Early Behaviorism: Pavlov, Watson, and Guthrie in Psychophysics

1. Early Behaviorism:Pavlov, Watson and Guthrie (Chapter 2) Vengertsev Dmitry

2. Agenda • Goals: • What classical conditioning is • Emotions might be learned • Similarities and differences among Pavlov, Watson and Guthrie • Early Psychophysics • I. Pavlov: Classical conditioning and its phenomena • J. Watson: Behaviorism, Emotional Learning • E. Guthrie: One-shot learning theory

3. First Steps of Psychophysics • W. James: Introspection is the self-observation and reporting of conscious inner thoughts, desires and sensations. • Scientific approach: Psychophysics • W. Wundt, G. Fechner tried to find absolute threshold for each sense – least amount of stimulation required for sensation • M. Weber law: noticeable difference are a constant proportion of a stimulus

4. Ivan Petrovich Pavlov • Profound influence on development psychology • Classical conditioning • is a form of associative learning • unconditioned stimulus (US) + • unconditioned response (UR) • conditioned stimulus (CS) + • conditioned response (CR)

5. Classical Conditioning

6. Classical Conditioning Theory • Two different explanation of Learning: • Contiguity – for behavior to change it’s sufficient that two events be paired • Reinforcement – an effect that leads to learning (such as satisfaction of hunger) (details in Chapter 3)

7. Phenomena in Classical Conditioning • Learning curve • Extinction and Recovery • conditioned associations are remarkably durable • spontaneous recovery (after some period of time) • Generalization • salvation at wide range of tones

8. John Broadus Watson • Profoundly influenced by Pavlov’s model of classical conditioning • Revolutionize American psychology • Behaviorism – observable aspects of behavior. It’s real goal is to provide the basis of control of human beings • Emotional Learning • Watson’s Environmentalism

9. Behaviorism • Before Watson: Behaviorism is a study of the phenomena of consciousness • Watson: consciousness is an irrelevant concept. Behaviorists tried to limit psychology to the study of actual, observable behavior • The main goals of behaviorism: • to provide the basis for the prediction and control of human beings • to derive laws to explain the relationships existing among stimuli, responses and consequential conditions (reward, punishment)

10. Emotional Learning • Little Albert • 11-month-old boy • At the beginning showed no fear to great variety of objects and people • Everyday among other things he was given white rat toy • Touched white rat – loud sound. Albert didn’t cried, he tried again and again – each time was loud sound • A week later procedure was repeated. Rat and the loud sound were combined for 5 more times • Albert behavior change dramatically

11. Watson’s environmentalism • Are humans primarily product of genetic makeup or are they developed according environment? • He was convinced that there are no individual differences at birth, people is function of their experience • Very popular ides in the United States at that time

12. Watson’s behaviorism • Exaggerating role of learning in determining the behavior and underemphasizing the role of heredity • He was more of a spokesman for behaviorism than a researcher • He popularized notion of environmental experiences

13. Edwin R. Guthrie • Theory consisted of only a single law: “When organism does something in one occasion, it will tend to do exactly the same thing if the occasion repeats itself”. • He claims that the full strength of the bond between stimulus and response is reached during the first pairing

14. Habits breaking • Fatigue Technique • Threshold technique • Method of Incompatible Stimuli

15. Thank you!