These are two very short papers that I would like you to read:
http://psych.hanover.edu/classes/Learning/papers/Guthrie%201937.pdf
http://psych.hanover.edu/classes/Learning/papers/Tolman%201938.pdf
After making your mind map for the two articles combined (1 map with both articles on it), respond to the following questions:
1) What did you find interesting about the articles?
2) What were the main points?
3) Why did the authors write the articles?
4) What was the main point about the articles?
5) How does the text and your reader handle the related material?
6) What do think the impact of this articles was / is?
7) How do these articles relate to the other articles we have read so far?
I like how they were relatively good at getting straight to the point. It is clear that they are evaluating, and trying to back the Sign-Gestalt-Expectation-Hypothesis. I also enjoyed the experiment they did to study it. Another thing I liked is how the circumstances for learning to pull the pan were layed out. I have to say I would have liked more from Tolman's reply. It would have also been nice to have a better explanation or definition of their conditioned response hypothesis. It is clear this wasn't the idea they were supporting, but it would have made it easier to understand the differences and why SGE is the more fit hypothesis.
I believe that biggest point, of course, was that although Sign-Gestalt-Explanation does not explain how all behavior is learned, it is still a reliable hypothesis. They made it clear that it is better in most circumstances than the Conditioned Response hypothesis. Another key point was that for any behavior to be properly learned, there are a set of circumstances that must be in place. For the experiment of the rats 6 were discussed.
1. If the rat is hungry and food is available in the pan the rat will eat.
2. If the pan is moved, but not too far away, the rat will grab at the pan.
3. If the pan is pulled a good distance away the rat will grab at the pan and "find" the rope.
4. If the string is smeared with food the rat will grab it.
5. If the string is jiggled the rat will pull it.
6. The rat will not reach for the string on the own without any prior teachings.
This carries with the idea, according to Tolman, that the rats learn to "expect" food when they pull the string. Not that they pull the string and then expect something. It is as though the rats learn the consequence of their actions. He admits, however, that this shows some anthropomorphism. Partly for this reason Guthrie takes Gestalt out of the name.
The big picture is that some "behavior" will occur before actual training, but certain behaviors must be conditioned.
I think the authors wanted to show there is more to how things are learned than just the regular idea of conditioning. They wanted to show that there is a level of "expectation" involved. They believe that animals have learned what will happen as a result of their actions and under certain cirmustances learning can take place without actual conditioning. The mainly wanted to show support of the Sign-Gestalt-Expectation hypothesis. People often get caught up into thinking that learning only happens one way or by one method, but their work shows there is much more to it.
I found in the book a clear explanation of respondent conditioning. I think in a way this idea goes against the SGE hypothesis. I am not sure, but the way it sounds to me is that they believe the rats are making mental connection. According to respondent conditioning this is a mistake. Conditioned stimuli do not have their power from mental associations but through actual physical occurences. The animals don't necessarily "learn" that pulling the string will provide me with food, but that at a given time that rope was paired with the food. It is a very slim difference I suppose, but as far as theories go I would say it does matter. Another small difference I noticed in the text was that the exmaples involved things that would naturally occur on their own independent of conditioning. The bell and the food is one expample. Although dogs may not naturally salivate to a bell they would salivate to food on their own. A rat on the other hand, under no untrained circumstances, would pull a string. This is a soley taught behavior. I am sure there are examples of this everywhere, but I personally wasn't able to find one similar in the text. I think the writers of the articles chose a good, fresh behavior to examine.
I would have to honestly say that it hasn't had that big of an effect. Not that I have seen anyway. I say this only because this is the first time I had ever heard of that theory. I am, however, relatively new to behavior focused studies. I can kinda begin to see what they were trying to do, but the differences at this point were still so fine that I don't think it will lead to many changes. I think it will take much more research to really have the impact they were working towards.
I don't know if this fits in too well with many of our past articles, maybe instinct. The author mentioned that when the pan was taking away that they would reach out and happen to grab the pan, but I wouldn't call this instinct. It is, however, a natuarl reaction. I would say that parts of it relate the stimulus control chapter of Pryor that we read. They mentioned in the article the importance of the stimulus...the string. If the length was too long then the animal would become bored or tired and so the behavior would suffer from conditioned inhibition. This ties in with what Pryor was saying about stimulus control. There must be clear cue of the stimulus (the purpose it serves) and there must be a method to its presentation.
1) I agree with Tiffany that there wasn’t a good operational definition of the conditioned response hypothesis. Maybe that is why I didn’t get the point of the article.
2/4) The main point is the fact that the Sign Gestalt Explanation doesn’t explain how all behavior is learned. There is a set of criteria that must be met for a behavior to be learned correctly. The criteria for this specific experiment are:
1. If hungry, the rat will eat food from the pan if this is placed before him
2. If the pan is gently removed while the rat is eating and its foot is on the edge of the pan, the rat will pull back on the pan
3. If the pan is pulled farther under the same conditions, the rat will 'scrabble' and catch the string in mouth or paw.
4. The rat will pick up a string on which food is smeared.
5. It will seize and pull on the string if the string is 'jiggled.'
6. If the pan is out of reach, the rat will not without certain training pull in on the string and obtain food.
Tolman states that some behavior will occur before the training, but there are certain behaviors must be conditioned.
3) I eventually figured out that they wrote it because there is more to learning than conditioning. They stated that there is a level of expectation of the rats before training. They obviously showed support of the Sign Gestalt Expectation hypothesis. There is much more to learning than the one method or one opinion we think.
5) The text discusses two types of conditioning; one of them being respondent conditioning. This occurs when a neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus. It involves the transfer of the control of behavior from one stimulus to another (S-S pairing). Respondent generalization relates to the behavior that occurs before the training because respondent generalization occurs when an organism shows a conditioned response to the values of the CS that were not trained during this acquisition.
6) This was the first time of hearing of the Sign Gestalt Explanation Theory. Also the studies were printed in the 1930’s. I think more research needs to be done on this theory, especially if they expect me to understand anything any time soon.
7) The only article I could think of was the one about instincts. Although those are necessarily learned behaviors, it relates to rats that learned certain behaviors before training. With the killer whale, it had instincts way before humans started training him.
1) I found the most interesting part of this to be about how they went after each other’s different point of views, and how these two scholars disagreed on some things, but showed how they like other ideas from the other person. It also gave good insight about how detailed they were about what they meant about certain ideas.
2) I believe the main topic of discussion was sign-gestalt-expectation-hypothesis. I found that part of the paper to be very confusing though. I wish they would have explained what that meant in a little bit more detail as well. I think it is saying that the rats are not quite learning what they wanted them to for the reasons they wanted the rats to, but they are doing the right thing for the right results.
3) I think the authors were trying to get the point across that sometimes learning occurs whether it was the reason intended or not. If the wrong way about learning and coming to the right conclusion or whether the expectations came to the wrong way about doing something, both are learning.
4)
5) There is one thing in the text that I think can relate to these articles. It is respondent conditioning. This occurs when a neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus. It involves the transfer of the control of behavior from one stimulus to another. I think this is what they are talking about when they discuss eating the food, to pulling the pan with their foot, to pulling the string.
6) When I google searched sign-gestalt-expectation-hypothesis, I found little about it. I have never heard of it before tonight, and since it was written in 1937, I do not believe it had a great impact in the world. If so, I believe there should be more research on that topic.
7) The closest article I could relate this to is animal instincts. It is showing how the rat learns to pull the pan to get the food. Getting food is an instinct for survival. So that rat is learning to get food which somewhat shows a connection.
I thought the fact that the two articles were basically an argument against each other was the most fascinating part about it. Rather than privately scrutinizing each other’s work, they publically published what they believe was wrong about the other’s theory. Guthrie went through Tolman’s entire experiment and picked out every tiny thing that he felt was wrong or irrational. Tolman then replied with a public response about how Guthrie’s thoughts on his work were way off base. Overall, I just felt it was a fun read.
I believe that the main point/points of this article was that, though the sign-gestalt-expectation theory is a logical reason for explaining the behavior and possible thought process of the rats, it is not necessarily the only explanation for the rats’ behavior. Tolman believed that, when the rats pulled on the string, they expected that food would be the reinforcement for their behavior. Guthrie argued this with the fact that it requires anthropomorphizing a human thought onto an animal – which is something that Gestalt refused to believe in. Along with this there are other possible circumstances that may have influenced the behavior such as the hunger, activity, and aggressiveness of the rats at the time the behavior occurred. Along with this, Tolman covered the string with food for part of the experiment which may have caused the rat to pull on it more, rather than pulling on it to reach the food in the end. Overall, I believe the author’s were trying to imply that there may be alternative theories to explain the behavior of the rats in this particular experiment.
I have to agree with the rest of the class that the book does a good job at discussing respondent conditioning which is closely related to Tolman’s idea of the sign-gestalt-expectation theory. The respondent conditioning states that the control of one behavior can be transferred from one stimulus to another. In Tolman’s experiment this relates to the fact that the food was related to the string pulling. By pulling the string, the rats were able to perform their personal desired behavior of eating the food.
I do not believe that the sign-gestalt-expectation theory had that great of an impact on psychology. I believe that there were too many arguments against it, such as Guthrie’s arguments, that it was never popularized. I believe that there may have been other theories similar to the approach that Tolman was taking that have overshadowed Tolman’s original theory (such as respondent conditioning). In the end I think that Tolman had the right approach, it just needed to be more thought through.
This article does relate to the article regarding instincts with the fact that it is natural for animals to focus on food and figure out ways to capture and take possession of their food. Animals are constantly trying to figure out various ways to get food in the wild, it is natural that they would figure out a way to achieve the food in this experiment as well.
1. I thought it was interesting that they didn’t give us much information on how they trained the rats to pull the string. The article was focused on behaviors that were known preconditioning.
2. The main points in the first article were explaining the experiment. The rats were to pull the string that pulled the food dish in so they could eat out of it. They took into account the behaviors they thought the rats knew before training them. One being that the rat will eat from the pan if hungry, if the pan is pulled away from them they will put there foot on the pan and pull it back, and if the string was covered with food the rat would pick it up. The unconditioned stimulus was the food in the pan and the conditioned stimulus was the rat pulling the string. The second article was very short explaining things in the first article a bit better. It explained how the latent learning was set up and that associative learning takes into account conditioning and stimulus response-ism. It also made clear that the conditioned response could have multiple proceedings.
3. The first article was a response to another article we didn’t read but I think it did a good job giving us a majority of the information. The second article was the response to the article we did read. I like how we got to see how one researcher found something in another’s experiment and did there own to critique it. Then we got to see what the researcher had to say about it. Normally when we read articles like this it’s a one and done type of thing. We read an article and normally don’t see any follow up information.
5. I looked up the law of latency in the text. I know we have talked about it before in other classes but I couldn’t remember what exactly it was. The text defines it as the intensity of the unconditioned stimulus increases, the latency (time to onset) of the unconditioned response decreases. So it’s the time between the stimulus and the reaction. The text gives the example of a puff of air in a rabbit’s eye. The puff of air will elicit the response of an eye blink. If the air puff isn’t as strong it will still make the rabbit blink but the time between the air and blink will be longer than a stronger puff of air.
6. I think the impact of this article was that researchers do follow up on others experiments and duplicate them to see if they can get the same results. I was also surprised to see that in one case the researcher admitted he was wrong and took responsibility for being wrong. This shows that just because a study is done it doesn’t mean it’s correct.
7. This article relates to other animal conditioning articles we have read. This article differs in that we didn’t get to read much about the experiment itself and how it was set up. This article was based on critiquing another article/experiment.
Tolman and Guthrie write about two models of learning, the conditioned response and Tolman’s theory of sign-gestalt-expectation. The articles are explanations of a study by McCulloch in which a hungry rat is fed food from a pan with a string attached. The string attached is smeared with food. As the pan is moved the rat will pull back the pan with its foot. As the pan is moved further away the rat will catch the string. According to Tolman the rat will not pull on the string to obtain food when the pan is out of reach if it has not had training. After training the rat will pull on the string until it can reach the food and eat.
The question of the experiment is why does the rat pull the string, what theory explains this learning. One possible explanation is conditioned response which states is the hungry rat is enticed to pull on the string when it is jiggled or smeared with food. It is sometimes rewarded because the pulling brings the food within reach. Eventually the rat learns to pull the strong or food tray to obtain food.
The second explanation and that which the author agrees with is Tolman’s sign gestalt-expectation hypothesis which states that the first taste of food establishes salivation and chewing (unconditioned responses). According to Tolman, and Guthrie appears to agree with much of his theory, these unconditioned responses are necessary before the rat will pull the string. Tolman states that the rat pulls the string because it already has the expectation of reward. It is not simply pulling the string and then getting reward of food as would be the traditional operant conditioning explanation.
The sign-gestalt theory adds a new intervening variable into the conditioned learning model. The theory states that the physiological response is necessary before the rat will pull the string; this is called the sign-gestalt. Traditional conditioned learning theory does not require this intervening variable.
These articles show how in the 1930’s how different concepts like the sign-gestalt were studied in an attempt to understand how learning occurred. The book points out that modern theory does not support the sign-gestalt expectation, however it is interesting to see how they were trying to get some sort of intention involved where as operant conditioning would say that learning is simply a matter of actions and consequences. It is important to have articles and research such as Tolman and Guthrie because we need to explore all options before we can have a more sound theory. It also teaches us that there are theories that we will support now, but after more research will learn are not valid. I would say to not be critical of researchers in the past that came to some conclusions that we no longer agree with, because they got their ideas out there and tried to come up with answers.
Terms: conditioned response, intervening variable, sign-gestalt, reward, unconditioned response
1) The most interesting aspect of the article for me was different and similar variations of behavior defined in the article. At first I did not understand how the rat’s behavior could be defined under many behaviourial genera. I also enjoyed the written argument between the two professors.
2) Gauthrie: That the rats behavior is categorized under the sign-gestalt-expectation when it should not have been the only explanation for the rats behavior (only the best one). Gauthrie proceeds to explain that after the rats have been trained; they learn to expect the food after pulling on the string. He also argued that Tolman anthropomorphized the rats ability to understand the sting pull equals behavior.
Tolman: Agrees with Gauthrie but has some arguments. The behaviors learned by the rats occurred before and after the training. Agrees that the conditioned response dose not require only one preceding unconditioned stimulus/response.
3) I think the authors wrote the articles to define the behavior that occurred during Tolman’s experiments. I also think that these articles show how the publishing process works(Tolman published, Guthrie critiqued and Tolman explained and responded.
4) Same as #2
5)In the text I found Respondent conditioning/generalization in the back of the book. Respondent conditioning occurs when an organism responds to a new event based on a history of paring with a biologically important stimulus. In the experiment the RS would have been the rats pulling on the string to eat food. Respondent generalization occurs when an organism shows a conditioned response to values of the conditioned stimulus that have not been trained. In the experiment, the rats might have salivated/expected food when pulling on the string after being trained.
6)The articles helped define the behavior in the Tolman study/ displays the publishing process.
7)The animal instinct article read relates because the rats pull the string in order to get food. The rat might not have been sure that they would get food but since food was a result once the rats instincts would dictate to pull the sting.
I found these articles a little confusing. I contribute this mostly to the writing of the authors. Both articles were written for an audience with a background in associative learning and previous research in the area. The articles were also both from 1937, which is likely another reason they were difficult.
I enjoyed reading an article where someone explicitly calls out a fellow scientist on the areas where his research is less than stellar. Previous articles from class have never done that, so it was amusing to read.
The articles discussed a previous article by Tolman on associative learning. The original experiment called for rats to pull on a string to provide them with food. Guthrie argued as to what was an unconditioned stimulus in the experiment. He also argued that conditioned inhibition would occur if the string were too long and the rat became bored with pulling the string to get food. The articles also focused on associative learning, latent learning, and the sign-gestalt theory.
Both article were written in response to a previous article. Guthrie wrote his article in response to Tolman’s original article on associative learning. He wrote the article to voice his concerns and disagreements with the original article and what could be changed. Tolman then wrote the second article in response to Guthrie’s article on Tolman’s original. Tolman voiced areas that he agreed with Guthrie and areas where he believed Guthrie was wrong. The main point of these articles, in my opinion, was to improve science. Research can only be improved by discussing the faults and strengths of the research and the hypotheses.
These articles served the purpose of strengthening research. I feel like these articles, especially Guthrie’s response, are a lot like the article by Breland and Breland, in that they break away from the norm and show how previous findings could be wrong. By writing a response article on areas where the research or the conclusions made from the research could be wrong, research on associative learning was impacted. After stating issues with the article, other researchers can now continue with new experiments by utilizing the constructive criticism to their advantage in building a better experiment. Tolman’s response back serves a purpose as well. His response can continue to impact research in the area through his justifications and explanations of why his research is correct and where it went wrong. This helps to create better experiments in the future.
I was surprised by the lack of information I found in the text regarding these articles. As I was reading I continued to come across terms and ideas that I was unsure about. While I read, I kept writing down things to look up in the text, but when I finally got to the text I found very few of the concepts I had written down. For example, I had hoped to find information on the sign-Gestalt hypothesis, but I wasn’t able to find any. Perhaps this is my fault and I wasn’t looking correctly, but I was very disappointed. I had also expected to find information about associative learning and latent learning, but found very little. I did, however, find information on conditioned inhibition, but was again disappointed in the text. While at first there appeared to be a lot of information on this concept, I quickly became confused when the section began relating the definition to an equation used earlier in the text that was unknown. I was happy to find a definition, but had hoped for more explanation that I would understand.
Guthrie wrote his article as a response to an article published by Tolman. Guthrie’s main point of writing this article was to point out things that he disagreed with in Tolman’s article, and to question his theories. In his article Tolman says that the unconditioned response is the food being present. Guthrie strongly disagrees with this. Guthrie thinks that more than one UCS is needed. Some of the other UCSs that he gives are the rat needs to be hungry, and not distracted. He also questions Tolman’s 7 kinds of learning. He says that they don’t explain in inappropriate response. Guthrie’s main point is that there are many environmental factors that go into a behavior, even in the most sterile of environments.
Tolman wrote a response back to Guthrie defending some of his points, and agreeing with Guthrie on others.
I find it interesting that these two men could be so open about their complaints of the other one. It seems to me that in research if you disagree with another researcher’s theories, you make your own, or conduct research that goes against the other’s theory. Instead of using a round-about way of questioning Tolman, Guthrie just gets straight to the point with this article. I think that this is very important in research because working more collaboratively, rather than competition, we can accomplish more. However, I think that this is practiced that often.
The articles were a little difficult to follow, because they targeted an audience of behavioral scientists, however, I found both the articles interesting in that they pose interesting questions about how animals acquire certain behaviors. I also found these articles interesting because they demonstrate how science works: A scientists tests his or her hypotheses then publishes their interpretation of the results. Other scientists are then free to contribute their ideas and theories on the subject which gains momentum for generating new and better theories and hypotheses on the subject.
The main points of these articles was to pinpoint how or why the rats pulled the string. The articles seem to shy away from the conditioned theory and focus more on the sign-gestalt theory, however neither explains acquisition of the behavior entirely. It is likely that there are several explanations for the behavior.
Guthrie wrote his article in response to an experiment done by Tolman and colleagues in which the acquisition of string-pulling behavior was explained using the Sign-Gestalt-Expectation-Hypothesis and Conditioned-Response theory. Guthrie disagreed with Tolman's associative-conditioning theory and wanted to make his points heard. Tolman then responded with his article to defend his theories.