Behaviourism and the cognitive revolution

Behaviourism has three philosophical claims: methodological behaviourism, psychological behaviourism, and philosophical or logical behaviourism. Skinner adopted all 3 and claimed radical behaviourism
1. Pavlov
  1. First key behaviourists influenced by Darwin. External stimuli affects behaviour and there is no "internal world" of consciousness.
2. Criticisms of behaviourism
  1. Genes can strongly influence behaviours, although conditioning can amplify/inhibit these. Prenatal environments may also affect behaviours.
  2. Instinctive drift (Breland & Breland) - tendency to revert to unconscious and automatic behaviours.
  3. Some behaviours are harder to condition than others
Thorndike
1. Functionalist that proposed the law of exercise and disuse, and the law of effect
  1. The law of exercise and disuse - repeated exercise of a response strengthens its connection
  2. The law of effect - responses that produce a satisfying effect are more likely to be repeated
  3. Basis of operant conditioning, learning that occurs through rewards and punishments
British associationism
1. Hartley
  1. Proposed that psychological processes emerge from the body as a neurological response. The body and the mind function together and there is no separate mental matter.
    1. He proposed the physiological associationist model of the mind - nerves vibrate and transmit to other nerves, giving rise to action.
2. Bain
  1. Proposed the mind and body occur together without a causal relationship. Claimed hedonism and was a voluntarist
Watson
1. Little Albert study to show conditioned fear.
2. John Watson (1913) - psychology as the behaviourist views it
3. Objectives of behaviourism - adjustment and maladjustment, phylogenetic continuity, and determination of behaviour
4. Behaviours can be measured and changed and all behaviours are acquired through conditioning
  1. Preparedness theory criticises this, , explains how some people are born ready to fear certain types of stimulus
    1. Harris, 1979 - what happened to little albert
    2. Seligman. 1971
5. Watson and Rayner, 1920
  1. Conditioning of an emotional response, Little Albert
Hull
1. Looked at organismic variables, aka motivations. Moved beyond S-R relationships
  1. Reaction potential to a stimulus (sER), Habit strength (sHr), and drive (D)
    1. Drive reduction theory (sER = sHr x D)
      1. Motivation arises as a result of biological needs. Humans will repeat any behaviour they know reduces the drives.
  2. Organismic variables are internal forces and influences that influence an organisms behaviour
2. Hull, 1949
Tolman
1. We cannot get rid of mentalist terms and cognitive maps etc. He saw evidence of goal directed behaviours in animals and cognitive processes
2. Looked at maxe learning in rats, arguing they create a cognitive map and take part in latent and expectancy learning (cognitive learning requires acquired expectancies)
Skinner
1. Proposed two accounts of learning: Type S (Classical conditioning) and Type R (Operant conditioning)
Cognitive model of the mind
1. Gestalt psychology
  1. Rejected Bundle Hypothesis, arguing that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (holism)
  2. Rejected constancy hypothesis, arguing that percept is rationally determined, and depends on the relationships between stimuli
  3. Law of Pragnanz - we are innately driven to experience things in as orderly, simple fashion as possible
  4. Phi and beta - our perceptions go beyond the physical evidence
  5. The 5 Gestalt laws - Similarity, closure, proximity, symmetry, and continuity
2. Bartlett
  1. Schema theory
  2. Studied recall in "war of ghosts" study
    1. Memories can be constructive. In his study he found that p's recalled what they thought should happen rather than what did
3. Craik
  1. The mind creates mental models of reality
4. Piaget
  1. Developmental psychology and genetic epistemology
    1. He assumes the use of cognitive structures, we acquire more complex means of reasoning with maturity.
    2. Compared to behaviourism, he assumes learning changes as a function of development, whereas behaviourism assumes learning is constant
5. Elsewhere
  1. Turing
    1. Proposed the Turing machine which states simple operations can give ride to any complex functions
      1. McCulloch and Pitts
        Developed a test for whether a computer could think
        Searle's Chinese room showed a problem for this
  2. Weiner
    1. Invented cybernetics
      1. Crucial to information processing and cognitive models of the mind
  3. Shannon
    1. Information theory
      1. Mathematical model of communication, proposing information can be measured in terms of uncertainty.
  4. All of these other theories were imported into psychology to explain the functioning of the mind. The brain is seen as an information processing device, taking input from the world and processing it, deciding which behaviour is the best output. This led to a computational theory of mind.
6. Critical evaluation of the cognitive revolution
  1. Chomsky
    1. Critiqued Skinner. He pointed out that the flexibility of language means that conditioning has little predictive value, and that imitation is a poor basis for language
      1. Argued language ability has a genetic basis and is innate. Through development, children adopt different parameters to learn new languages (universal grammar)
  2. Miller
    1. Miller's magic seven, focus on STM capacity, chunking
7. Miller, 2003

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