Lecture 5: The Rise and Fall of Behaviourism: 1900-2000 Flashcards

1
Q

hoe stond psychologie in 1900

A

wel echt als een science nu

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2
Q

wat was de dominant method (vooral in usa)

A

introspection

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3
Q

waardoor werd psychologie gezien als een soft science in 1900

A

door dingen als spiritualism, mesmerism, phrenology… dingen die keer op keer fout werden bewezen.

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4
Q

wat was een belangrijke stroming aan het begin van de 20e eeuw (1900)

A

positivism (Comte)

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5
Q
  • Positivism is popular at the beginning of the 20th century.
  • The thesis: Science is ultimately the way to truth
  • Objectivity of knowledge must be guaranteed
  • This relates poorly to the fact that introspection is still the dominant methodology
A

oke

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6
Q

wie was Bridgman

A
  • The theory of relativity turns physics upside down
  • The basis lies in Einstein’s persistent question: how do we establish through
    measurements that two events are simultaneous?
  • The Newtonian intuition of absolute time appears to be wrong!
  • The physicist Bridgman wants to save physics from another revolution like this by clearly
    attaching all concepts to measurement procedures
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7
Q

door wie was william james eerder al beinvloedt

A

darwin

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8
Q

er was een soort disbalans in 1900, mensen wilden psy graag als harde science zien, maar hier was ook kritiek op. ook was er al heel lang geen nieuwe bevinding (zoals bv in de biologie).

A

oke

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9
Q

we mean by any concept
nothing more than a set of
operations; the concept is
synonymous with the
corresponding set of
[measurement] operations”

A

bridgman (wilde dus alles operationaliseren!)

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10
Q

3 ingredienten voor behaviourism

A
  1. hard vs vague
  2. a time of revolutions
  3. humans are animals
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11
Q

dus de operationalisation of Bridgman =

A

we should define everything in terms of how we measure them.

= concepts should be reduced to measurements

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12
Q

waar kwam bridgman niet zo ver

A

binnen de filosofie

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13
Q

wat was kritiek op bridgman

A

– Length can be measured with multiple different procedures, so no unique definition of length
– Operations cannot be “synonymous” to concepts

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14
Q

maar… Bridgman werd wel heel populair binnen de psychologie

A

yay

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15
Q

Boring:

A

maakte Bridgmans ideeen populair met: intelligence is what the intelligence test measures

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16
Q

pavlov’s classical conditioning=

A

Neutral stimulus (NS; tone) is linked to unconditioned stimulus (US; food) provoking an unconditioned response (UR; salivating)

After a while, the NS becomes a conditioned
stimulus (CS) and is followed by a conditioned
response (CR; salivating)

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17
Q

thorndike was een student van…

A

james

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18
Q

thorndike studying animals
because he cannot find
children to serve as subjects

A

oke

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19
Q

wat had thorndike bedacht

A

law of effect (behaviours followed by a reward are more likely to be repeated)

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20
Q

wat is instrumental conditioning

A

wat skinner later operant conditioning noemt: a procedure in which a reinforcement, such as food, is delivered contingent upon a response

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21
Q

hoe leidde de evolutie theorie tot behaviourism

A
  • Biology is successfully studying animal behavior
  • Nobody ever asks a dog what it thinks of anything
  • Apparently behavioral science in biology doesn’t need introspection…
  • So why should that be necessary with people?
  • Can’t we just let psychology revolve around behavior?
  • And even remove any dependence on ‘mental states’?
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22
Q

dus wat waren de 3 oorzaken + gevolgen die ook weer leidden tot behaviourism

A

1) hard vs. vague: positivism (science brings truth and requires objectivity)

2) time of revolutions: operationalism (concepts should be defined through mechanisms)

3) learning theory (based exclusively on stimuli and behaviour, inspired by animal research)

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23
Q

wie was de eerste behaviourist

A

watson

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24
Q

No more introspection; only
behavioral analyses in terms
of reinforcement and
punishment, a psychology without consciousness

A

oke

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25
Q

wat was de key ding van behaviourism (hoe leg je het in een zin uit)

A

kijken naar observable behaviour, stimulus response associations.

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26
Q

wie schreef het eerste journal article

A

watson

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27
Q

wat was john watson

A

een behaviourist en empiricist (geloofde in tabula rasa)

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28
Q

“Give me a dozen healthy infants,
well-formed, and my own
specified world to bring them up
in and I’ll guarantee to take any
one at random and train him to
become any type of specialist I
might select – doctor, lawyer,
artist, merchant-chief and, yes,
even beggar-man and thief,
regardless of his talents,
penchants, tendencies, abilities,
vocations, and race of his
ancestors.”

A

watson

29
Q

Watson essentially repeats many of the ideas of the British Empiricists:

A
  • The Tabula Rasa thesis is in fact a direct copy of John Locke
  • The learning theory of the behaviorists is very close to that of David Hume
30
Q
  • Behaviorism is designed as an
    absolutist system
  • Much of the content, however,
    has withstood the test of time
    well
  • In psychotherapy behaviorist
    concepts (conditioning,
    extinction, exposure) for
    example, are still widely used
  • Also a lot of learning theory is
    rooted in behaviorism
A

oke

31
Q

wat hoorde bij Skinner

A

radical behaviourism

32
Q

radical behaviourism=

A

total ban on the use of terms that refer to mental states, all human behaviour can be understood as S-R associations, what is not measurable should be left out of science (did not deny these mental states, but just stated that they did not belong in science).

33
Q

thoughts, etc.
* Note that Skinner didn’t deny
that these things exist; he
just insisted that they didn’t
belong in science
27B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)
* Radical Behaviorism: total
ban on the use of terms that
refer to mental states; all
human behavior can be
understood as S-R
relationships
* What is not directly
measurable has to be left out
* So: a psychology without
dreams, expectations,
thoughts, etc.
* Note that Skinner didn’t deny
that these things exist; he
just insisted that they didn’t
belong in science

A

oke

34
Q

wat dacht skinner over free will

A

free will is an illusion. man is not an actor but a lens, a point where influences come together. behaviour is the outcome.

35
Q

waar dacht skinner dat de ‘I’ naar toe verwees

A

naar the person as a whole (not a mind or a brain) -> an input output mechanism.

36
Q

wat dacht skinner over homunculus?

A

dat er geen homunculus is, not even in the brain?

37
Q

waardoor kwam de kritiek op behaviourism

A

toen Skinner probeerde te schrijven over language in S-R associaties

38
Q

hoe schreef skinner over language

A

1) child starts with imitation
2) then learns complex sentences through reinforcement and punishment
3) end result = very complex S-R associations based on language behaviours.

a child who masters language is therefore a sort of well trained pigeon

39
Q

wat zijn de 3 hoofdpunten van chomsky

A

skinners theory is…
- much more vague than skinner presents
- unable to explain the complexity of language
- does not do justice to the learning process we see in children

40
Q

wat is de input altijd van skinners theorieen

A

a stimulus in the physical environment

41
Q

wat is de output altijd van skinners theorieen

A

observable behaviour in response to the stimulus

42
Q

Skinner’s theory is supposed to be more objective because the terms he uses (stimulus,
response, reinforcement) refer to observable things and behavior.

wat is chomsky zijn reactie hierop?

A

nonsense:
- if we take these terms literally, they hardly apply
- if we take these terms metaphorically, they become just as vague

43
Q

Skinners theory is just as vague as traditional theories:

A
  • skinner wants a lawful relationship: one stimulus always gives one response
  • however, people can respond differently to a red chair (chair, wood, red, sit)
  • dus: if the chair is the stimulus, there is NO lawfullness
  • what is we make the property of the chair the stimulus? -> the redness of the chair
  • but… then it is no longer objective, because we only know what the stimulus is after you say red
44
Q

wat is het voorbeeld van response strenght van chomsky

A
  • in animal experience: strength is measured by pitch, stress and quantity
  • but what about verbal behaviour of humans?
  • strong response would then be: WOWOWOWOWOWWO
  • but if we were to make a response like a soft wow also count, the concept would be vague again.
45
Q

wat was Chomsky zijn kritiek op reinforcement

A
  • reinforcement should explain the response
  • to explain all responses, the concept reinforcement should be so vague that there is always some reinforcement
  • ‘X is reinforced by Y’ is the same thing as saying ‘X wants Y’
46
Q

in short: the 3 examples of why Skinners terms are not correct if they are taken literally, and vague if they are metaphorically

A
  1. chair (meerdere responses mogelijk, en niet meer objectief als je het hebt over de roodheid van de stoel)
  2. response strength (animal experiments meten pitch etc, mensen zouden dan WOWOW moeten schreeuwen voor een sterke response, en als wow geaccepteerd wordt dan is het niet meer objectief/vague)
  3. reinforcement (another way of saying ‘wanting’, vaag concept)
47
Q

chomskys argument dat skinner niet de complexiteit van language kan uitleggen=

A

skinner is limited to behaviour, but language requires intentions. you cannot use the behaviour of the listener to explain the intention of the speaker

48
Q

wat was het argument van chomsky dat skinner’s theorie het complexe leerproces van kinderen niet goed weergeeft

A
  • parents are not precise enough in punishment en reinforcement
  • children dont do mimicry
  • children can understand an infinite number of sentences
  • children learn language spontaneously
  • the type of mistakes children make does not seem to suggest they learn by trial and error
49
Q

hoe legt hij chomsky het argument van kinderen uit adhv een voorbeeld

A

“The man who is tall is happy”
“Is the man who is tall happy?”

50
Q

wat is chomsky zijn stand dus over language

A

language is innate, he is a nativist, proposes language acquisition device (LAD)

51
Q

met wie komt chomsky daarmee overeen

A

plato en descartes

52
Q
  • Chomsky explains the innate
    system by an evolutionary
    change in humans
  • Although the system seems
    very complex, it’s probably
    something simple
  • But we can’t omit this system
    from the explanation of
    language just because it seems
    so complex
A

oke

53
Q

waarom is chomsky een rationalist

A

hij dacht:
* Linguistics should let go
of the assumption that
the meaning of language
can be found in the
observable outside world
* Instead, the meaning of a
word is a mental concept:
it’s in our head

=Rationalism

54
Q
  • 8 years later (1967), Chomsky writes
    that his review is more of a critique
    on behaviorism than on Skinner’s
    work specifically
  • And even more generally, it can be
    seen as a critique on empiricism:
    “an account of the development and
    causation of behavior that fails to
    consider the structure of the organism
    will provide no understanding of the
    real processes involved”
A

oke

55
Q

“the remarkable capacity
of the child to generalize,
hypothesize and “process
information” in a variety
of very special and
apparently complex ways
which we cannot yet
describe or begin to
understand, and which
may be largely innate”

“It is clear that what is
necessary in such a
case is research, not
dogmatic and perfectly
arbitrary claims”

A

chomsky

56
Q

wat is recentelijk bewijs tegen chomsky

A
  • The LAD is quite controversial; there is no “language organ” in the brain so how does that
    work?
  • And how “poor” are the stimuli that children get? They hear thousands of language expressions a day
  • Recent research with neural networks suggests that certain aspects of grammar can be learned inductively
57
Q
  • Chomsky shows that behaviorism fails in
    obtaining objectivity: we cannot get
    around intentions, beliefs & feelings to
    explain behavior.
  • This tension, of those who try to achieve a
    “hard science” to understand the mind,
    versus those who argue that such
    “objective” approaches miss out on
    fundamental characteristics of the mind,
    will pop up again and again in history
A

oke

58
Q

Turing:

A
  • English mathematician
    who cracks the Enigma
    code of the Nazis
  • Turing shows how to
    make a machine do
    calculations
  • Proves that such a
    machine can handle all
    calculable functions
  • This also includes all
    standard logic: the Turing
    machine thus can “think”
    a bit
59
Q

Boolean algebra

A
  • Mathematical implementation of logic
  • True sentences are given the value “1”, false sentences the value “0”
  • In logic, the truth of compositions (“p and q”) is a function of the truth of the elementary statements (“p”, “q”)
  • In Boolean algebra the truth value of compositions is calculated by mathematical operations on the elementary parts
  • E.g.: the value of “p and q” equals the value of p multiplied by the value of q
  • “p and q” is thus only true (“1”) if p and q are both true (both “1”), because only then you get 1x1=1 (in all other cases you get 0)
60
Q

who discovered modus ponens

A

aristotle!!!!!!1 my baby

61
Q
  • Aristotle discovered that certain forms of reasoning always give true conclusions from true premises: logic
  • Example modus ponens:
    If p then q
    p
    q
  • Is always valid, regardless of the
    meaning of p and q! Because the meaning of p and q doesn’t matter, a machine can do it
    as well. Turing applies this insight from Aristotle
A

oke

62
Q

the computer analogy =

A

Mind:Brain

  • The Turing machine shows how a psychological process (reasoning) can be performed by a machine. This results in the
    computer analogy:

Software:Hardware

The mind as the software program that performs reasoning.

63
Q
  • The question of how the mind relates to the brain goes all the way back to Plato
  • Descartes’ dualism dominates until the 20th century: the mind interacts with the brain.
  • Turing gives a new possibility: the mind is implemented in the brain, like a program is
    implemented in a computer
A

oke

64
Q
  • If thinking is indeed nothing more than implementing logic, then a computer can also think
  • Could a computer also develop consciousness?
  • This question continues to occupy philosophical minds to this day
A

oke

65
Q
  • Chomsky shows stimulus-response theory
    is insufficient to understand complex
    behaviour such as language
  • Therefore, to understand complex
    behaviour, we need to construct theories
    about what goes on inside the black box
  • The development of digital computers
    provides a framework for doing this, in
    which the mind can be seen as a program
    that performs information processing
  • This leads to a new organizing principle:
    the computer metaphor, in which
    mind:brain=software:hardware
  • The study of this information processing in
    humans becomes known as cognitive
    psychology
A

oke

66
Q

dus de turin gmachine showed….

A

how a psychological process (reasoning) can be performed by a machine. could the mind work like that too??? is the mind implemented in the brain, like a software programme in hardware?

67
Q
  • Behaviorism briefly satisfies the need for an
    objective, hard science
  • However, falls short in the analysis of
    complex behavior; specifically language
  • The downfall of behaviorism is primarily
    scientific in nature: there are good arguments
    against it
  • Also important: Behaviorism in many ways is
    also a winner
  • Can the analogy of the mind as computer
    program keep the brain at distance?
A

oke

68
Q
A