Behaviorism
...in later influenced Ivan Pavlov to do his famous research on conditioned reflexes. Edward Thorndike has been attributed to defining and establishing educational psychology. As well as changing the study of child development into an objective science. He also helped establish the use of tests and statistical methods in psychology and education. Thorndike developed the classic experiment which involved what he called puzzle boxes. A typical puzzle box consisted of ropes levers and latches that an animal (usually a cat) could use as a means for escape. The cat was locked in the puzzle box and enticed to escape using food that was placed just out of reach from the box. Thorndike then observed the cats attempts to gain access to the food. Cats attempted many strategies for escape including trying to squeeze through the bars of the box or meowing incessantly for help. After none of these strategies worked, the cat would continue with trial and error strategies that led to eventual freedom and reward. The cats learned quickly (typically within 3 minutes) how to escape from the box, but their first success was generally by chance. Successive trials however showed that they took less and less time to escape. Thorndike concluded that cats do not learn by developing insight into a problem but learn through trial and error. Thorndike also believed this was how humans also learned. Thorndike came up with the idea of theories of learning. The most popular of which being the Law of Effect. This law states that responses that are made just prior to a pleasant event is more likely to be repeated, while responses that are made just prior to unpleasant events are more likely to diminish. He called these pleasant events satisfiers and unpleasant events annoyers, and they play a critical part to learning. Thorndike's Law of Effect defines what has become known as Instrumental Learning. Instrumental learning is the belief that learning behaviors are instrumental in maintaining satisfying events. An organism will perform a response and establish a connection between that response and the stimulus that preceded it if the consequence that followed was satisfying. This theory suggested a connection between the stimulus and the response and not the response and the reward. This theory also set the groundwork for the popular stimulus-response learning theory. Other key people in this school of thought include: Pavlov, Watson, Skinner, and Seligman. Ivan Pavlov is most widely known for his research with dogs and salivation which lead to the theory of classical conditioning. John Watson is typically credited as being the founder of behaviorism. His most famous experiment involved a little boy named Albert and a white rat. The child was conditioned to fear a white rat or anything resembling it by operant conditioning. B. F. Skinner is said to be the most influential behaviorist of all time. He of course developed operant conditioning as well as the Skinner box and many other ideas. Seligman discovered the idea of learned helplessness. He is known for the dog/shock experiments in which dogs developed feelings of helplessness through operant conditioning. Behaviorism would fit into the “It” (exterior individual) quadrant of Ken Wilbur’s quadrant model. This is the scientific quadrant which includes physical development, including the evolution of the human brain. There are several criticisms of the behaviorism paradigm. Probably the biggest criticism is that this paradigm denies conscious experience, thinking, knowledge, images, feelings, and so on. Mental events influence behavior, and their influence therefore cannot be ignored. Behaviorists see human beings as an automatons instead of creatures of will and purpose. They also believe language to be simply a learned behavior while others argue that language is too complex to be explained in this manner. Behaviorism can not explain why some responses an organism can make are more easily modified by learning than others or why different principles of learning apply to different species of animals. These findings are causing revisions of behaviorism or shifts to other perspectives. One major legacy of behaviorism is that psychologists generally agree now that the subject matter of psychology is overt behavior. Today cognitive psychology is very popular, but even these psychologists use behavior to index those events. In that sense, most experimental psychologists today are behaviorists. Gestalt psychology was based on the belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Gestalt psychologists challenged most all of behaviorists’ views. First, they saw the behaviorists' attempt to analyze behavior into stimulus-response bonds as another ill-fated effort to carve the whole into its parts. Second, they felt that psychology should continue to study conscious experience rather than shift its focus to observable behavior. Psychoanalysis is a theory of personality and a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes the role of the unconscious factors in personality...