Chapter 12-Behaviorism

Question 1

Shared Sechenov’s goal of creating a totally objective psychology. Focused his study on the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli that control behavior and on the physiological processes that they initiate. For him, all human behaviour is reflexive

Answer 1

Ivan Pavlov

Question 2

The reduction or cessation of activity caused by stimulation, such as when extinction causes a conditioned stimulus to inhibit a conditioned response. It was Sechenov’s Discovery of inhibitory mechanisms in the brain that led him to believe that all human behavior could be explained in terms of brain physiology

Answer 2

Inhibition

Question 3

Describe Pavlov’s work in studying the digestive processes

Answer 3

Using a patient who had suffered a severe gunshot wound to the stomach and recovered but had an open hole in his body through which his internal organs could be observed, Pavlov observed his internal processes, including those of the digestive system and perfected his technique for studying digestion.
He prepared a gastric fistula-a channel-leading from a dog’s digestive organs to outside the dogs body. He performed hundreds of experiments to determine how the amount of secretion through the fist you love varied as a function of different types of stimulation to the digestive system which one him the 1904 Nobel Prize in physiology

Question 4

A learned reflex

Answer 4

Conditioned reflex

Question 5

Describe Pavlov’s discovery of the conditioned reflex

Answer 5

While studying the secretion of the dogs gastric juices in response to such substances as meat powder, pavlov noticed that objects or events associated with meat powder also caused stomach secretions-for example, the mere sight of the experimenter or the sound of his or her footsteps. He referred to these latter responses as conditional because they depended on something else-for example, meet powder

Question 6

Describe Pavlov’s personality

Answer 6

He was a positivist and was totally dedicated to his laboratory work. He wrote very little. He encouraged both women and Jewish students to study in his laboratory, a practice very uncommon at the time. One thing he had no tolerance for was mentalism-if researchers in his laboratory used mentalistic terminology to describe their feelings, he fined them

In his private life, however, Pavlov was a completely different person. He was sentimental, impractical, and absent-minded-often arousing the wonder and amusement of his friends. He often forgot to pick up his pay, and often loaned it to irresponsible acquaintances. Him and his wife lived in extreme poverty during the early years of their marriage but she continued to give him her complete support.

Question 7

An unlearned reflex

Answer 7

Unconditioned reflex

Question 8

A stimulus that elicits an unconditioned response

Answer 8

Unconditioned stimulus

Question 9

An innate response elicited by the unconditioned stimulus that is naturally associated with it

Answer 9

Unconditioned response

Question 10

A previously biologically neutral stimulus that, through experience, comes to elicit a certain response

Answer 10

Conditioned stimulus

Question 11

A response elicited by a conditioned stimulus

Answer 11

Conditioned response

Question 12

Describe Pavlov’s Believe about the process of formation of a conditioned reflex

Answer 12

And unconditioned reflex is innate and is triggered by an unconditioned stimulus, for example, placing food powder in a hungry dogs mouth will increase the dog saliva flow. The food powder is the unconditioned stimulus, and the increased salvation is the unconditioned response.
Pavlov called a biologically neutral stimulus a conditioned stimulus. Because of its contiguity with an unconditioned stimulus, in this case food, this previously neutral stimulus developed the capacity to elicit some fraction of the unconditioned response, in this case salivation.
When a previously neutral stimulus a conditioned stimulus, elicits some fraction of an unconditioned response, the reaction is called a conditioned response. Thus, a dog salivating to the sound of an attendants footsteps exemplifies a conditioned response

Question 13

According to Pavlov, brain activity that leads to overt behavior of some type

Answer 13

Excitation

Question 14

According to Pavlov, the pattern of points of excitation and inhibition that characterizes the cortex at any given moment

Answer 14

Cortical mosaic

Question 15

The elimination or reduction of a conditioned response that results when a conditioned stimulus is presented but is not followed by the unconditioned stimulus

Answer 15

Extinction

Question 16

The reappearance of a conditioned response after a delay following extinction

Answer 16

Spontaneous recovery

Question 17

The inhibition of an inhibitory process. Is demonstrated when, after extinction, a loud noise causes the conditioned response to appear

The assumption was that the fear caused by the strong stimulus displaces the inhibitory process, thus allowing the return of the conditioned response

Answer 17

Disinhibition

Question 18

The neurotic behavior that pavlov created in some of his laboratory animals by bringing excitatory and inhibitory tendencies into conflict

Example: showing a dog a circle is always followed by food and showing a dog an ellipse is never followed by food. According to Pavlov, the circle will come to elicit salivation and the ellipse will inhibit salivation. If the circle increasingly becomes more elliptical and the circle and the ellipse become indistinguishable, The excitatory and the inhibitory tendencies will conflict, and the animals behavior will break down

Answer 18

Experimental neurosis

Question 19

According to Pavlov, those objects or events that become signals for the occurrence of biologically significant events, such as when a tone signals the eventuality of food

Answer 19

First-signal system

Innate processes are expanded by conditioning. As biologically neutral stimuli (CSs) are consistently associated with biologically significant stimuli (USs), The former come to signal the biologically significant events. The adaptive significance of such signals should be obvious; if an animal is warned that something either conducive or threatening to survival is about to happen, it will have time to engage in appropriate behavior

Question 20

According to Pavlov, the symbols of objects or events that signal the occurrence of biologically significant events. Seeing fire and withdrawing from it would exemplify the first-signal system, but escaping in response to hearing the word fire exemplifies the second-signal system

Answer 20

Second-signal system

Question 21

Describe Pavlov’s view of psychology

Answer 21

He had a low opinion of psychology not because it studied consciousness but because it used introspection to do so

Question 22

Describe Pavlov’s view of associationism as it had been previously discussed in philosophy

Answer 22

He believed that he had discovered the physiological mechanism for explaining the associationism that philosophers and psychologists had been discussing for centuries. He believed that by showing the physiological underpinnings of Association, he had put associationism on an objective footing and that speculation about how ideas become associated with each other could finally end.

The temporary connections formed by conditioning or precisely the associations that had been the focus of philosophical and psychological speculation

Question 23

The founder of behaviorism who established psychology’s goal as the prediction and control of behavior. In his final position, he denied the existence of mental events and concluded that instincts play no role in human behavior. On the mind-body problem, he finally became a physical monist, believing that thought is nothing but implicit muscle movement

Answer 23

John B. Watson

Question 24

Describe Watsons undergraduate experiences

Answer 24

Despite his history of laziness and violence in school, Watson somehow managed to get himself excepted to Furman University at the age of 15. Continued to live at home and worked at a chemical laboratory to pay his fees. He learned the psychology of Wundt and James and had problems with his brother Edward, who considered him a sinner like his father and therefore a disgrace to the family

He should have graduated in 1898, but an unusual event set him back a year. Moore, his favorite teacher, warned that he would flunk any student who handed his or her examination in backward. Absentmindedly, Watson handed in his examination backward and was flunked.

It actually ended up benefiting Watson, however, because during the extra year he earned a masters degree

Question 25

Describe Watson’s graduate school years at the university of Chicago

Answer 25

Watson began to investigate the learning process in the white rat at the time when very little was known about animal learning. By the end of 1902, Watson knew more about the white rat than anyone else in United States and begin to develop a feeling for behaviorism but his mentor Angelle responded negatively and silenced Watson for four years.

In 1906, he began his researched designed to determine what sensory information rats used as they learned to solve a complex maze. Using six month old brass that had previously learned the maze, Watson began systematically removing one sensory system after another, in hopes of learning which sensory system the rats used to traverse the maze correctly. He removed the senses a vision, hearing, and smell and nothing appeared to make a difference. Found that the rats were relying on kinesthetic sensation-sensations from the muscles

Question 26

Describe Watsons professorship at John Hopkins University

Answer 26

He did not want to leave the University of Chicago but was offered a $3000 A year salary that was irresistible. He taught human psychology using Ticheners manuals.

Baldwin was chairman of the department and was caught in a brothel and was forced to resign from John Hopkins immediately. Upon Baldwin’s resignation, Watson became the editor of the psychological review, and ultimately he used to journal to publish his views on behaviorism.

After many years of being discouraged for his behavioristic positions, he publicly announced his behavioristic views in 1908 at a meeting at Yale University and was severely criticized and again fell silent. In 1913 he gained courage again and decided to state his views at a series of lectures at Columbia University. That lecture is usually taken as a formal founding of behaviorism and was published in 1913 in the psychological review. His ideas did not gain immediate popularity but grew steadily over a period of several years

Question 27

Describe Watsons scandalous divorce

Answer 27

In 1920 his wife discovered that he was having an affair with Rosalie Rayner with whom he was doing research on infant behavior and she sued him for divorce. The scandal was too much for Johns Hopkins: Watson was asked to resign and he did. This marked the end of Watsons professional career in psychology

Question 28

Describe Watson’s work in advertising

Answer 28

An opportunity arose for him to work for the advertising company J. Walter Thompson. The job contrasted sharply with what he had grown accustomed to.

His job was to study the rubber boot market on each side of the Mississippi River.

He was hired in 1921 at a salary of $10,000 a year and was considered one of the leading people in advertising and was made a vice president of the company. By 1928 he was earning over $50,000 a year, and by 1930 over $70,000.

He introduced the concept of market research and found, for example, that blindfolded smokers cannot differentiate among different brands of cigarettes. Because preference must be based on the images associated with various brand names, Watson concluded that sales could be influenced by manipulating the images associated with branding. Following the strategy, he increased the sales of such products as Johnson’s baby powder, toothpaste, Ponds cold cream, maxwell house coffee, and Odorono one of the early deodorants

Question 29

Describe Watsons objective psychology

Answer 29

Like the Russian objective psychologists, Watson completely rejected introspection and any explanation of behavior based on mentalism. Both thought that consciousness could not cause behavior; it was merely a phenomenon that accompanied certain physiological reactions caused by stimuli- and epiphenomena on.

Question 30

Describe Watson’s beliefs about the goals of psychology

Answer 30

The prediction and control of behavior

The goal of psychological study is the ascertaining of such data and laws that, given the stimulus, psychology can predict what the response will be; or, on the other hand, given the response, it can specify the nature of the effective stimulus

For him, a stimulus could be a general environmental situation or some internal condition of the organism. A response was anything the organism did and that included a great deal

Question 31

Describe the four types of behavior and four methods for studying behavior that Watson proposed

Answer 31

Behavior: explicit or overt learned behavior such as talking, writing, and playing baseball; implicit or covert learned behavior such as the increased heart rate caused by the site of a dentist drill; explicit unlearned behavior such as grasping, blinking, and sneezing; and implicit unlearned behavior such as glandular secretions and circulatory changes

Methods for studying behavior: observation, either naturalistic or experimentally controlled; the conditional-reflex method, which Pavlov had proposed; testing, which meant the taking of behavior samples and not the measurement of capacity or personality; and verbal reports, which Watson treated as any other type of overt behavior

Question 32

Describe Watsons views concerning language and thinking

Answer 32

The most controversial aspect of this theory. To be consistent in his behavioristic view, Watson had to reduce language and thinking to some form of behavior and nothing more: “saying is doing-that is, behaving. Speaking overtly or to ourselves is just as objective a type of behavior as baseball”
Speech was simply a type of overt behavior

Thinking is implicit or subvocal speech

Question 33

Watsons belief that most, if not all, human behavior is caused by environmental experience

Answer 33

Radical environmentalism

Question 34

Describe Watson’s conception of the role of instincts and learning and behavior

Answer 34

His view toward instincts changed radically over the years. In 1914 instincts played a prominent role in his theory. By 1919 Watson had taken the position that instincts are present in infants but that learned habits quickly displacement. In 1925 he completely rejected the idea of instincts and humans, contending that there are a few simple reflexes such a sneezing, crying, eliminating, crawling, sucking, and breathing but no complex, innate behavior patterns called instincts

Experience and not inheritance makes people what they are.

Said that if he was given a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and his own specified world to bring them up in he could guaranteed to take anyone at random and train him to become any type of specialist he might select such as a doctor, lawyer, artist, and even a thief.

Question 35

Describe Watson’s position on emotions

Answer 35

Believe that humans inherited the emotions of fear, rage, and love. Through learning, these emotions come to be elicited by stimuli other than those that originally elicited them. Furthermore, all adult emotions such as hate, pride, jealousy, and shame are derived from fear, rage, and love.

Question 36

Describe Watson’s experiments with Mary Cover Jones with little Albert and Peter

Answer 36

To demonstrate how emotions could be displaced to stimuli other than those that originally elicited the emotions, Watson and Rayner performed an experiment in 1920 on an 11-month-old infant named Albert. They showed Albert a white rat, and he expressed no fear of it. As Albert reached for the rat, a steel bar behind him was struck with a hammer which caused Albert to jump and fall forward. Again he was offered the rat and just as he touched it they would hit the steel bar again and he would jump and this time he began to cry. A week later, when the rat was again presented, Albert was less enthusiastic and attempted to keep his distance from it. Five more times they place the rat near him and struck the steel bar and Albert, who at first was attracted to the rat, was now frightened of it. His fear was just as strong five days later and had been generalized to other furry objects.

Peter and the rabbit: to see if fear could be eliminated in a person, they found a child, a three-year-old boy named Peter who was intensely frightened of white rabbits, rabbits, for coats, frogs, fish, and mechanical toys. The first showed him other children playing fearlessly with those objects and there was some improvement-a technique called modeling. Then they tried counterconditioning, he ate it in a lunch room 40 feet long and one day as he was eating lunch, a rabbit in a wire cage was displayed far enough away from him that he was not disturbed and each day they move the rabbit a bit closer until one day it was sitting beside him as he ate and finally he was able to eat with one hand and play with the rabbit with the other. This is one of the first examples of what we now call behavior therapy.

Question 37

The use of learning principles in treating behavioral or emotional problems

Answer 37

Behavior therapy

Question 38

Describe Watson’s views on child rearing

Answer 38

His favorite topic was children. He wrote the psychological care of the infant and child with his wife Rosalie and it was extremely popular.

He advised adults to never hug and kiss children, never let them sit on your lap. If you must kiss them, then do it once on the four head when you say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning, give them a pat on the head if they have made an extraordinary good job of a difficult task. Mother love is a dangerous instrument, and instrument which may inflict a never healing wound.

Question 39

Describe Watson’s views on sex education

Answer 39

Children should be given frank, objective information about sex; and he often expressed his gratitude to Freud for breaking down the myth and secrecy surrounding sex.

Question 40

Describe Watson’s position with respect to behaviorism and the good life

Answer 40

Leave that psychology should be useful in every day life, and he often applied is behaviorism to himself and his children. He believed that it could make for a better life then traditional believes good

Question 41

Describe Watson’s view of the learning process

Answer 41

Instead of relying on Thorndike’s law of effect, Watson explained learning in terms of the ancient principles of contiguity and frequency. Watching pointed out that in a learning situation, a trial always ends with the animal making the correct response. This means that the correct response tends to occur more frequently than incorrect responses and that the more often a response is made, the higher the probability that it will be made again-the law of frequency. It also means that the final response an organism makes in a learning situation will be the responsible tend to make when it is in the next situation, he called this the law of recency

Question 42

Watsons observation that typically it is the correct response that terminates a learning trial and it is this final or most recent response that will be repeated when the organism is next placed in that learning situation

Answer 42

Law of recency

Question 43

Describe Watson’s position regarding the mind-body problem

Answer 43

At first he excepted consciousness as an epi-phenomenon, but later switch to a physical monist position. He denied the existence of the mind

Question 44

Summarize Watson’s influence on the development of psychology

Answer 44

Had to long-lasting effects: first, he changed psychology’s major goal from the description and explanation of states of consciousness to the prediction and control of behavior. Second, he made overt behavior the almost-exclusive subject matter of psychology. His influence has been so pervasive that today most psychologists can be considered behaviorists

Question 45

Pursued a type of behaviorism very different from Watsons. His behaviorism emphasized purposive and instinctive behavior

Answer 45

William McDougall

Debated with Watson, and after the debate, a vote showed McDougall to be the narrow Victor.

Question 46

The version of behaviorism that claims only directly observable events, such as stimuli and responses, should constitute the subject matter of psychology. Explanations of behavior in terms of unobserved mental events can be, and should be avoided

Answer 46

Radical behaviorism

Question 47

The version of behaviorism that accepts The contention that overt behavior should be psychologies subject matter but is willing to speculate about internal causes of behavior, such as various mental and physiological states

Answer 47

Methodological behaviorism

Question 48

The school of psychology, founded by Watson, that insisted that behavior be psychology’s subject matter and that psycholog’s goal be the prediction and control of behavior

Answer 48

Behaviorism