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2.3C Problem 4 Summary
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2.3C Problem 4Behaviourism (1913) *= neo
behaviourist
Can be seen as extreme form of functionalism
Founded by Watson
Learning step-by-step
Watson
1. Believed mind-body problem and concerns with consciousness held
psychology back with debates of little practical consequence
2. Science is only capable of studying overt, visible, measurable phenomena:
mind can’t be investigated scientifically
3. Experimental psychology was very behind contemporary biological work
4. Psychology was too human-centred: should be concerned with behaviour in
general
5. Disagreed with hereditarian bias- legacy of commitment to evolutionary
theoretical orientation: he was instead seeking scientific techniques to
predict and control behaviour- to do this must downplay importance of
immutable genetic factors
Problem for him= how to tackle higher-order phenomena eg.
language/thinking
Rejection of mentalistic concepts
o Most experimental psychologists didn’t reject mental phenomena as
strongly as Watson, but believed overt behaviour can be explained
scientifically without using them
Varieties of Behaviourism
Diverged into different types after Watson fired from job at John Hopkins uni
Type a) unhappy about excluding internal events & only examining overt stimulus-
response relations
- Tolman*: inspired by Gestalt holistic approach
o Believed in latent learning- organisms acquire cognitive map of
surroundings just by moving around it
Intervening variables/hypothetical constructs- Internal
factors
- Lashley (Neurophysiologist): Behaviourist physiological psychology-
extending behaviourism to other learning topics
o Brain functioning localised in large tracts of the brain, showing
equipotentiality- brain can be utilised to serve many functions
and assume those of the parts which have been removed
o Behaviourist physiological psychology
o Identified major components needed for cognitive science
Scientific method favour at this time=introspection
Taken over by behaviourists
o Necessary to confront behaviourism directly before new insights
about brain
Any theory of human activity should account for complexly
organised behaviours
o Simple associative chains between a stimulus and response can’t
account for serially ordered behaviour
Action sequences unfold too rapidly to be a step process
Have to be organised in advance
Organisation best thought of as hierarchical:
Broadest overall plans
o Increasingly specific actions happen
, o Nervous system has overall plan, response units’ slot in, irrelevant
of environment
Nervous system is:
Also, active
Hierarchically organised units
Control comes from centre, not peripheral stimulation
o Central brain precedes and determines specific behaviour-
organisation comes from within the organism
o Focussed on language
Previously ignored due to behaviourist perspective and
relative “invisibility”
- Mead: Social behaviourism- concerned with social construction of the self
- Skinner*: nearly atheoretical- concerned with empirically studying shaping
of behaviour by reinforcement contingences
o No attention to internal events, no theory construction
o Single-subject operant conditioning methods
Extremely versatile
Successfully produce applicable techniques for predicting
and controlling behaviour
- Hull*: hypothetico-deductive theory, with postulates, theorems, and
quantification
o Developed based on rat-learning experiments
o Much criticism
2 related propositions
1. Researchers interested in science of behaviour should restrict themselves
to public methods of observation which any scientist can apply and
quantity
Elements should be observable: no introspection
2. Researchers interested in science of behaviour should focus exclusively on
behaviour
Should avoid topics inc. mind, thinking, imagination, hypothetical
mental constructs (symbols, schemas ideas)
Individuals are passive reflectors of various forces and factors in the
environment
Science of behaviour can account for anything an individual might do, and the
circumstances which one might do it
Solved needs of scientific community
o Unable to acceptance introspective evidence at face value
o Vague global concepts like will/purpose
o Explanation of human behaviour with same constructs used to describe
animal behaviour
Decline of Behaviourism
Organisation of behaviour problem
o Classical behaviourism: complex behaviour involves conditioning each
component item to its predecessor
This can’t explain higher-order human behaviours
Would take more time than available
Return of instincts
o All animal species used in behaviourism, we prepared and counter
prepared to learn or not learn certain behaviours
o Extreme environmentalism was untenable and heredity plays crucial
role in determining/setting constraints on animal behaviour
CBT fuses cognitive and behaviourist approaches
o Behaviourism still exists by abandoning theoretical dogmatism for
pragmatic approaches
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