn't perform to their potential. Tolman had three groups of rats: one that never received a reward at the end of the maze or NR, one that always received an award or R and the last group was not rewarded initially but they were rewarded on day 11 or NR-R. The R group gradually had less and less errors than the NR group. Was this due to learning or due to the reward causing the rats to go faster. The NR-R group showed the same pattern as the NR group until day 11. This is where the NR-R group's errors dropped dramatically, showing they were definitely learning the maze but their performance didn't reflect it because there was no initiative.
2a) What person did you find interesting?
A person I found interesting was Edwin R. Guthrie.

2b) Why were they interesting to you?
Guthrie was interesting to me because he lives by the rules of K.I.S.S. Or keep it simple stupid. Most people were critical of his theories because they seemed too simple and easy. I also found him interesting because he completed virtually no research yet still developed some very popular theories. His main focus was contiguity or experiencing two things at once. Basically the basis for conditioning behavior. I also am critical of his only experiment with Horton about cats escaping. This is because in later experiments it was shown this was not repeated unless there were observers close to the cage. The behavior of the cat to open the cage was also a behavior common to cats which is known as “flank rubbing.”
3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?
The overall message of this chapter was showing how psychologists throw ideas out there and other psychologists build off of and personalize these and so on. For example John Watson started Behaviorism and this chapter talks about the evolution of behaviorism into neobehaviorism.

3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?
It interested me because it showed me that there is a unity in psychology through all of the schisms. Although psychologists disagree with each other, they still have a bond and make each others theories stronger. This is done by either building off of a previous idea or being combative of a previously thought idea. The criticism is almost always constructive and never destructive.
4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think the most important take-away from this chapter is that even if you are 100% committed to a specific psychology approach you should still be open-minded. Take criticism constructively. You can use it to either make your theory and case-in-point stronger by arguing or grow it by tweaking your theory so it isn't criticized. This also showed me that criticism isn't always a bad thing and no matter what idea you have you almost will always be criticized because someone will have the opposite idea.
5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?
This built-on to the idea that the History of Psychology is about more than just learning names and dates. It's here to show us claims that were made, criticisms of these claims and how these claims evolved into bigger ideas we still use today.
6a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
I would like to learn more about one-trial learning.

6b) Why?
I found it interesting that the cats in the Guthrie and Horton experiment seemed to learn how to escape the cage after the first trial. Was this because they understood what they did the first time and did it again knowing that it would open the cage or is it just that it was contiguity where the cat found if it rubs up against the pole like a human leg, the cage will open. This experiment is a little controversial but this can be similarly shown with the latent learning NR-R group of rats. Once the reward was introduced they seemingly learned the maze much better with one trial and errors dramatically decreased.
7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?
I have always found comparative psychology difficult to wrap my head around. The idea of continuity among species seems abstract to me. This is the idea that the laws of behavior that apply to one species should apply to other species as well to an extent. I think there should be an emphasis on the latter half of the previous sentence. Just because a rat has a certain behavior, I don't think that is grounds to assume we, as humans, would have that same behavioral response.
8) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Terminology: latent learning, Edward Tolman, Edwin Guthrie, contiguity, on-trial learning, John Watson, Neobehaviorism, one-trial learning