Chapter 9: Behaviourism

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Chapter 9 Behaviourism

• A History of Psychology
• (3rd Edition)
• John G. Benjafield

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Ivan P. Pavlov (18491936)

• Set out to become a priest
• Abandoned idea after reading a Russian
  translation of Darwin
• 1883 became a medical doctor
• 1904 awarded Nobel Prize
• Work on the physiology of the digestive system

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Pavlovs Animals

• Early career
• Often took his animals home because of a lack of
  facilities at the university
• Later career
• Constructed an Institute of Experimental Medicine
  in St Petersburg (1891)

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Conditioned Reflexes

• I.M. Sechenov (18291905) Cerebral Reflexes
• Proposed that mental life should be understood
  entirely in physiological terms
• Reflex is the appropriate unit of explanation
• Pavlov dissociated himself from the psychology of
  the time

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Conditioned Reflexes

• Unconditioned reflexes
• The same response always occurs in the presence
  of the same stimulus
• Unconditioned Stimulus
• Conditioned Stimulus
• Conditioned Response
• Unconditioned Response

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Facts Conditioning

• A conditioned response is usually smaller in
  magnitude than an unconditioned one
• Extinction The CR will eventually cease if the
  CS is repeatedly presented alone
• Spontaneous recovery A previously extinguished
  CR may return after a period of rest

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Speech

• Higher-order conditioning A second CS is paired
  with a CS that has already been established
• Primary signalling system consists largely of
  sensory stimuli
• Secondary signalling system consists largely of
  words
• Words name primary signals

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Temperaments and Psychopathology

• Fundamental cortical processes
• Excitation
• Inhibition
• Temperaments arranged on a scale
• Choleric (extremely excitatory)
• Sanguine
• Phlegmatic
• Melancholic (extremely inhibitory)

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Vivisection and Anti-vivisectionism

• Vivisection the dissection of live animals
• Anti-vivisectionism the movement against the use
  of live animals in research

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Vladimir M. Bekhterev (18571927)

• Reflexology attempt to explain all behaviour,
  from the individual to the social, in terms of
  the reflex concept
• Developed a technique for studying associated
  motor reflexes in both dogs and humans

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John B. Watson (18781958)

• 1899 graduated from Furman University
• Graduate student at University of Chicago
• Impressed by Jacques Loeb (18591924)
• 1903 doctoral dissertation in animal psychology
• 1908 Faculty at Johns Hopkins University

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Psychology as the Behaviourist Views It

• Published in 1913
• Challenged psychologists to change virtually
  every aspect of their discipline
• Not a study of consciousness
• Study human behaviour in same way as animal
  behaviour

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Habits

• Behaviorism (1939) humans are unique because of
  the variety of habits they can form through
  conditioning
• 1. Visceral (emotional) habits
• 2. Manual habits
• 3. Laryngeal (verbal) habits

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Emotional Habits

• Can only study emotion via very young children
• Innate emotional responses fear, rage, love
• Little Albert study
• Produced conditioned emotional reactions in an
  11-month-old infant

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Manual Habits

• the entire range of muscular responses
• Manual habits form through repetition
• Formation permits smooth transition from one
  situation to the next
• Watson advocated distributed practice to acquire
  skills (vs. massed practice)

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Verbal Habits

• Thought same as internal speech
• Verbal habits constitute thinking
• Speech is a serially-ordered behaviour

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Watsons Second Career

• Following second marriage (to Rosalie Rayner),
  Watson worked for
• J. Walter Thompson advertising agency
• William Esty Co.
• Watson transferred principles of conditioning to
  advertising

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Karl S. Lashley (18901958)

• Undergraduate at University of West Virginia
• PhD at Johns Hopkins
• Under Herbert S. Jenings
• Postdoctoral studies with Watson

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Cortical Localization of Function

• 1916 Lashley studied with Shepherd Ivory Franz
• Ablation technique by which parts of the cortex
  are destroyed and the results observed
• Studied the effects of ablation on the frontal
  lobes in rats
• 1917 moved to University of Minnesota

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Brain Mechanisms and Intelligence

• Law of mass action learning and memory depend on
  the total mass of brain tissue remaining
• Law of equipotentiality within limits, any part
  of an area can do the job of any other part of
  that area

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The Problem of Serial Order in Behaviour

• Criticized Watsons associative chain theory
• Priming of responses
• Spoonerisms

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B.F. Skinner (19041990)

• . . . behaviour which seemed to be the product
  of mental activiy could be explained in other
  ways.
• Consciousness a form of behaviour

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The Behavior of Organisms

• Published in 1938
• Respondent behaviour elicited by a known
  stimulus
• Operant behaviour no known eliciting stimulus
• Studied by means of a Skinner box

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The Behavior of Organisms

• Behaviour regulated by Three-term Contingencies
• Environment provides a stimulus situation
• Which elicits a response
• Which is followed by a reinforcing stimulus
• Reward or punishment
• Negative reinforcement ? punishment

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A Case History in Scientific Method

• Published in 1956
• Discussed the ways in which Skinner made
  discoveries
• Applied the principles of his psychology to his
  own creativity
• Ex. When you run into something interesting,
  drop everything else and study it
• Ex. Apparatuses sometimes break down

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The Baby Tender

• Air crib Baby tender
• Built for his second daughter
• Wrote about the innovation in the popular press
• Baby in a box

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Teaching Machines

• Typical classroom reinforcement only when the
  child does the work required to avoid punishment
• Skinner suggested reinforce students for each
  response in a sequence that gradually builds up

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Skinners Utopian and Dystopian Views

• Walden Two (1948)
• Utopian novel of a community regulated by
  positive reinforcement
• Received mixed reviews
• Skinner increasingly discussed the dystopian
  features of modern life in the West
• Dystopia a society that is the opposite of a
  Utopia