Chapter 1 - Some pioneers of Comparative Psychology

Question 1

What was George John Romanes approach to comparative studies?

Answer 1

He viewed evolution as linear and studied animal intelligence

Question 2

what was a major problem with Romanes animal intelligence data?

Answer 2

It was too anecdotal to be taken seriously and hard to prove; many stories of incredible dog behaviour when stories were mostly witnesses by one individual and over emphasized

Question 3

What kind of approach was Romanes taking when studying animal intelligence?

Answer 3

an anthropomorphic approach ==> explained apparently clever animal behaviour in terms of human reasoning abilities and said animals could reason like humans

Question 4

What is a problem with Romanes anecdotal method?

Answer 4

Selection-bias

he only picked data that demonstrated animals doing intelligent behaviour without context and ignored the vast amount of other non-intelligent things that animals do

Question 5

What kind of approach did C. Lloyd Morgan take in comparative studies?

Answer 5

First he was monism

He took a more experimental approach as opposed to Romanes anecdotal approach

Question 6

what was the name of the book by Morgan?

Answer 6

Called An introduction to Comparative Psychology = stressed that mind and body are both products of evolution

Question 7

What was Morgan’s view on animal behaviour/ Morgans cannon?

Answer 7

he believed in objective observations

He saw problems wit anecdotal approach and wanted a hollistic view of behaviour not just small interesting portions

He said that to understand an animals behaviour we must ‘dumb’ down to trial and error first (the simplest method) and then if that doesnt work we can bring into a more “higher” explanation like insight

Question 8

What are some cautions to take when using Morgan’s Cannon?

Answer 8

1. no one knows what ‘higher psychical faculty” is and who determines it
2. Might miss higher processes if we are always trying to dumb them down
3. misleading idea of phylogenetic scale. Humans are not just highly evolved fish, pigeons or rats
4. Each species is specifically adapted to its own environment, so one cannot be smarter or more advanced than the other because environments differ

Question 9

What was Thorndike’s contribution to animal learning?

Answer 9

used an objective method to study animal learning

he created the Thorndike Puzzle Box ==> put a cat in a box and saw how many trials it takes for the cat to escape using learning curves (time to escape should decrease over number of trials)

Question 10

What kind of learning/conditioning did Thorndike demonstrate using his Puzzle box?

Answer 10

instrumental learning / operant conditioning

Question 11

What is Thorndike’s law of effect?

Answer 11

• satisfying consequences strengthen connections

- unpleasant consequences weaken connections

Question 12

What is Thorndike’s idea of ToT (Transfer of Training)?

Answer 12

idea that by studying one subject/task, the learning process can transfer over to similar tasks (i.e. learning latin to be better at learning other languages - this failed btw)

Question 13

what is the opinion of all true behaviourists (from Pavlov to Skinner) about behaviour?

Answer 13

they all regarded behaviour as the only proper subject for psychology and rejected subjective experience as a legitimate topic

• they all promoted the objective observation of behaviour since animals can’t introspect

Question 14

what was the driving force behind behaviourism?

Answer 14

animal research

Question 15

What was Pavlov’s contribution to behaviourism?

Answer 15

pavlov was a moderate behaviourist; he contributed the conditioned reflex by demonstrating it with his dogs

Question 16

What is the purpose of conditioned reflexes? describe an example with Pavlov’s dogs?

Answer 16

the purpose of conditioned reflexes is to adapt to environment

Pavlov’s dogs drooled when they saw food and when they heard the bell after it was conditioned to signify food on the way; they drool to prep their GI tract for food which allows for better absorption and extraction of more nutrients

Question 17

what was Pavlov’s ideas on temperament? What are the two groups he places humans and animals into in terms of learning capabilities?

Answer 17

Pavlov demonstrated that animals show individual differences in their abilities to form conditioned reflexes.

Excitatory group/Pro-active animals ==> easily conditioned; deal with threats immediately/ learn easily but are very rigid to changes in environment.
Inhibitory group/reactive animals ==> difficult to condition; take longer to learn but are more flexible and can detect changes in environment better

thought this distinction would also apply to humans

Question 18

What are the temperamental extremes associated with pathology according to Pavlov? (4 types)

Answer 18

they are based on body fluid amount

1. Choleric ==> anxious, high energy (extrovert) BUT low emotional stability
2. Sanguine ==> warm and dynamic; high energy (extrovert) and positive emotional stability
3. Melancholic ==> Depressed; Low energy Introvert, and negative emotional stability
4. Phlegmatic ==> calm, self contained; positive emotional stability, but an introvert (low energy)

Question 19

What was Watson’s contribution to Behaviourism?

Answer 19

Watson opposed structuralism (study of the structure of the mind via introspection) and had said that psychology needs to shift from being subjective to being objective and available to all

he was a moderate behaviourist

Question 20

What behaviourist concept Watson’s experiment with Little Albert representing? How is this contrasted with Freud and Little Hans?

Answer 20

Watson paired a white rat + loud sound to a baby called Little Albert and created conditioned fear (via classical conditioning and association)

this was a direct contrast to Little Hans by Freud; which was a little boy who was scared of horses and Freud claimed it was due tot he Oedipal complex and caused a phobia.

Watsons is objective and Freuds is subjective/introspective

Question 21

What was Skinner’s contribution to behaviourism?

Answer 21

Skinner was a radical behaviourist
He highly emphasized that psychologists should study the relationship between stimulus and response and nothing else (no nerves or physiological aspects)

He said that people have personal mental processes but theres no point in studying them

Question 22

What is the contrast between Pavlov’s and Skinner’s experiments?

Answer 22

Pavlov’s experiments are passive, so an antecedent (a stimulus) causes a response; But Skinner’s experiments are active, where a behaviour is caused by a consequence and without consequence the behaviour would not occur

Question 23

What was Skinner’s operant experiment and how does it differ from Thorndike’s Puzzle box?

Answer 23

Skinners operant experiment focused on voluntary behaviour whenever the animal wants; And it examined the natural flow of behaviour and lets you measure the number of successful responses of the animal because the animal stays in the box and can receive rewards as they push lever;

Operant box has an advantage that the researcher doesn’t have to be around all the time but its basically putting food outside the box and waiting to see how long it takes for the animal to learn to open the cage and get the food.

Question 24

what was on disadvantage of Skinner’s radical beliefs on behaviourism?

Answer 24

People thought Skinner was an evil person trying to shape people and remove their free will

Question 25

What are Respondents?

Answer 25

respondents are controlled by antecedents and are elicited

therefore, behaviour is elicited by antecedent (classical conditioning)

Question 26

What are operants?

Answer 26

Operants are controlled by consequences and are emitted

behaviour is emitted due to its consequence

Question 27

What are antecedents?

Answer 27

stimuli that occur before the behaviour

Question 28

what are consequences?

Answer 28

rewards/punishments that occur after behaviour

Question 29

What was Tolman’s contribution to behaviourism?

Answer 29

Tolamn proposed operational behaviourism which is accepting unobservable events in the study of behaviour as long as they are used rigorously and carefully

these include motivation and cognition

Question 30

What are intervening variables? (tolman)

Answer 30

intervening variables explain the relationship between two other variables

The intervening variable explains how or why the independent variable (variable being manipulated) has an effect on dependant variable (variable that is being observed or measured)

i.e. the intervening variable: thirst
is not objective and can’t be seen or measured; but if we take into account input variables like: hours of water deprivation, dry food, and saline injection, we can measure the output variables: volume of water consumed, rate of lever for pressing water and quinine tolerated to infer with best judgement that the animal is experiencing thirst.

So thirst, explains the relationship between input (independent variable) and output (dependant variable)

Question 31

What was Hull’s contribution to behaviourism?

Answer 31

• he also supported intervening variables

- looked at the interactions between antecedent and consequence variables

Question 32

What is Drive? (Hull)

Answer 32

Drive is motivation caused by biological need. It is influenced by being deprived

i.e. Thirst is a drive

Question 33

What is Habit? (Hull)

Answer 33

Habit is learning; influenced by the number of times behaviour has been reinforced

i.e. Drinking Alcohol is a habit

Question 34

What was Hull’s main idea behind Drive and Habit?

Answer 34

He believed these two fundamental variables combined to influence all performance in the form of behaviour

Question 35

What is Information processing theory? What is a downfall of it?

Answer 35

information processing theory was influenced by technology ==> it is the standard model of cognition; and deals with inputs and outputs;

i.e. we get an environmental input ==> our senses analyze this ==> then its stored in short term memory ==> and then we either respond OR it gets stored in long term

doesn’t really explain how its converted to memory or how we use this to learn

Question 36

What is Connectionism theory?

Answer 36

also called parallel distributed processing;

it comprises of nodes that are connected with other nodes; if the node is activated then other nodes are activating depending o the strength of connection between nodes

each node responds to a feature in the environment (i.e. bark, arched back, tail)

Question 37

what is the advantage of Connectionism theory?

Answer 37

the advantage is that it shows learning because connections between two nodes become stronger as more examples + experience is presented to it

Question 38

What are the 3 ways that we study Animal learning?

Answer 38

1. Retaining original interest in studying observable behaviors
2. Hesistant to use many theoretical constructs to explain animal learning (i.e. Parsimony by Morgan’s Canon)
3. Questions revolve around motivationally and biologically significant events (i.e pressing lever for food)

Question 39

What are the 3 ways that we study Human learning?

Answer 39

1. Study more focused on mental processes
2. Use more theoretical constructs to explain behaviour
3. Questions revolve more around less-biologically relevant questions (i.e. word list memory)

Question 40

What are 4 reasons as to why humans use animals to study humans?

Answer 40

1. according to Darwin; animals can tell us about humans and it is believed to be fundamental, general processes that is shared across animal kingdom
2. Animals don’t suffer from demand characteristics ==> subtle clue that makes participants aware of what the experimenter expects to find and how participants are expected to behave; this can change an outcome of an experiment because participants change their behaviours
3. Control (more control over confounds with animals than w/ humans)
4. Ethics ==> some experiments are hard to do on humans
5. Brain mechanisms; Causations ==> In human studies, causation can rarely be inferred since we would have to manipulate things in the brain at times which is unethical, but with animals experiments, causation can be made.