Animal Psychology and Early Behaviorism

1
Animal Psychology and Early Behaviorism

• John B. WatsonFounder of behaviorism
• Apply animal psychology methods to humans
• Consciousness irrelevant
• Observable stimuli and responses
• Roots
• Philosophical
• Animal Psychology
• Functionalism
• Russian physiologists
• Philosophical roots
• Empiricism
• Mechanism
• Positivism

2
Animal Psychology

• British comparative psychology
• Inspired by Darwin
• Animals like humans or humans like animals?
• George John Romanes (18481894)
• Animal intelligence (1883)
• Thought processes evolve
• Mental state of animals differ from humans in
  degree
• Introspection by analogy

3

• Conwy Lloyd Morgan (18521936)
• Morgans canon
• In no case may we interpret an (animal) action
  as the outcome of the exercise of a higher
  psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as
  the outcome of the exercise of one which stands
  lower in the psychological scale.
• Accepted introspection
• Simple association rather than insight
• Chicks and tastetaste aversion, one trial
  learning

4
American Animal Psychology

• Humans function like animals
• Jacques Loeb (18591924)
• Tropismresponse to stimulus
• Adaptive and mechanical
• E. L. Thorndike and animal learning
• Puzzle boxes
• Observation
• Objective measures
• Errors
• Time to escape
• No insight, trial and error

5

• Law of effect
• Any act which in a given situation produces
  satisfaction becomes associated with that
  situation, so that when the situation recurs the
  act is more likely than before to recur also.
  Conversely, any act which in a given situation
  produces discomfort becomes disassociated from
  the situation, so that when the situation recurs
  the act is less likely than before to recur
• Satisfaction undefined
• Law of exercise or disuse
• Any response to a situation will, other things
  being equal, be more strongly connected with the
  situation in proportion to the number of times it
  has been connected with that situation and to the
  average vigor and duration of the connections
• Later deemphasized
• Prepared responses
• Stimulus generalization
• Later emphasis on reward

6

• Other animal psychologists
• Willard Stanton Small (18701943) rats and mazes
• Animal psychology and behaviorism
• Watson apply to the experimental study of man
  the same kind of procedure useful in the study
  of animals lower than man.
• Methodological
• Reject introspection
• Behavior
• Theoretical
• Conditioned reflex

7
Russian Physiology

• Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov (18291905)
• Organism as a reflex machine
• Inhibitory and excitatory reflexes
• Thought inhibited speech
• Learning controls reflexes
• Psychology studied through objective
  physiological methods

8
Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov (18491936)

• Associationism applied to stimulus and response
• Modifying reflexes
• Research on digestion
• Assumed
• Physiological reductionism
• Mechanical determinism
• Neural energy homeostasis

9
Psychic Reflexes

• Broad definition of reflex
• Conditioned reflex basics
• Unconditioned stimulus
• Food
• Unconditioned response
• Salivation
• Conditioned stimulus
• Light
• Conditioned response
• Salivation in response to light

10

• Features
• Temporal relations
• CS before and overlapping UCS
• Trace conditioning
• Generalization
• Inhibition
• Extinction
• Spontaneous recovery
• Disinhibition
• Conditioned inhibition
• Differential inhibition
• Higher order conditioning
• Using a CS to condition a CSdifficult
• Personalitybalance of inhibitory and excitatory
• Conditioned neuroses and responses to stress
• Model of objective physiological study of mental
  processes
• Conditioned reflex as a unit of behavior

11
Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev (18571927)

• Muscular reflexes
• Thought muscular action of inner speech
• Objective Psychology

12
John Broadus Watson (18781958)

• Founder and promoter of behaviorism
• Objective methodology applicable to humans and
  animals
• Physiological basis
• Polemical tone
• Emphasis on application
• U. of Chicago
• Myelination and learning
• Rats and kinesthesis
• Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It (1913)
• WWIpsychologists as experts
• 1920s popularized behaviorism

13
Behaviorism

• Methods
• Data observable actions
• Behavior broadly defined
• Multiple methods of observation
• Subject matter
• Behavior analyzed into stimulus-response
• Responseslearned/unlearned, explicit/implicit
• Stimulisimple/complex

14
Topics

• Instinctscame to view them as a result of early
  learningenvironmentalist
• Learning
• Conditioning as the basis of behavior
• Modification of reflexes
• Initially stimulus linked to multiple reflexes,
  reflex that terminates stimulus becomes more
  probable
• Conditioned reflex
• Frequency and association only not reinforcement
• Emotions
• Fear, rage and love
• Little Albert

15
(No Transcript)
16

• Thoughtsubvocalization
• Muscular
• Observable
• Popular appeal
• Child rearing
• Criticism
• Arrogant and extreme
• Contributions
• Detached consciousness from behavior
• Emphasis on application
• Objective method and terminology