WEEK 8: Behaviourism

Question 1

Wundt
What were his three goals for psychology?

Answer 1

Three goals for psychology
Break conscious processes into their basic elements
Discover how the elements are organized
Determine the laws of connection controlling the organization of the elements

Question 2

What is introspection?

Answer 2

Introspection is the examination of one’s own mental state - ‘internal perception’

Question 3

Wundt’s New Psychology
Types of experiences? 2
What does immediate experience consist of? Is it biased by interpretation?
What is mediate experience influenced by? What does it interpret?
What is Wundt’s conclusion (which experience should be studied?

Answer 3

Immediate experience
- Consist of sensations or feelings
- Unbiased by interpretation

Mediate experience
- influenced by past experience
- ‘interpretations’ of the meaning of sensations

Wundt’s conclusion
Only immediate experiences should be studied

Question 4

Elements of conscious experience
What two elements make up experience
How is sensation provoked (organ. impulses)
What are feelings? what type of response

Answer 4

Sensations and feelings are two elements that make up experience
Sensation is provoked when a sense organ is stimulated and impulses reaching the brain
Feelings are a subjective reaction to stimuli and occur with sensation, however, it is not stimulated by a sense organ
Emotions =compounds of feeling elements

Question 5

What two elements make up experience?
Origin?

Answer 5

Sensation and feelings
Wundt

Question 6

The influence of animal psychology on behaviorism
Hans The Wonder Horse
Country?
Abilities?
What did Osten (the owner) want to prove?
What was the theory? What kind of processes?
What did Osten believe? Difference between humans and animals?

Answer 6

Germany- Horse named Hans
Abilities = add and subtract, recognize objects, demonstrated memory etc
Osten (the owner) wanted to prove that Darwins theory of humans and animals possessing similar mental processes was correct
Osten believed that with the right training, horses and other animals would be able to show their intelligence and that the only difference between humans and animals was education

Question 7

The influence of animal psychology on behaviourism
Watson- the relationship between behaviourism and animal psychology
What theory did animal psychology stem from?
What did animal psychology attempt to show? (existence, continuity)

Answer 7

Watson- the relationship between animalism psychology behaviorism ‘Behaviourism was established from the studies in animal behaviour’
Animal psychology stems from evolutionary theory and led to attempts of showing the exisitence of mind in lower organisms and the continuity between animal and human minds

Question 8

The influence of animal psychology on behaviourism
Loeb
Loeb
against? method, animal traits
Developed a theory on animal behaviour on what concept? (What kind of moments, does not involve?
how was the animal conciousness formed? define?

Answer 8

Increased objectivity in animal psychology
German physiologist and zoologist

Against anthropomorphism and method of introspection by analogy

Developed a theory of animal behaviour based on the concept of tropism, an involuntary forced movement (animals have involuntary forced movements)- behavioural response is forced by stimulus, not consciousness

However, Loeb was not able to discredit the past of animal consciousness as he argued that animal consciousness was formed by associative memory (animals learned how to respond to certain stimuli, the idea of a mental connection)

Question 9

The influence of animal psychology on behaviourism
Loeb
What was their approach? What does it mean?
What did he still invoke the idea of? how is consciousness formed? what does this mean?

Answer 9

Behaviour- cause and effect- a mechanistic approach

Even though Loeb took a mechanistic approach, he still invoked the idea of consciousness (consciousness formed by associative memory, how to respond to stimuli)

Question 10

The influence of animal psychology on behaviourism
Rats, Ants, and the Animal Mind
What was introduced in 1900? by? The standard method for?
What was still questioned at this time?
What type of therms did Small use to interpret the rats behviour?
What type of elements are in Smalls work

Answer 10

In the 1900- Rat maze was introduced by Small at Clark university as a standard method for the study of learning

The concept of consciousness still questioned at this point
To interpret the rat’s behaviour in the maze, Small used mentalistic terms, writing about the rats ideas and images
Mental processes elements in Smalls work

Question 11

The influence of animal psychology on behaviourism
Rats, Ants, and the Animal Mind
What article did Charles henry turner write? who was he? what term did he use?
Who reviewed his paper? what did they adopt?

Answer 11

1906: Charles Henry Turner, a graduate student at the university of Chicago, published an article- A preliminary Note on Ant Behaviour (first time the term ‘behaviour’ is used)
Watson reviewed this paper and praised it. He adoted the term ‘behaviour’ from then on

Question 11

The influence of animal psychology on behaviourism
Rats, Ants, and the Animal Mind
What article did Charles henry turner write? who was he? what term did he use?
Who reviewed his paper? what did they adopt?

Answer 11

1906: Charles Henry Turner, a graduate student at the university of Chicago, published an article- A preliminary Note on Ant Behaviour (first time the term ‘behaviour’ is used)
Watson reviewed this paper and praised it. He adoted the term ‘behaviour’ from then on

Question 12

The influence of animal psychology on behaviourism
Rats, Ants, and the Animal Mind
What was established by 1910?
Washburn- what did she teach? where? name of the book? what was her book established as?
In her book what was attributed to animals and what method was mentioned? what was compared? why?

Answer 12

1910: 8 comparative psychology laboratories were established

Washburn- taught animal psychology at Cornell, and her book ‘The Animal Mind’ was the first comparative psychology textbook published in the US- in her book the attribution of consciousness to animals persisted as well as the method of introspecting the animal mind by the analogy with the human mind
Analogy: comparison between one thing and another, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification

Question 13

The influence of animal psychology on behaviourism
Rats, Ants, and the Animal Mind
Name of Washburn’s book?
What must our interpretation of animal behaviour be based on?
How must we think when thinking of what takes place in the mind of an animal?

Answer 13

Washburn
in her book ‘The Animal Mind’ Wasburn emphasises that our interpretation of animal behaviour must be on the analogy of human experience. Be anthropomorphic when thinking what takes place in the mind of an animal

Question 14

Toward a science of behaviour
What did Wundt launch?
what happened to psychology? what three things were losing agreement?
What kind of psychology arose? aim? what emerged?
What did functional psychologists want to do?

Answer 14

After Wundt formally launched psychology, psychology as a science had undergone drastic revision as the value of introspection, the existence of mental elements, or the need for psychology to remain a pure science was no longer agreed upon by every psychologist.

Functional psychologists rise
modify, adding and changing whats already been discovered (not aiming to destroy the establishment of Wundt etc) so that a new form of psychology emerged

Functionalist psychologists wanted to build on the past

Question 15

Toward a science of behaviour
What did the protests in 1913 aim to do?
What was this movement called, and who promoted it? occupation?
What type of psychology was not credible?
What types of terms did Watson’s psychology reject? examples?
What were these examples seen as?
why did he reject consciousness?
What did the new psychology not include? (3) only focus on? (3) = psychology which views humans as?

Answer 15

1913- protest occurred which set out to destroy older points of view. No modifications to the past. This movement was called Behaviourism which was promoted by an American psychologist, Watson.
Functional psychology was not credible
Watson’s behaviourism- scientific, only observable behavioural acts that could be described objectivity in terms such as ‘stimulus’ and ‘response’
Watson’s psychology rejected all mentalistic terms and concepts eg ‘image’, ‘sensation’, ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’- seen as meaningless for a science of behaviour
Reject consciousness as it can not be seen, touched, smelled or moved- therefore introspection which assumed the existence of the conscious processes is irrelevant to the science of behaviour

New kind of psychology- without consciousness, mind, or soul. Only focus on what can be seen, heard, or touched = psychology that views humans as machines

Question 16

Toward the science of behaviour
What did Comete establish? define?
Criteria for valid knowledge? (2)
Does introspection support this? why?

Answer 16

Comete- founder of positivism = facts
Valid knowledge is social in nature and objectively observable

This means that introspection does not fall into this category as it is private to the individual consciousness and can not be objectively observed

Question 17

Becoming an animal psychologist
Who founded comparative psychology?
What did state legislators and university admins think of comparative psychology? quote?
Yerkes’s students? what usually occurred to animal psychologists? when?

Answer 17

Yerkes’s comparative psychology
seen as not having practical value by state legislators and university administrators as ‘smelly and expensive’
The students that Yerkes taught in his laboratory looked for jobs in applied fields as they were unable to find employment in comparative psychology. However, those who did find jobs, animal psychologists were usually the first to be fired in financial hardship.

Question 18

Becoming an animal psychologist
Who’s research was reprinted in the Journal of science? who was he?
What work did he introduce? to what audience?
What kind of psychology did Palovs’s study support? perspective?
Therefore what did this increase? what did this lead government to do? (examine, determine)

Answer 18

Palov’s study was reprinted in the journal of science (Russian psychologist) introducing his work on animal psychology to an American audience

Palov’s research supported objective psychology and Watson’s behaviourism = animal psychology became established and methods became more objective.
Greater objectivity led to the government establishing a committee to examine clever Hans’s powers, to determine deception involved

Question 19

Becoming an animal psychologist
What did the investigation of Hans find?
However who was not convinced? what did they want to find out?
who did he appoint? occupation? what did he do? test?
Two groups? when was the horse able to answer correctly? what did the other experiments find?
How was Hans able to answer correctly?

What approach does the case of Clever Hans signify in the study of animal behaviour? why do we have to focus on behavior and not consciousness in controlling of the mind?

Answer 19

Investigation into deception in clever Hans found no deception
However, Stumpf (one of the committee members formed by the government) was not satisfied and wanted to figure out how the horse correctly answered questions. He appointed a graduate student, Pfungst (experimental psychologist) who carried out an experiment to test this phenomenon.

Two groups
Questioners who knew the answer
questioners who did not know the answer
Results showed that the horse only answered correctly when the questioners knew the answer
Frm a series of controlled experiments, Pfungst concluded that Hans had been unintentionally conditioned by his owner- subtle cues

Learned responses

The case of clever Hans, therefore, shows the importance of the experimental approach in the study of animal behavior
Deal with behaviour, not consciousness - animals can be conditioned for behavior the idea of consciousness operating an animals mind is not valid

Question 20

Throndike
Researcher in?
Wht approach did he use when researching? what type of behaviour did he focus on?

Answer 20

Important researcher in the development of animal psychology
Took a mechanistic, objective approach and focused on overt behaviour

Question 21

Throndike
What did he study? (2) (behaviour, process)
What did he name his study of association? define?
Therefore, what is learning
What are the simplest elements of behaviour?

Answer 21

Studied animal behaviour and the learning process
Called his experimental approach to the study of association- - connectionism (connection between stimulations and responses)
Learning = connecting
Simpliest elements of behaviour - stimulus-response units

Question 22

Throndike
What did he build? for his research in?
What animal was used? Trait? What did the cat need to learn? What was timed?
What types of behaviours were seen on the first dew trials?
What types of behaviours were seen in later trials? What did this mean?
What type of learning was shown

Answer 22

Built crude puzzle boxes out of crates and sticks to use for his research into animal learning

Food deprived cat would be placed in the box and timed on how long it took to escape
Aim - learn how to operate the latch and escape
On the first few trials, random behaviours like sniffing and poking were seen in order to escape but after that, the cat learned how to operate the latch and escape and the random behaviours were less frequent meaning learning was complete

To record data, Thorndike used quantitative measures of learning eg logging the number of wrong behaviours

Trial and error learning- learning based on the repetition of response tendencies that lead to success

Question 23

Throndike
Laws of learning? define?

Answer 23

Laws of learning

Law of effect - Acts that have beneficial consequences will be associated with those situations so if those situations are to occur again, the act is likely to recur

Law of exercise or law of use and disuse - stimulus-response associations grow stronger through repetition

Trial and error learning - based on the repetition of response tendencies that lead to success

Question 24

Palov
What did his work help shift? what kind of ideas? to (3)
Who did his work help? how? (3))

Answer 24

His work helped shift associationism from subjective ideas to being concerned with objective, quantifiable physiological events eg muscle movement

His work also provided Watson with a method for studying behaviour and for attempting to control and modify it

Question 25

Palov
During his career what three major problems did Palov work on?
Function of?
What kind of glands? example?
What kind of reflexes? define?

Answer 25

Function of nerves and the heart
Primary digestive glands
Conditioned reflexes - Reflexes that are dependent on the formation of association or connection between stimulus and response eg salvation in the dogs
Reinforcement

Question 26

Influence of functional psychology on behaviourism
Behaviourism is?
What method is not accepted?
What does objective psychology focus on? What is it not?

Answer 26

Behaviourism and objectivity
No introspection
Objective psychology focuses on behaviour not consciousness
Behaviourist direction

Question 27

Three stages of behaviourism

Answer 27

Watson- father of behaviourism
Behaviourism reached the peak of its popularity in 1924
Neobehaviourism (1930-1960): includes the work of Tolman, Hull, and Skinner
-TThe core of psychology is the study of learning
- Most behaviours no matter how complex they are can be accounted for by the laws of conditioning
-Psychology needs to adopt the principle of operationalism
Neo-neobehaviourism or sociobehaviourism (1960 to 1990): includes Bandura and Rotter
-A return to the consideration of cognitive processes while maintaining a focus on the observation of overt behaviour

Question 28

Tolman
Questioned the usefulness of?
Researched? animal?
Unsatisfied?
What was his behaviourism called, what did it combine?
What terms did he deny?
Behaviour = ?
What terms can be used to define purposiveness? What does it not include?

Answer 28

Questioned the scientific usefulness of introspection
conducted research on learning in rats
Unsatisfied with Watsons behaviourism and began to develop his own

Purposive behaviourism: Tolman’s system combining the objective study of behaviour with the consideration of purposiveness or goal orientation in behaviour
Denied the mentalistic concepts in psychology
Purposiveness can be defined in objective behavioural terms without introspection
behaviour “reeks” of purpose and is oriented toward achieving a goal or learning the means to an end