Problem 4
Learning goals:
What was revolutionary about Gestalt and Behaviourism?
What is the conflict between Gestalt and Behaviourism and the history behind these two? (Don’t
focus on perceptual elements)
How did the cognitive revolution come to pass?
Behaviourism
Origins and theories
Behaviourism may be seen as an extreme form of functionalism
- its enduring effect was as much methodological as theoretical, although it was
largely as a theoretical- level movement that it was launched
John B Watson’s dissatisfactions on the discipline:
- Believed the nature of consciousness and the mind body problem were
intractable metaphysical debates of little practical consequence
- Commitment to a positivistic view of science as only capable of studying overt
visible measurable phenomena
- Believed experimental psychology had poor standards of both conceptual and
methodological rigour
- Believe psychology was too human centred. he argued it should be concerned
with behaviour in general
- He was unhappy with the hereditarian bias in psychology. Unlearned behaviour is
restricted to a few physiologically governed reflexes
Thorndike - pioneered the experimental study of learning which dominated in the
1890s
Watson's rejection of mentalistic concepts an instance on restricting attention to
overt behaviour marks the final abandonment of philosophical concerns as well as
reflecting the dominant positivistic view of the nature of science
All that matters are overt behaviour and thus things like feelings, emotions, mental
images, and fantasies are beyond our concern
Few American experimental psychologists rejected mental phenomena as strongly as
Watson
Varieties of behaviourism
Simple over stimulus-response relations in addition to reincorporating internal
processes into the picture
- Tolman – influenced by Gestalt psychologists’ holistic approach. Concluded that
organisms acquired a cognitive map of their surroundings merely by moving
around it (latent learning)
- intervening variables/ hypothetical constructs
- S – R S – O – R (o – organism)
- Tried to evade the over reductionist character of Watson's original version
- Social behaviorism: concerned with social self - mead
-
Extending behaviour to other topics than learning
, - Karl Lashley - neurophysiologist who adopted the behaviourist framework in his
brain functioning research
- claim the brains functioning was only localised in very broad terms
- meet/ mead?
Theoretical complexity
- Skinner - purely concerned with empirically studying the shaping of behaviour by
reinforcement contingencies. no attention to suppose internal events and no
elaborate theory construction
- His single subject operant conditioning methods proved extremely versatile and
he was able to produce good applicable techniques for predicting and controlling
behaviour
- Hull - highly ambitious attempt at producing a hypothetico-deductive theory with
postulates, theorems and quantification
Behaviourism should be considered not so much as a theory in itself but as a
conceptual framework in which theorising could be undertaken
- a ‘unified discourse’ and a set of methodological practises within which
propositions could be formulated and theoretical debates constructed and
hopefully settled
Decline of behaviourism
The organisation of behaviour problem
According to classical behaviourism, complex behaviour involves associatively
conditioning each successive component item to its predecessor
- Cannot explain many higher order human behaviours such as piano playing or
language learning
- Cognitive psychologists took over and soon develop much better ideas about
how such outcomes might be neurologically implemented (computer analogy)
The return of instincts
new ethological research into animal behaviour called into question behaviourism’s
doctrinaire environmentalism
Hidden logical error- the white rat was convenient because it was a highly adaptive
animal and able to adjust rapidly to new environments. It was generalised in his
behaviour because it was environmentally determined
- All species were prepared, and counter prepared to learn, or not to learn, certain
kinds of behaviour
- Rats can learn that food is noxious in a single trial; even though the negatively
reinforcing consequences of ingestion or considerably delayed, they are
‘prepared’
- neither phenomenon is explicable without invoking innate factors
It became clear that extreme environmentalism was indefensible and that heredity
played a crucial role in determining and setting constraints on animal behaviour
While environmentalism was at this time ‘politically correct’, behaviourism- most
radically environmentalist school of all- failed to benefit
Behaviourism survival has thus been achieved by the abandonment of theoretical
dogmatism in favour of a more pragmatic approach, and a corresponding change in
how the technique is presented
Learning goals:
What was revolutionary about Gestalt and Behaviourism?
What is the conflict between Gestalt and Behaviourism and the history behind these two? (Don’t
focus on perceptual elements)
How did the cognitive revolution come to pass?
Behaviourism
Origins and theories
Behaviourism may be seen as an extreme form of functionalism
- its enduring effect was as much methodological as theoretical, although it was
largely as a theoretical- level movement that it was launched
John B Watson’s dissatisfactions on the discipline:
- Believed the nature of consciousness and the mind body problem were
intractable metaphysical debates of little practical consequence
- Commitment to a positivistic view of science as only capable of studying overt
visible measurable phenomena
- Believed experimental psychology had poor standards of both conceptual and
methodological rigour
- Believe psychology was too human centred. he argued it should be concerned
with behaviour in general
- He was unhappy with the hereditarian bias in psychology. Unlearned behaviour is
restricted to a few physiologically governed reflexes
Thorndike - pioneered the experimental study of learning which dominated in the
1890s
Watson's rejection of mentalistic concepts an instance on restricting attention to
overt behaviour marks the final abandonment of philosophical concerns as well as
reflecting the dominant positivistic view of the nature of science
All that matters are overt behaviour and thus things like feelings, emotions, mental
images, and fantasies are beyond our concern
Few American experimental psychologists rejected mental phenomena as strongly as
Watson
Varieties of behaviourism
Simple over stimulus-response relations in addition to reincorporating internal
processes into the picture
- Tolman – influenced by Gestalt psychologists’ holistic approach. Concluded that
organisms acquired a cognitive map of their surroundings merely by moving
around it (latent learning)
- intervening variables/ hypothetical constructs
- S – R S – O – R (o – organism)
- Tried to evade the over reductionist character of Watson's original version
- Social behaviorism: concerned with social self - mead
-
Extending behaviour to other topics than learning
, - Karl Lashley - neurophysiologist who adopted the behaviourist framework in his
brain functioning research
- claim the brains functioning was only localised in very broad terms
- meet/ mead?
Theoretical complexity
- Skinner - purely concerned with empirically studying the shaping of behaviour by
reinforcement contingencies. no attention to suppose internal events and no
elaborate theory construction
- His single subject operant conditioning methods proved extremely versatile and
he was able to produce good applicable techniques for predicting and controlling
behaviour
- Hull - highly ambitious attempt at producing a hypothetico-deductive theory with
postulates, theorems and quantification
Behaviourism should be considered not so much as a theory in itself but as a
conceptual framework in which theorising could be undertaken
- a ‘unified discourse’ and a set of methodological practises within which
propositions could be formulated and theoretical debates constructed and
hopefully settled
Decline of behaviourism
The organisation of behaviour problem
According to classical behaviourism, complex behaviour involves associatively
conditioning each successive component item to its predecessor
- Cannot explain many higher order human behaviours such as piano playing or
language learning
- Cognitive psychologists took over and soon develop much better ideas about
how such outcomes might be neurologically implemented (computer analogy)
The return of instincts
new ethological research into animal behaviour called into question behaviourism’s
doctrinaire environmentalism
Hidden logical error- the white rat was convenient because it was a highly adaptive
animal and able to adjust rapidly to new environments. It was generalised in his
behaviour because it was environmentally determined
- All species were prepared, and counter prepared to learn, or not to learn, certain
kinds of behaviour
- Rats can learn that food is noxious in a single trial; even though the negatively
reinforcing consequences of ingestion or considerably delayed, they are
‘prepared’
- neither phenomenon is explicable without invoking innate factors
It became clear that extreme environmentalism was indefensible and that heredity
played a crucial role in determining and setting constraints on animal behaviour
While environmentalism was at this time ‘politically correct’, behaviourism- most
radically environmentalist school of all- failed to benefit
Behaviourism survival has thus been achieved by the abandonment of theoretical
dogmatism in favour of a more pragmatic approach, and a corresponding change in
how the technique is presented
