Behaviorism: Antecedent Influences Chapter 9 Ms. Wilson, MS, LPC

Topics The Influence of Animal Psychology on Behaviorism Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949) Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov (1849-1936) The Influence of Functional Psychology on Behaviorism

Toward a Science of Behavior Evolution of psychology from Wundt to functionalism Functionalism movement was more evolutionary than revolutionary Watson promotes another change: the philosophical tradition of objectivism and mechanism, animal psychology, and functional psychology Zeitgeist dominated by the objectivistic, mechanistic, and materialistic influences New psychology: focused on only what could be seen, heard, or touched John Watson

The Influence of Animal Psychology on Behaviorism Animal psychology: antecedent to Watson’s psychology Jacques Loeb (1859-1924): German physiologist and zoologist Animal Tropism: which is an involuntary forced movement Argued that animal consciousness was revealed by associative memory Animals had learned to react to certain stimuli in a desirable way Jacques Loeb (1859-1924)

Tools for the behaviorists: Rats, Ants, and the Animal Mind Robert Yerkes: strengthened comparative psychology in the US. Willard Small (1900): the rat maze is introduced as a standard method for the study of learning Charles Henry Turner A Preliminary Note on Ant Behavior (1906) Watson later adopted the term 1910: eight comparative psychology laboratories had been established The animal mind analogous to the human mind Margaret Washburn published The Animal Mind (1908). The Hampton Court

On Becoming an Animal Psychologist Animal psychology was a difficult profession Not well respected in academia Always concerned with funding Poor career prospects Revival of animal psychology: 1909: Publication of detail account of Pavlov's work by Yerkes and Morgulis in Psychological Bulletin. Clever Hans case showed animals are capable of learning

Edward Lee Thorndike (1874–1949) Created a mechanistic, objective learning theory that focused on overt behavior Believed that psychology must study behavior, not mental elements or conscious experiences Finished Ph.D. with Cattell Animal Intelligence (1898) Connectionism: Thorndike’s approach to learning that was based on connections between situations and responses Argued that behavior must be reduced to its simplest elements: the stimulus–response units (S-R) Edward Lee Thorndike (1874–1949)

The Puzzle Box Thorndike built crude puzzle boxes out of crates and sticks to use on animals Example: Thorndike placed a food- deprived cat in a box to test how long it would take for the cat to activate the lever to be fed Responses were random at first On subsequent trials, random behaviors were less frequent until learning was complete Trial-and-error learning: learning based on the repetition of response tendencies that lead to success

Laws of Learning Law of effect: acts that produce satisfaction in a given situation become associated with that situation; when the situation recurs, the act is likely to recur Law of exercise: the more an act or response is used in a given situation, the more strongly the act becomes associated with that situation

Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov (1849–1936) Worked on learning Helped shift associationism from its emphasis on subjective ideas to objective and quantifiable physiological events Example of topic: glandular secretions and muscular movements Provided Watson with a method for studying behavior and for attempting to control and modify it Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov

Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov (1849–1936) Won the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his work in physiology. During his work on the physiology of the digestive system Pavlov discovered the conditioned reflex. Conditioned reflexes: reflexes that are conditional or dependent on the formation of an association or connection between stimulus and response Noted that objects or events associated with presentation of food also produced gastric secretions. Referred to these as “conditional” because they depended on something else. An early translation of his work mistranslated conditional as conditioned.

Ivan Pavlov (continued) Developed classical (Pavlovian) conditioning In classical conditioning: An unconditioned response, is triggered by an unconditioned stimulus. For example, food elicits salivation out of an organism. The conditioned reflex is developed by the laws of contiguity and frequency. A biologically neutral stimulus is associated, through contiguity, with the unconditioned stimulus and develops the capacity to elicit some fraction of the unconditioned response At this point the neutral stimulus has become the conditioned stimulus and the response to the conditioned stimulus is the conditioned response. Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery

Classical Conditioning Step 1: Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) > Unconditioned response (UCR) Conditioned Stimulus (CS) No response Step 2: Pairing UCS and CS > Conditioned Response (CR) + Step 3: Conditioned Stimulus (CS) > Conditioned Response (CR) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhqumfpxuzI&feature=related

The Influence of Functional Psychology on Behaviorism Before Watson: functional psychologists moved away from Wundt’s and Titchener’s pure psychology of conscious experience Need for an objective psychology that would focus on behavior instead of consciousness Zeitgeist: overall movement of American psychology was in a behavioristic direction Missing link: the agent of a revolution whose inevitability and success were assured (Watson)