Chapter 5: Strengthening the scientific standing of psychology Flashcards
wat zei watson over introspection
Watson (in his manifesto) argued that previous research on introspection into consciousness had failed and that in order to become a real science, psychology needed to focus on observable behaviour and ignore mental terms (everything that is related to consciousness, thinking, feelings, motives, plans, purposes, images, knowledge or the self).
“I believe we can write a psychology [as just described]… and never go back upon our definition: never use the terms consciousness, mental states, mind, content, introspectively verifiable, imagery, and the like. I believe that we can do it in a few years… It can be done in terms of stimulus and response, in terms of habit formation, habit integration and the like. Furthermore, I believe that it is really worthwhile to make this attempt now.” (Watson, from the Behaviourist Manifesto, 1913; from Brysbaert & Rastle, p. 194).”
watson
Chomsky evaluates Skinner’s work on the basis of how well it is able to predict behavior. Therefore, if it is unclear what kind of reinforcement causes a behavior, it can’t predict and is meaningless
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a tact is
a tact is a verbal behavior where an individual expresses or identifies something in their environment. For example, if a child sees an apple and says “apple,” that would be an example of a tact. The verbal response (saying “apple”) is evoked by the particular object (the apple) in the environment. Through reinforcement, the child is more likely to continue labeling objects in the future. Tacts are important in language development and communication skills.
verbal operant =
In behavior analysis, verbal operants refer to different functional units of language or verbal behavior.
dus gewoon taal
Chomsky uses the example of a fox to address the concept of a tact. What point is Chomsky trying to make with this example?
Hier wilde Chomsky laten zien dat de uitleg van Skinner over waarom mensen op een bepaalde manier reageren op een woord, niet klopt. Hij gebruikt hierbij het voorbeeld dat iemand het woord fox hoort, en vervolgens wegrent of om zich heen kijkt.
De twee assumpties van Skinner over een tact zijn: 1. De luisteraar heeft een geschiedenis met het woord fox, waardoor dit woord geassocieerd wordt met de actie om zich heen kijken, en wegrennen etc. en 2. De luisteraar heeft een interesse in het woord, en het bovenstaande gedrag is een reinforcer voor het zien van een vos.
Chomsky vind deze uitleg niet overtuigend, en geeft aan dat de luisteraar misschien nooit een vos heeft gezien, en ook geen interesse heeft in het zien van die vos, maar toch wel het gepaste gedrag uitvoert. Hiermee zijn de assumpties die Skinner stelt dus niet altijd van toepassing.
officiele term van tact door skinner, en hoe applied dit tot bv een stoel
Tacts are responses that are under control of a stimulus.
So, the chair and its property of redness control the response “red”
wat zei chomsky over denotation and connotation
This must seem familiar by now: Chomsky prefers the other terminology over Skinner’s. While denotation and connotation are not without their issues, he believes they are still more informative than stimulus control and property.
autoclitics are
Autoclitics are, then, responses to already given responses, or rather, as we find in reading through this section, they are responses to covert or incipient or potential verbal behavior
by 1900 there were 41 psychology labs in the usa.
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in 1892 the APA was founded
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what was the first american psychology stroming
functionalism
how was psychology in the usa molded by the culture
- strong interest in darwins evolution theory
- americans believed in the importance of the environment
- mistrust of intellectualism, knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
strong interest in darwins theory=
usa was struggling to establish a new nation, eugenics had a big impact, several states adopted legalislation aimed at preventing marriage or compulsory sterilization
galtons’ eugenics
he encouraged people with desirable features to reproduce with each other
importance of the environment
most of them were immigrants, convinced that human characteristics were not only due to inheritance but also depend on environment: could change and control human actions for the better (protestant religion)
mistrust of intellectualism =
usa was a nation of common sense business men, not interested in abstract science but in practical accomplishments that made money
wat was het verschil tussen american and european psychology
american psych = functionalists
european psych = structuralism, introspective study of consciousness
wat was nog een reden dat psychologen meer richting functionalism gingen
wundts research ran into problems in 1880: his lab had been centred on mental chronometry, extending Donders’ theory from three stages to five. but there were large individual differences, therefore they could not derive a scientific law from them. therefore wndt turned to introspection and historical methods, and usa turned to darwin
in early 20th century the future of psych was looking less glamourly, most labs were set up within philosophical and theological institutes
die dus niet open gesteld waren naar nieuwkomers
hoe probeerden ze in de psychologie de public te overwinnen
phrenology, mesmerism, spiritualism and other paranormal subjects
phrenology=
gall, different functions were controlled by different parts of the brain. well-developed functions were supported by parts of the brain with a larger volume. measuring parts of the skull would predict the strenghts and weaknesses of a person.
mesmerism=
able to look inside bodies and diagnose illnesses, vooral Charles Pywn en Fowler brothers
spiritualism=
the belief that spirits o fthe dead could be contacted by mediums
fox sisters
waarom werd echte wetenschappelijke psychologie niet zo bekend onder de general public
omdat het niet vet genoeg was, niet sterk genoeg bewijs om hun interesse te wekken
wie schreef survival of the fittest
Herbert Spencer in 1864
wat schreef Spencer over evolutie
claimde dat evolution had a direction and an equilibrium endpoint. organisms could pass on newly learned skills to their offspring.
wanneer was Thorndike actief
1898: birthday of comparative psychology
2 dingen die anders waren aan Thorndike’s onderzoek
- not relying on anecdotal evidence, but on careful observations in controlled environments
- basing conclusions on animals’ behaviour, not on what supposedly went on in their minds
welke law had thorndike gemaakt
law of effect: Responses that produce a satisfying effect in a particular situation become more likely to occur again in that situation, and responses that produce a discomforting effect become less likely to occur again in that situation
(dit had hij geobserveerd dmv dieren in zijn puzzelbox)
wat bestudeerde Ian Pavlov in eerste in stantie
digestive system of animals
wat hoorde bij Thorndike
Thorndike’s puzzlebox!!
instrumental conditioning
bij wie was pavlov inspired
I.M. Sechenov: zei dat mental life could be understood in terms of physiological reflexes.
wat hoort bij Pavlov
classical conditioning: a neutral stimulus that is presented shortly before a stimulus that automatically eclicts a response: the neutral stimulus starts to eclict this response as well
who brought research on animal behaviour into the natural sciences
thorndike als eerste, maar pavlov helemaal
watson
published a scathing article against the lack of scientific rigor in the psychological labs, which would become the start of: behaviourism
wat voor shift was er te zien
van introspection of the own mind, to observation of others behaviour
door welke twee factoren kwam deze shift binnen het onderzoek naar psychologie
- the impact of evolutionary theory on american psychology: survival in the context of natural selection depends on how the animal acts, not on what it thinks
- introspection turned out to be very counterintuitive, and difficult procedure for students: easier and more objective to observe others
watson over introspection
psychology must discard all reference to consciousness and must distance itself from the study of mental states
3 standpunten van positivism
- science is based on observation and experimentation, therefore it is the truth
- scientific theories are summaries of empirical findings, therefore true
- scientific knowledge is true: should be the motor of all progress
3 eisen waar psych science aan moest voldoen
- must be able to represent the elements of mathematical laws as numbers.
- distinction between independent en dependent variables
- the need for verification by others
wie was bezig met mathematical law as numbers
Clack L Hull: explained learning and motivation by equations. but he found that these equations were limited to controlled situations in which the animal functioned, could not be used outside of the lab
Skinner
operant conditioning
radical behaviourism: organism is nothing but a place where stimuli provoke behaviors on the basis of S-R associations. humans have way less controll over actions than they assume
welke soort conditioning hoort bij wie
Thorndike - instrumental conditioning
Pavlov - classical conditioning
Skinner - operant conditioning
Tolman
doubted Skinner, conviced it could not be understood in simple S-R associations.
exp: rats who were not reinforced would not learn
Blodgett
found that rats learning was not due to the fact that the presence of food had reinforced taking the correct turns, but that the rat had learned the layout of the maze and were able to use this knowledge when they had reason to do so.
hoe noemden Tolman en Blodgett deze manier van leren
latent learning: the acquisition of knowledge that is not demonstrated in observable behaviour
wat zei Tolman over behaviour
behavior is motivated by goals (porposive behaviourism)
Tolman agreed with…
Watson and Skinner that psychology should be based on observable behaviour
dus wie zijn de 2 belangrijke mensen van behaviourism
Watson & Skinner
what were the most important factors in the developments of the 1940s
technological advances outside of the psychology labs: increasing need for long-distance communication and sophisticated encryption codes due to the world wars
McCulloch & Pitts
argued that human behavior could be thought of as a Boolean decive (in 0 en 1)
wat voor machines voor Boolean devices
Turing machines
Lashley
questioned the validity of S-R models: vooral over speech, words unfold so quickly that it is impossible that each word is based on S-R associations. also there is a speech error that includes the anticipation of words that have not yet occurred
Leahey: 3 ways in which the availability of computers changed psych. research
- a new explanation for the purposiveness of behaviour
- simulation of human thinking
- psychologists as software engineers
a new explanation for the purposiveness of behaviour =
een probleem was: hoe leg je uit dat mensen clear goals hebben en dat deze goals het gedrag directen? dat kan bijna niet zonder homunculus.
computers lieten zien dat je geen homunculus nodig hebt: zij hadden deze goal-directed behaviours dmv information feedback
Miller
1956: limits of short-term memory, people could only report 7 +/- 2 unrelated items at the rate of about a stimulus per second.
the human mind could be considered a computer with limited memory.
Neisser
1967: book that summarized the evidence for information processing in the mind -> cognitive psychology rise.
what was different aan cognitive psychology
- accepted a separate level of mental representations to which algorithms were applied
- introduced more complex information manipulations than simple associations that had formed the basis of human knowledge since the days of empiricism and associationism
- differed from pre-behaviourist psych: want alleen verifiable predictions and experimental tests of the hypothesized tests of the mechanisms
2 approaches of cognitive psych
- information processing diagrams
- write a computer program that performed the transformations that were assumed to occur
waar stonden de boxen voor in information processing diagrams en waar stonden de pijlen voor
boxen= (temporary) stores of info
arrows = transforming cognitive processes
hoe kwamen ze bij top-down processes
door information feedback mechanisms discovered during WWII
wie maakte die information processing diagrams voor het eerst
Broadbent
kritiek op Broadbent
when ppl see an array of elements flashed for a short period of time, they only manage to see 4 elements.
waarop Sperling zei: a short time delay between stimulus and tone, and noticed that the reporting ability declined as this time increased
latent learning =
the retention of information, without reinforcement or motivation
