Pioneers

Pioneers

1. Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov (1849 – 1936)

   • focus of 3 problems
     • function of the nerves of the heart
     • primary digestive glands
     • conditioned reflexes
   • psychic reflexes
     • the “dog situation” is explained

2. Vladimir M. Bekhterev (1857 – 1927)

   • objective psychology
   • reflexology
     • objective study of stimulus-response connections
     • the environment and behaviour were to be discussed
   • association reflex
     • unconditioned stimuli
     • stimuli that was associated with the unconditioned stimuli

3. Edward Lee Thorndike (1874 – 1949)

   • Thorndike’s Law of Effect (1898)
   • Law of Reinforcement (1902)
   • connectionism
     • Situations, elements of situations, and compounds of situations
     • Responses, readiness to respond, facilitation, inhibitions, and directions of responses.
   • learning
     • concrete connections between stimuli and responses
     • mind is man’s connection system
   • mental processes such as annoyance, discomfort and satisfaction
   • The puzzle box **
     • research on animal learning

4. John Broadus Watson (1878 – 1958)

   • “Psychology as the Behaviourist Views It”
   • “behaviourism”
   • behaviourist theory
     • the study of people’s actions with the ability to predict and control those actions
   • Watson’s theory
     • He opposed mentalistic concepts
     • He used contiguity to explain learning
     • He considered emotion to be just another example of classical conditioning
     • He rejected the notion of individual differences
     • He thought complex behaviours came about through combinations of identifiable reflexes
     • He was a chief proponent of “nurture” and believed that all human differences were the result of learning
     • He believed that practice strengthens learning