Classics in the
History of Psychology
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Christopher D. Green
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Introduction to Psychology
George Sidney Brett (1929)
Authorized by the Minister of Education
First published in
Posted November 2001
Chapter III
The Elements of Behavior
Scientific Method
All
natural sciences follow a method which may be called the "analytic
method". No science could be constructed unless we either assumed or
discovered some factor or set of factors at once simple and capable of
indefinite repetition. Such factors are found in geometry, in physics, and in
physiology: they are called the "point", the "atom", the
"cell". What these terms mean at different times will be a matter for
scientific men to decide: the fact still remains that these are the units which
they use as starting-points: the rest of the science then consists in showing
the nature and uses of all the complex forms of these units.
In order to become a science, psychology must
adopt this method: for it is the method which makes the science. It might be
objected that the material makes the science, but that is not the case: the
science is essentially the method, and the material only the particular
limitation which it is convenient to adopt for practical purposes. Nobody
supposes that the rules of counting are to be changed because the things to be
counted are animals and not plants. Neither is this principle, of reducing
compound things to their units, and then considering the relations of these
units, a principle that must be changed because the material is different. [p.
24]
Here
the reader will naturally object that, if this is true, the method must be very
abstract. That is exactly the case, and every student ought to learn from the
first that a scientific method is necessarily abstract. This is not a fault,
but a most excellent quality. A foot-rule is in this sense abstract: no one
wants a foot-rule that will measure wood and will not measure cloth. But while
it is essential to get down to the basis in this way, all the rest of the work
is complicated by perpetually discovering that some units are useful for
particular purposes only: if we change the purpose or the material, we must
adapt our method to the new conditions. The unit of linear measurement is not
suited for measurement of volumes; we may order a yard of cloth, but we order a
quart of milk; we speak of the cells which compose the body, but we cannot
analyse motion or behaviour or memory into cells, though there have been many
cases where these false analogies have been used to the great detriment of the
sciences manufactured out of these false units.
It is clear that the psychologist must use an
analytic method as much as possible, if he is to produce a science; and also
that he must find for himself the right units into which he can analyse the
material. The earlier psychologists did this by regarding the mind as made by
the union of a number of faculties, such as sense, memory, will. This
"faculty psychology" has passed away, because these units were really
classifications too general and comprehensive to be scientific. They can all be
reduced to smaller factors, and they actually overlap in a way that leads to
confusion. A mathematician may be described as a person with a faculty for
doing mathematics, but such a description is useless, because it throws no
light on the processes involved in the act of calculation. [p. 26]
While we ought to reject these
mysterious "faculties", we may regard them as a crude way of
indicating special abilities, and then trace these abilities to particular
elements in the physical and mental structure of individuals. In this way we
reach again the general idea of typical forms of behaviour, and begin the whole
explanation by making a more simple analysis of behaviour. From the first
simple stage of discrimination between three things and four things to the
calculations of a Newton may be a long journey; perhaps in the end there will
still be mysterious elements, such as genius, which we cannot yet make clear;
but in education it is certain that this is the only road, and that we must
begin by studying the simple processes in order to understand how the learning
process itself goes on, and why it sometimes goes only a little way, while in
other cases it may reach the most astonishing degrees of perfection.
EXAMPLE OF
ANALYSIS
Let us imagine a person watching a child working out a sum. To the untrained eye probably all the children in a class will seem to be doing
the same operation, assuming that there
are no cases of positive idleness or rebellion. A careful observer will note
that even those who are most absorbed in the task will show a great variety in their actions. The
fact that this is the "time-to-do-sums" constitutes a general setting for the behaviour as
a whole. The recognition of this fact is itself very complex: it is qualified
by a still more general attitude induced by being in school and not in the
playground, by the habit of doing this kind of thing at a regular hour, by the presence of others doing the same
thing, and even by more common factors, such as the temperature of the room, or
the state of the weather when it makes indoor work more attractive [p. 27] than
outdoor occupations. The general setting
of the behaviour constitutes in the individual a set or disposition
which pervades all the special activities.
Recent investigations have shown
that this question of the general disposition is very important. Nothing in the
world is quite isolated; there are no actions wholly separable from what went
before or will come after. As a patch of colour in a picture is qualified by
the surrounding colours, so an act is qualified by the whole setting in which
it occurs. In more technical language, the behaviour at a given time is a
response to a situation. The situation in this case is defined as
"sum-to-be-done" -- a total objective to be attained. The response is
the whole reaction, in its length and breadth, which begins and ends under the
control of the situation. We must consider this response in detail, so far as
is possible.
The next element will be the stimulus
to action, also called the "urge" or "drive". It is now
generally recognized that we cannot make the sharp distinctions which were once
considered obvious. We certainly cannot analyse an action as though it began
with a full and complete idea, followed by a separate desire to achieve the
object of thought. It has been a maxim
of psychologists for many centuries
that "the understanding does not
move to action"; and in recent times this maxim has developed into the
positive doctrine that all action begins from specific impulses. The
consequence is that we have to give the place of honour to elements which are
emotional rather than intellectual.
The starting-point, then, will be
a more or less definite desire to do the sum, though what that desire really is
may still be open to question. To answer the question we should require to know many things about the pupils,
for we touch at once on the individual differences which constitute the
elements of the total disposition. Some [p. 28] may have an attitude which call
be called ambition: others have
a kind of self-respect, or vanity, or a desire to please a teacher who excites
feelings already created by parental affection in other similar situations. The
teacher should learn to appreciate the nature of the urge or drive which will
most successfully stimulate the pupil, and then arouse it by skilfully
presenting the aim of the lesson. It will be difficult to decide the exact
nature of the impulses at work, but for the present it will be unnecessary to
settle the point.
We may think of the primary urge
or desire as simply a force working from within the organism: it is like the
force which is developed in an engine by the expansion of steam. Very soon
there will be motion, and the first thing to move will be that part of the
engine or organism which is least rigid. In the steam-engine the parts are so
arranged that the easiest way of action is to drive the piston: similarly, in
the organism arrangements have been made so that there are natural paths for
the passage of energy, in other words "lines of least resistance". When
the engine begins to move, it is obvious that its movement is determined as a
whole by the nature of each part and the way one part is connected with
another.
An animal may be compared with a machine: it
has been called "an internal combustion engine", with innumerable
parts more delicately connected and balanced than in any known machine. When it
moves the animal exhibits the working of its structure: its action is said to
have a "pattern". The characteristic
movements of a goose and of a donkey are obviously defined by very different
patterns, anatomical and physiological.
The word "pattern" has
come into use in psychology
because it emphasizes the ideas of arrangement and shape. Animal bodies are all
made of cells: but the [p. 29] arrangement of the cells makes the difference
between one kind and another. By
analogy with this outward difference, we ·can assume that one brain differs
from another in the arrangement of its cells, or what is called the
"paths" of neural excitement.
When we go from these elementary
examples to such complex questions as the difference between British and
American views on liberty, we may seem to have lost all connection with the
starting-point. But at least we must hold fast to the method until a better one
can be found: we must still suppose that the urge to express himself on the
liberty of the subject comes from some particular drive in the orator's nature,
and that the expression will overflow through exactly that system of channels
which heredity and habit and previous meditation have made ready for it. What
these channels are, in more technical language, will be described in the next
Chapter: the object of the present Chapter is to consider the actions
themselves.
BIOLOGICAL
CLASSIFICATION
A biological classification is
made on the principle of going from the simple to the complex. For this reason
we usually regard organic nature as comprising plants, animals, man. In the
study of plants it is not necessary to consider the possibility of sensation:
in spite of poets and some scientific writers a "sensitive" plant is
a myth. The plant is none the less alive: it responds to changes in the
environment by specific adaptations. These are described as forms of "tropism". The word is familiar
from the old compound word "heliotrope" the flower that
"turns" to the sun (trope, turning, helios, sun). The
word tropism denotes the most
elementary form of reaction: it can be explained usually in terms of physics and chemistry without reference to
conscious purpose. [p. 30]
Nature is very subtle and
complex. It is not always easy to tell whether a living organism is a plant or
an animal. The biologist may have rules for settling such questions, but, when
the question concerns behaviour rather than structure, it is not easy to give
an answer. So we find the action of the plant in turning to the sun paralleled
by the action of the moth in flying toward the flame. Those who think that a
"mechanical" (which means really physico-chemical) explanation is the
only scientific answer possible, will insist
that the moth's actions can ho completely described as the result of
light-stimulation on nerve centres. This may look suspiciously like another
case of tropism, but in fact there are many differences, and it is very
important to remember that, while it is convenient to ignore differences in
order to create classes or formulae, the real thing remains an individual with all its individual
differences. With this warning we may go on to explain that the kind of action
called tropism does in fact
resemble the action of a very simple
connection between nerves: in other words, we pass by almost imperceptible
gradations from tropisms to reflexes.
REFLEX ACTION
The word "reflex", as in "reflex action", is actually
derived from the science of optics, in which it was used to denote the fact
that light is "turned back" from a reflecting surface at an angle,
equal to the angle of incidence. By analogy with this it was argued that
impressions on the brain or "seat of the soul" were similarly turned
back: something came in, and then something went out. So all mental operations
could be classified as sensation and reflection. We still preserve the traces
of this history in our way of using the phrases "reflecting surface"
and "reflective mood". [p. 31]
THE ELEMENTS OF
BEHAVIOUR
But the present
use of the term "reflex arc" (v. p. 39) is not derived from
optics, but from anatomy and physiology. The reflex are is the unit of function
which corresponds to the simplest type of action in animals as distinct from
plants: it involves only two processes, one that comes in and one that goes
out, with a connecting mechanism. Since we are now speaking of a body which has
nerves, we call these "currents", and distinguish them as afferent
(carrying to) or efferent (carrying out). This total process is called
"sensori-motor", because the unit of action here described is nothing
more or less than the occurrence of a sensation followed ;by the particular
action which belongs to that particular pattern or arrangement of nerves (p.
28).
[p. 32]
Reflexes are distinguished as
simple and compound. A simple reflex is brought about by an impulse passing
directly from the sense-organ to the motor centre and thence to the muscle. The
centre may be in the spine or at the base of the brain. Winking, sneezing, and
the "knee jerk" are examples of simple reflexes. In compound reflexes
the impulse is spread through a number of co-ordinated centres. Grasping and sucking in infants are
examples. In the grasping reflex all the
fingers act at once, and in sucking, various movements of the tongue and
lips are co-ordinated in one compound response.
A standard example is the
scratch-reflex: if the insect bites the dog so as to stimulate a particular
centre, the dog's leg is brought into action so as to scratch the irritated
surface.
This is all very simple and
clear, and we begin to hope that it will be possible to ex-plain all behaviour
in the same simple way. Let us suppose that a stimulus [p. 33]·produces an action on account of the hereditary structure of the
organism. We shall have here a simple mechanical pattern. But we must be
careful not to assume too much. Though we may select a case in which the process
is apparently invariable, we shall find that it is rarely so fixed as it
appears: if the dog for any reason cannot apply its leg to the right spot, it
may discover another way of removing the nuisance.
It is also possible to make the
action depend on a different stimulus. If the usual cause of the action is
associated with some other stimulus, in course of time this second stimulus
will become effective by itself; the original reflex response will then follow
the occurrence of this second stimulus. The reflex act is then said to be
"conditioned", and the action as a whole is called a "conditioned reflex"
The possibility of this kind of
transference wax most conclusively shown by a Russian physiologist, Pawlow. He demonstrated it in the following
way: The sight of food causes an increase in the flow of saliva. This is
clearly not an intentional or rational act, but a primary organic response. Pawlow arranged an experiment in which
the rate of flow of saliva could be measured. He then "conditioned" the response by presenting a secondary
stimulus, such as a light or the sound of a bell, along with the original
natural stimulus, the food. As a result·, the secondary stimulus became
sufficient by itself to produce an increase in the flow of saliva equal to that
produced by the right of food.
HABIT
Public opinion decided long ago that the
prospect of a good meal "makes your
mouth water", We now know, scientifically, that the dinner-bell probably
does actually cause that "watering"
process. The scientific [p. 34] experiment gave this fact great
prominence, and to-day it is customary to see in the conditioned reflex the
type of many learning processes. What has really been achieved is a deeper
insight into the nature of habits. There are some reflex actions which are
original, because the individual is made that way. We blink at a sudden flash,
because that movement is part of a well established relation between stimulus
and response. We have a "knee-jerk", because a blow on the knee follows
a particular track into and out of the spinal nerve-centres. There are other
reflex actions which imitate these original patterns, because they have the
same kind of fixity. But they may have been acquired: the connections may have
been established by accident or by choice or by training. These are usually
called "habits", and
there is in fact no important distinction between habit and conditioned reflex, except that the
latter term gives a slightly different view of the nature of response.
Since it is clear that
"conditioning" covers a very wide area of conduct and may be going on
at any time, it is very important for teachers, who are also necessarily
trainers, to be fully alive to this fact. The rider may assume that the horse
will stop when the reins are pulled: but some horses will stop only when the
reins are slack. A child may be expected to go to sleep when the room is dark: but,
if the light is left on so that it may not be afraid, it becomes unable to
sleep without a light, and the (supposed) fear increases. The orator who holds
the button of his coat while speaking becomes conditioned by the button, and
the humorist who cuts off the button has his reward when the speaker finally
breaks down. All the factors in the environment, so far as they attract notice,
have some power to condition a person's actions; and this is the reason why [p. 35] those
factors must be carefully observed in order to understand and regulate
behaviour.
From the simple reflex, compound reflex, and conditioned
reflex it is easy to arrive at the idea of a still more elaborate form of
behaviour called the "chain-reflex". As this subject is closely
connected with the problem of instincts it will be deferred until the mechanism
of action has been described (Chap. IV), and will be considered in the chapter
on instincts and emotions (Chap.
V). In view of the general tendency to misunderstand the importance of reflex
action and to make the word "reflex" cover everything that an
individual can do, it is worth while to quote an opinion from a biologist of
undisputed authority: "Attention should be especially directed to the
futility of attempting to derive intelligence and the higher mental faculties
in general from reflexes, habits, or any other form of fixed or determinate
behaviour. On the contrary, these owe their origin to the more labile (or
changeable) and plastic components of behaviour, which are determined, if you
like, though not by rigid innate organization, but rather by individual
experience acting through and upon the innate units and combining these in new
patterns. The nervous system is more than an aggregate of reflex area, and life
is more than reaction to stimuli".
----------
*C. J. Herrick -- Neurological Foundations of
Animal Behaviour, 1924, p. 234