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3. The Conceptual Basis of Neobehaviorism and Behavioral Science
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3 The Conceptual Basis of Neobehaviorism and Behavioral Science The new behaviorisms of the 1940s and 1950s, consisting of precisely formulated and conceptually rigorous theories, were rad ically different from their predecessors. Empirically, neobehaviorism derived its support from extensive work in animal laboratories, so that there was a complete contrast with the speculative behaviorisms of the 1920s. A new movement demanded a new set of paradigms, a new core speciality from which the rest of psychology could be in vaded, and a new epistemological basis. The paradigms were provided by the now familiar tasks that had to be solved by rats in mazes, shock boxes, and Skinner boxes and by pigeons in Skinner boxes. The new speciality was learning theory. The new epistemological basis was the doctrine of operationism; the rise of operationism was closely tied to the emergence of learning theory. When behavioral science reigned supreme in psychology, learning theory and neobehaviorism were coeval. The concept of learning as deployed in psychology is so curious that some prior discussion is nec essary. The dictionary meaning of learning implies that learning is a process whereby knowledge is acquired in a consistent and formalized fashion. In contemporary psychology, however, the term is broader in terms of content or application and conceptually much more re stricted than it is in ordinary discourse. Psychologists, for example, talk of rats learning to run down a straight alley for a food reward or of young children learning the personality pattern of selfabasement as a consequence of prolonged abuse within a family. Those two cases would not be treated as examples of learning outside psychology. We would say that the rats had been trained, implying that they were mal leable. Although we would also say that young children learning 83 84 | The Conceptual Basis of Neobehaviorism and Behavioral Science arithmetic are malleable, we would not say that they had learned arithmetic unless they could selfconsciously apply their new skills in a wide variety of situations (and we would not believe that to be true of the rats). We would say that personality patterns are acquired by a complex, largely passive, and unconscious set of processes very dif ferent from those underlying formal or academic knowledge. The concept of learning could be given broad application only if its meaning was greatly restricted. Two steps were necessary. First, fol lowing Thorndike’s and Watson’s lead, American psychologists treated all forms of learning as skills. Maze running in rats, the learn ing of arithmetic by schoolchildren, and the growth of a personality pattern could then be treated as the incremental growth of some sort of underlying habit structures. Second, those habit structures were said to be under the control of input (or independent) variables and to express themselves in output (or dependent) variables. For behaviorists in particular and for pragmatically, instrumentally oriented American psychologists in general, habit, which operated out of sight, was a serious problem. As I have already said in chapter 1, we can see how the problem was solved by analyzing Woodworth’s treatment of experimentation, which was closely linked to his treat ment of learning.1 Both conceptually and historically the first step was to claim that experimentation was the sole route to the discovery of causes, a claim sustainable only if one treated causation as nothing other than the discovery of close functional relationships between input and output variables. The next step was to make habits the paradigm for unseen factors. Woodworth made that move in the second edition of his Experimen tal Psychology.2 He and Schlosberg analyzed the phenomenon of rem iniscence in perceptualmotor learning at length.3 The paradigm task was the pursuit rotor, in which subjects had to maintain contact be tween an electrically activated stylus and an electrically activated disc mounted on a gramophone turntable. In conditions of massed prac tice (where the subjects have very brief rests between brief periods of practice), performance initially increases and then starts to decline. If the subjects are allowed to rest then, on their initial reexposure to the task their performance shows a dramatic improvement. Moreover, even if the rest period is as long as a month, performance remains at a maximal level (forgetting sets in after a month, but reminiscence still occurs with rest periods of up to two years). [52.14.126.74] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 17:12 GMT) The Conceptual Basis of Neobehaviorism and Behaviorial Science | 85 Those working in perceptualmotor learning...