TWO PREDOMINANTLY ASSOCIATIONISTIC THEORIES & GESTALT THEORY

Modified: 2025-08-09 3:33 PM CST

Chapter 7 Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (links to Kardas on Pavlov)

Russian Psychology at the turn of the 20th Century

• From 1905 to 1917 Russia was in a nearly perpetual state of political and social agitation. It was in this climate that three physiologists, Ivan Sechenov, Ivan Pavlov, and Vladimir Bekhterev took the first steps toward what would prove to be a physiologically-based psychology, one that would for the first time provide a convincing mechanism for associationism. Mackintosh (2003, p. 178) noted:
  • "The history of associationism, as of all good, and some not so good, ideas can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophy. But, it was Pavlov’s discovery of the conditioned reflex that made the scientific study of associationism or associative learning possible . . . "
• Pavlov’s experimental paradigm set the standard for what is required for the experimental analysis of associative learning, and virtually all the advances that have been made since 1965 in our understanding of associative learning, even if they have not relied on salivating dogs, have been based on procedures closely modeled on those he developed.

Empirical Observations

• Pavlov's student, Ivan Tolochinov, first noticed that dogs began to salivate to non-food cues; that they were learning to anticipate food when it was paired with a neutral stimulus.
  • The evidence was that the dogs began to salivate to stimuli such as color and odor alone.
  • All that was required was the close pairing in time of such neutral stimuli followed by a food stimulus.
  • Very quickly, Pavlov shifted his laboratory’s research direction on digestion to study this new "Pavlovian" conditioning process.
• Major Theoretical Concepts
  • Excitation and Inhibition
    • Excitation is easily understood, inhibition, not so much
      • The most important early contribution was Sechenov’s realization of the importance of physiological inhibition.
      • Previous physiological accounts of behavior had depended solely on reflex activation and that had been insufficient in explaining the complexity of animal and human behavior.
      • Sechenov also promoted the use of animal models for understanding human behavior while, at the same time, arguing against the use of introspective methods.
      • His work inspired the next generation of Russian physiologists, especially Pavlov and Bekhterev.
        • Late in his career, Pavlov and his group were more interested in how conditioning could be inhibited or suppressed.
        • Most likely that interest derived from the long history of the study of physiological inhibition begun by Sechenov.
        • In Pavlov’s laboratory research concentrated on the conditioning of autonomic responses such as digestion, and nearly always, surgery of some type was required.
  • The Dynamic Stereotype
    • Pavlov believed that as conditioning to place in familiar environments it led to a "cortical mosaic" or a representation of conditioning in the brain
    • Once that dynamic stereotype existed, it was difficult to change
  • Irradiation and Concentration
    • Irradiation: A process involving the sense receptors, their pathway to particular brain areas.
    • Eventually, other nearby brain areas are also affected
      • Pavlov used irradiation to explain generalization
    • Concentration: A process opposing irradiation that put either excitation or inhibition in smaller, restricted brain areas
    • Pavlov used concentration to explain responding or not responding to narrower are more specific stimuli
  • Excitatory and Inhibitory Conditioning
    • Excitatory: CS produces a response (metronome (CS) produces salivation (CR))
    • Inhibitory: Adding a compound CS to an existing one produces disinhibition (p. 176)
  • Summary of Pavlov's Views on Brain Functioning
    • Orienting reflexes are investigated but dropped
    • Other stimuli produce conditioning
    • Pavlov (nor we) could not explain the neurological side of conditioning
  • First and Second Signal Systems
    • First signal: CSs (think of a red light)
    • Second signal: Meaning of the CS or STOP
    • In humans, semantic generalization expands meaning
    • See p. 178 where "4" as a CS also worked for: square root of 16, 8/2, 2x2, and more equivalences of "4"
• Classical vs Instrumental Conditioning
  • Classical conditioning is stimulus dependent
    • Before conditioning, the UCS (air puff to eye) will cause the UCR (blink))
    • After conditioning, the CS (light or tone) will cause the CR (blink)
    • In other words, the blink is going to happen anyway; in classical conditioning it happens BEFORE the UCS
    • The organism is anticipating the UCS and just beats it to the punch
  • Instrumental or Operant conditioning is response dependent
    • In the apparatus there will exist the opportunity to make a response (press a bar, run a maze)
    • IF that response is made, then a reinforcer will follow
    • Obviously, if the response is not made, then no reinforcer and no conditioning
    • Example:
      • You are hungry and I put you in a room full of canned food with a P38 can opener
      • If you don't know how to use the can opener, you will never open a can, get reinforced
      • Hence: no learning

P38 can openers

• Recent Research on Classical Conditioning
  • CRs Are Not Necessarily Little URs
    • Conditioned compensatory responses may be responsible for physiological effects
    • Tolerance and withdrawal symptoms may be results of conditioned compensatory responses
  • Extinction Involves Interference
  • Pavlov's original view of extinction is too simple
  • Bouton added the renewal effect and reinstatement (p. 182)
  • He also assumed that external effects such as time and place contributed to learning or extinction
  • Overshadowing and Blocking
    • Overshadowing: in classical conditioning, a decrease in conditioning with one conditioned stimulus because of the presence of another conditioned stimulus. Usually a stronger stimulus will overshadow a weaker stimulus. (APA Dictionary of Psychology)
    • Blocking: Kamin found that presenting a compound stimulus (e.g., light and tone) with shock led to response suppression
    • However, following that with the light only did not suppress the response
    • Video: explains both
• Rescorla-Wagner Theory of Classical Conditioning
  • Contingency Not Continuity
  • Look at the graphic below:

  

• Rescorla discovered that simple contiguity was not sufficient to explain the acquisition of a classically conditioned response
  • The graphic above shows 10 experimental conditions
    • The number in each is the percent freezing response (freezing response explained in text)
    • Rats were shocked in silence (e.g., no warning) or after a tone (warning) 0, 10, 20, or 40 percent of the time
    • Notice how the percent freezing is maximal when rats were shocked only with warning and never without warning
    • Notice how rats just as likely to be shocked with or without warning hardly ever froze
    • Notice that it is the predictability of the shock, its correlation with the warning that determined the freezing response
    • It is NOT simply contiguity
    • Below is the original study.

    Rescorla, R. A. (1968). Probability of shock in the presence and absence of cs in fear conditioning. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 66(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025984

• Learned Helplessness

• Video: Seligman's experiment
• Dogs that were restrained and shocked learned that they could not avoid the shocks
• Learned helplessness accounts for many human behaviors
• Video: Effects of learned helplessness
• Other Accounts of Classical Conditioning
  • The Importance of Attention
    • Predictive cues
      • CS: electric can opener, UCS: cat food, CR: cat runs to kitchen
    • MacIntosh allows for an active and cognitive organism
  • To attend, organism's must:
    • Capture elements to be learned
    • Attend more (at first) to surprising elements
    • Eventually, surprising elements are less so, attention and learning drop
• Learned Irrevalence, Latent Inhibition, and Superconditioning
  • What happens when a CS is not followed by a UCS? (AKA: pre-exposure)
  • It retards conditioning when a UCS follows that CS
  • In excitatory, presumably because of surprisingness (p. 194)
• Conditioned Taste Aversion: The Garcia Effect
  • Garcia was studying classical conditioning in rats.
    • Nausea was the UCR, and it was induced by two UCSs, either X-rays or LiCl (a salt).
    • Both of the UCSs will cause nausea in the appropriate dosage.
    • Other groups of rats were given electric shock as a UCS.
    • The CSs were either bitter water or plain water associated with light and sound.
    • So, some rats drank the bitter water and were made sick.
    • Others drank the bitter water and received a shock. Still others drank the plain water and were made sick.
    • Finally, some drank the plain water and received an electric shock.

    • Then all were allowed to choose between the bitter water and the plain water associated with the light and sound.
      • Those that had been made sick would not drink the bitter water.
      • One group would not drink even when the interval between the bitter water and the nausea had been 75 minutes!
        • Talk about trace conditioning.
      • The rats that had received the foot shock did not avoid the water in either form.
    • The main result of Garcia's research was to demonstrate that not all CS-UCS pairings are equivalent.
• This was a blow to established learning theory (More recent research has shown that nearly any CS can be made to act like the bitter water.
• However, the procedures to do so are different than Garcia's, so the effect of Garcia's research remains.)
• In a practical sense, a new field emerged, one that studies taste aversions.
  • For example, suppose you have never eaten oysters.
    • You arrive in New Orleans, are persuaded to try a dozen raw ones, but one was bad.
    • Your next three days are spent retching.
    • What will you do if, three months later, someone offers you an oyster? Will you recall your bad experience in New Orleans? Will you eat raw oysters again?
    • This phenomenon is related to food neophobia, the fear of new foods.
    • We are much more likely to become conditioned to the UCSs and UCRs associated with new foods than to old foods.
  • So, if you were a longtime raw oyster eater and ate a bad one, you will probably eat oysters again.
• Finally, a very real problem is the issue of pest control.
  • Coyotes have thus far resisted all efforts at control, including poisoning.
    • Poison baited carcasses have been set out in an attempt to reduce their numbers.
    • The coyotes very quickly learn to avoid such baits.
    • Why? If they only eat enough to become sick, they learn to avoid such new food sources.
  • The same is true with rats. They will learn to avoid poison baits for the same reason.
• John B. Watson's Experiment With Little Albert
  • Observations that children feared different objects led them to hypothesize that children exhibiting such fears must have learned conditioned emotional responses (Watson & Rayner, 1920) during the course of their “early home life” (p. 1).
  • To test their hypotheses, they selected “Albert B.,” today known as “Little Albert” who was
    • “healthy from birth and one of the best developed youngsters . . . He was on the whole stolid and unemotional. His stability was one of the principal reasons for using him as a subject in this test” (p. 2). Later they wrote (original italics) “At no time did this infant ever show fear in any situation” (p. 3).
  • Their stated goals were:
    • to determine whether they could condition him to be afraid of a white rat,
    • whether the fear would transfer to other objects,
    • what effect time might have on conditioned emotional responses,
    • if emotional responses could be removed following their acquisition.
  • Watson and Rayner used a loud noise sounded from behind the infant in order to cause a fear response.
    • “The sound was that made by striking a hammer upon a suspended steel bar four feet in length and three-fourths of an inch in diameter” (Watson & Rayner, 1920, p. 2).
  • In the experiment, the bar was struck as soon as Albert touched the white rat.
  • After only two trials Albert showed a fear response.
  • A week later, Albert was subjected to five more trials. At the end of those and when presented with the rat alone (original italics):
    • The instant the rat was shown the baby began to cry. Almost instantly he turned sharply to the left, fell over on left side, raised himself on all fours and began to crawl away so rapidly that he was caught with difficulty before reaching the edge of the table (p. 6).
  • Albert showed fear of the white rat that had not scared him previously.
  • Five days later, they showed him a rabbit. Again, he showed fear and burst into tears.
  • He also showed fear (but not as much) to a white seal fur coat and to cotton wool. The conditioned emotional response transferred.
  • Watson and Rayner waited a month to see if Albert’s fears disappeared over time. They did not.
  • They never had a chance to attempt to decondition or extinguish Albert’s fears as he left the hospital to go home.
  • A few years later one of Watson’s students, Mary Cover Jones (1924) was the first to demonstrate that it was possible to extinguish conditional emotional responses.
    • John B. Watson's Little Albert Study (Summary)
      • Albert showed fear of the white rat that had not scared him previously.
      • Five days later, they showed him a rabbit. Again, he showed fear and burst into tears.
      • He also showed fear (but not as much) to a white seal fur coat and to cotton wool.
      • The conditioned emotional response transferred.
      • Watson and Rayner waited a month to see if Albert’s fears disappeared over time. They did not.
• Furter Applications of Classical Conditioning to Clinical Psychology
  • Extinction
    • When one of my sons was three, he and I were shopping for groceries and he began to cry loudly while seated in the shopping cart
    • We had just arrived, so I just ignored him for 30 minutes and finished our shopping list
    • He did stop crying. I had used extinction
    • PS: I was ready to explain my behavior and the principle of extinction to any of my fellow shoppers. None asked :-(
    • Suppose I had quit shopping as soon as he had started crying. What would he have learned?
  • Behavioral therapy derives from learning theory.
    • Behavioral therapy attacks symptoms not underlying causes, overtly directs clients to change their behavior, and relies on the science of psychology more so than other therapies.
    • Behavioral therapy also strives for therapeutic effect over relatively brief periods.

  • Counterconditioning is the replacement of one response to a stimulus by another.
    • The substituted response is in the opposite affective direction to the original.
    • In aversion therapy, a client learns to associate negative consequences with a stimulus that was associated with positive consequences before.
  • In systematic desensitization, a client's anxiety to a stimulus is replaced by relaxation.
    • Teaching the client to relax is part of the therapy.
    • In addition, the replacement is usually done in a graded fashion, making it easier for the new response to be substituted.
  • Specific behavioral therapies have been created from the phenomena of classical and operant conditioning.
    • Counterconditioning, aversive therapy, extinction, flooding, and implosive therapy all derive from classical conditioning.
    • While the token economy and behavioral contracting come from operant conditioning.
    • Finally, some behavioral therapy comes from Bandura's modeling techniques and may account for the success of self-help groups.
• Applications of Classical Conditioning to Medicine
  • Using Garcia's approach to have patients avoid nausea while in cancer radiation therapy
  • Therapists can set up radiation therapy in such a manner so that patients do not associate the therapy with the nausea that often accompanies that therapy
• Pavlov on Education
  • The text argues that most of the effects of classical conditioning in education are incidental
• Evaluation of Pavlov's Theory
  • Pavlov was a Nobel Prize-winning physiologist who discovered classical conditioning in the course of his physiological research.
    • Ivan Pavlo eventually and begrudingly became a psychologist and in the process helped change the direction of psychological research.
    • Classical conditioning became a major tool in the theoretical formulations of later behaviorists. It allowed them to explain behavior without having to consider consciousness.
    • Pavlov's discovery of classical conditioning provided the first mechanism for explaining learning without reference to the mind.
    • The long-standing doctrine of associationism had its first explanatory mechanism.
    • Later research demonstrated the importance of timing and correlation of the CS--UCS pairing.
      (See Rescorla-Wagner below)
    • Classical conditioning was the first salvo of the behaviorist revolution.
      • Watson used Pavlov's methods to demonstrate the Conditioned Emotional Response with Little Albert, for instance.
      • American behaviorist theorizing took off with the combination of Watson's manifesto and Pavlov's classical conditioning.

Kardas on Pavlov

Chapter 8 Edwin Ray Guthrie

• Major Theoretical Concepts
  • The One Law of Learning
    • CONTIGUITY only
      • But, any interpretation learning will be probabilistic
    • One trial learning
    • Only one-trial is necessary for learning
      • But, that is for only one particular response
      • Because skills, such as in sports, consist of a great many different, but related responses
      • Each of those responses is different because of the great variability of the environment
        • Example: hitting a golf ball is learned in one trial
        • Playing good golf requires MANY separate instances of learning: off of a tee, in short grass, in the rough, in sand, with ball below feet, with ball above feet, wind in face, ad infinitum
    • Recency important
      • The last response will dictate the next one under similar conditions
    • One-Trial Learning
  • Movement-Produced Stimuli
    • Stimuli affect the body and the body's responses then become conditioned to them
    • In other words, the contiguity need not only be between the response and the environment
    • Contiguity can exist between movement produced stimuli and behavior
      • Example: telephone ringing (p.214)
        • Once it rings, it ceases acting as a stimulus and the long-practiced conditioned movements take over
  • Why Does Practice Improve Performance
  • He differentiated between movements, acts, and skills
    • Movements: muscular, learned in on trial
    • Acts: include a variety of movements, must be available under widely occurring environmental conditions, require practice, NOT learned in one trial
    • Skills: are made up of many acts
  • Guthrie on Reinforcement
    • Reinforcement changes the stimulus conditions
      • Example: getting out of the puzzle box ends the escape attempt. The stimulus situation changed. When cat re-introduced to box, it immediately goes to the last successful response it made to escape.
  • The Guthrie-Horton Experiment
    • Used a large number of cats in a Thorndikian puzzle box
    • Each cat learned own unique escape behavior (stereotypy)
    • Once cat escaped, that behavior ceased
    • They atributed that to the situation changing; no need to escape once out

  s

  Notice how cat B gets out of the puzzle box by rubbing the pole with some part of it body

• Video: Cat A in the puzzle box (17+ minutes) but you should read the explanation given early on in the video
• Forgetting
  • All forgetting involves new learning (remember this when looking a habit breaking, below)
  • This is an extreme form of retroactive inhibition
    • interference that occurs when new learning or exposure to new information impairs the ability to remember material or carry out activities previously learned, especially if the two sets of material are similar. For instance, studying French in college may retroactively interfere with what is remembered of Spanish learned in high school. Retroactive interference is one of the processes that account for forgetting. Also called retroactive inhibition. --APA Dictionary of Psychology
    • The graphic below shows the same process
    • The C (controls) remember A-B better because no retroactive interference from A-B)
    • Forgetting is learning to do something under similar circumstances

• Summary
  • Not a reinforcement theorist
  • Accepted contiguity, but not frequency
• How to Break Habits
  • Find cues that initiate the bad habit
    • Think of smoking's cues:
      • Waking up
      • Eating
      • Someone else smoking
      • Finishing a task
      • Going to bed
      • and many, many more
  • Threshold Method
    • Do not introduce strong stimulus, instead introduce weak stimulus and then increase it slowly
    • Example: saddling a horse
    • Do not just throw on thesaddle
    • Instead, start with light cloth, work up slowly to heavier cloths. At the end, saddle should not initiate bucking response
  • Fatigue Method
    • Horse example (again)
    • Get horse, saddle, and ride
    • Stay on the horse until bucking stops
  • Incompatible Response Method
    • Tie horse to a post
    • Saddle
    • Get on
    • Horse cannot buck because it is tied to post
• Sidetracking a Habit
  • Is not habit breaking
  • Instead, it is avoiding the cues that elicit the unwanted behavior
  • Think of programs similar to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)
  • There, people change nearly all of the cues that make them drink
    • Example: Suppose you are a biker and all of your biker buddies drink. What to do?
    • Guess what, you will now discover a new group of biker buddies in AA, and they don't drink
• Punishment
  • Unlike Thorndike and Skinner, Guthrie saw punishment as an effective method
  • Pain is not the key
  • Punishment works when it created new behavior in response to an old situation
    • Example: Dog chasing cars
    • Let it chase your car and you slap it on the nose (but not on the butt)
  • Example (p. 225)
    • Girl throws down hat after coming home
    • Mom makes her go back outside, re-enter house, and hang up hat
    • Guthrie: punishing her after she has thrown down hat is too late
• Summary of Guthrie's Views on Punishment

  1. Pain is not the key
  2. Punishment must cause (new) incompatible behavior
  3. Punishment must be delivered in the presence of the stimuli that elicited the punished behavior
  4. If 2 and 3 are not met, punishment will be ineffective

• Fowler and Miller (1963, p. 226)
  • Shock not the issue
  • Shock front paws, slows rat down
  • Shock rear paws, speeds rat up
• But, Guthrie's views of punishment are incomplete, at best
• Drives
  • Guthrie called them maintaining stimuli
  • Could be internal (e.g., hunger) or any persistent source of stimulation
  • Maintaining stimuli call out previous acts that removed them
  • Explained alcohol or drug use: tension reduced by alcohol or drug consumption
• Intentions
  • Responses conditioned to maintaining stimuli
  • Sequence of behavior was important
    • Example: Hungry organism eats if food is present. If not present a sequence of behaviors begins to end up by eating food
    • Example: Empty refrigerator might lead to getting dressed and driving to restaurant
• Transfer of Training
  • Guthrie expected little transfer of training because each learned situation was different
  • Guthrie suggested that practice should take place in the same location that later performance would
  • Example: Study in same desk in classroom, no in dorm
  • Example: student might successfully solve multiplication problem on board in front of class but not solve it at desk (p. 227)
  • No cognitive notions in Guthrie's theory
• Voeks's Transformation of Guthrie's Theory
  • Virginia W. Voeks was Guthrie's student and received her PhD under Hull
  • She attempted to make Guthrie's theory more testable and formal
  • She constructed a theory similar to Hull's system (pp. 229-230)
• Guthrie on Education
  • Motivation not that important
  • Practice important
  • Rejected formal discipline
  • Supported education that matched job requirements
  • Punishment okay, but only when applied while disruptive behavior is occurring
• Evaluation of Guthrie's Theory
  • Contributions
    • Simple theory, only required contiguity and recency
      • Theory could explain wide variety of learning phenomena
    • Alternative theory to Skinner and Hull
  • Criticisms
    • Too simple for many others
    • Guthrie's methodology insufficient
    • Guthrie and Horton should have used a behavior other than rubbing against a vertical pole

Kardas on Guthrie

Chapter 10 Gestalt

• Opposition to Voluntarism, Structuralism, Functionalism
  • Their main complaint was the elementism of each of the approaches above.
  • A phenomenological approach: studies conscious experience iself directly, intentionally, and from one's own point of view.
    • gestalt: a unified whole that cannot be predicted from summing its component parts. Gestalts may be perceptual, cognitive, or social
    • Melody was one of the precursors to Gestalt psychology
    • Melody is more than the notes that make it up
    • Melody is a gestalt because it must be understood in its totality
      • Eleanor Rigby and Muzak-Many years ago, long before the iPod, I was in an elevator that had piped in music, probably provided by the Muzak Company. As I listened to the music, it sounded familiar. All of a sudden, I recognized the tune. It was Eleanor Rigby, a Beatles song from their Revolver album. How had I recognized it?
        • The lack of lyrics did not matter.
        • The elements, in this case the notes, were not the stimuli.
        • Rather, it was how those notes hung together phenomenologically that led to my eventual recognition of that familiar tune:
        • “Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been...”
• Gestalt psychology was the European opponent and successor to structuralism.
  • It was founded by Wertheimer, Koffka, and Köhler
    • Wertheimer noticed the apparent movement of telephone poles while sitting in a train, an early example of the phi phenomenon.
    • Gestalt psychologists were extremely interested in perception and devised many rules to explain perceptual phenomena.
    • One of their main rules was, "the whole consists of more than simply the sum of its parts."
• Max Wertheimer conducted the first research explicitly judged as Gestalt psychology when he examined the mathematical thinking of aborigines.
  • But it was his research of the phi phenomenon and the Gestalt principles of perception that caused others to first notice the emergence of a new school of psychology.
  • Wertheimer, along with Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka, formed the initial nucleus of Gestalt psychology.
• The German word gestalt needs explaining because it has no good English translation.
  • Close approximations include figure and percept, but gestalt actually means more than that.
  • A gestalt is more like a readily perceptible figure, one that stands out readily.
  • Gestalts need not only be perceptual. ,
  • Any time a concept is reconfigured into to simpler and more understandable form it may be a gestalt.
    • Now apply that definition to learning:
      • Operant Conditioning
        • Skinner box lever (the manipulandum for a rat)
        • Reinforcement: food or water
        • Gestalt learning occurs when the rats realizes the RELATIONSHIP between the lever and the reinforcement
• Major Theoretical Concepts
  • Field Theory: physical theory that describes the movement of objects when influenced by forces such as electricity and magnetism
    • Gestalt psychologists hope to find similar forces in the brain. (They did not succeed.)
    • They were looking for an isomorphism between the brain and the real world
    • Maps are a good example of isomorphism: point-to-point representations, in this case between the 2D maps and the 3D world
    • The 3D world can be projected point-to-point onto a variety of flat maps
      • Notice that each of the projections below are make by different isomorphic conversions from the globe to a 2D flat map

  

  • Nature vs Nurture: the philosophical regarding the sources of knowledge.
  • Law of Pragnanz: humans prefer experience and stimuli that are simple and orderly. In other words, they prefer good gestalts.
    • Laws of Gestalt:
      • The Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization
• The Brain and Conscious Experience
• Epiphenomenalism: conscious experience is a "by product" of sensory experience
• Scotomas: blind spots that are either ignored or filled in by an active brain
• Charles Bonnet syndrome (CBS):
  • from damage to retina or other parts of the visual system
  • causes hallucinations in their scotomas but no intellectual deficits
• Prosopagnosia
  • Inability to recognize faces
• All of the above are indicative of an active brain
• Subjective and Objective Reality
  • The physical world is not directly experienced
    • Koffka:
      • Geographical environment-Objective reality
      • Behavioral environment-Subjective reality
        • Lake Constance story (pp. 273-274)
        • Disney golf ball and alligators
        • Chicago neighborhoods
• Gestalt Principles of Learning
• Köhler and Teuber began studying the apes’ cognitive abilities.
• They set up a fruit basket that was suspended in the air by means of a rope and pulley.

• Köhler hoped that the apes would examine the rigging of the basket and simply unhook the ring and get the fruit.
• Instead, a chimpanzee named Sultan learned to dislodge the fruit from the basket by vigorously shaking the rope and causing the fruit to fall to the ground.
• Following the failure of the fruit basket experiment, Köhler devised simpler tests for his animals.
• He provided them with wooden crates that they could move and stack.
• Later, he hung a banana out of reach from the netting that formed the roof of the animal enclosure.
• Sultan, eventually judged the smartest of the station’s apes, solved the problem in about five minutes.
• Sultan showed no evidence of trial-and-error learning.
• Instead, he first attempted to retrieve the banana by jumping up for it.
• When that failed, he quit trying for a short period.
• Then, he stood up, grabbed a box, and placed it directly under the banana.
• Sultan combined his earlier experience with boxes and slid one into the correct location

• Köhler named this type of learning as insight learning. It was characterized by the sudden appearance of a solution after a period of quiescence. The presolution period.
  • Köhler interpreted Sultan’s solution in gestalt terms.
  • He believed that Sultan had reorganized the problem cognitively.
  • The ape had somehow realized that putting the box right under the banana was the solution.
• Transposition
• He used chickens first and chimpanzees later.
  • The chickens first learned to discriminate between two gray boxes, learning to choose the lighter shade.
  • Next, Köhler tested them with the original light gray box and a newer one colored an even lighter gray.
  • The chickens now chose the new lighter shade.
• Chimpanzees showed the same pattern; for the apes the stimuli varied in size not in color.
  • Köhler concluded that both species had learned a relationship because neither picked the original training stimulus.
  • Thus, he used Gestalt psychology to interpret his animal learning experiments.
  • He believed he had demonstrated that his apes had exhibited intelligent behavior, a radical concept at the time.
• The Behavioristic Explanation of Transposition
  • Spence's explanation, based upon S-R principles delayed acceptance of the gestalt explanation (pp. 279-280)
• Gestalt Psychology on Education: Productive Thinking
  • Wertheimer's book, Productive Thinking is short
  • Its first five chapters covered problem solving using mostly geometric and mathematical examples.
  • The last two chapters described how Galileo and Einstein arrived at their historic discoveries.
  • Throughout, the focus was on elegant as opposed to “ugly” solutions.
  • Commenting on his examples, he concluded:
    • "We found factors and operations at work—essential to thinking—which had not been realized by the traditional approaches, or had even been neglected by them. The very nature of these operations, e.g., of grouping, of centering, of reorganization . . . is alien to the gist of the traditional approaches . . . the features and operations described are of a characteristic nature: they are not piecemeal, they are related to the whole-characteristics, they function with reference to such characteristics (p. 189–190)."
  • To Wertheimer, Gestalt psychology could encompass nearly any aspect of human or animal behavior.
    • The key was not to break down natural processes artificially
    • Instead it was to look for an organic whole, a gestalt, and examine it concretely, functionally, and experimentally.
  • Gestalt Psychology on Reinforcement
    • Instrinsic Reinforcement over Extrinsic Reinforcement
    • Unsolved problems cause undesirable ambiguity in a person
    • Curiousity is an example of what gestalt theorists see as an intrinsic reinforcement
  • Was Popper a Gestalt Theorist?
    • His definition of learning: problem solving
    • Problems come from perceived discrepancies between observation and expectancy (FYI: Piaget and Tolman will have similar notions)
    • Popper believe people had an innate cognitive hunger
    • Problems could be solved by:
      • Proposing possible solutions to discrepancies should be bold and creative
      • Those potential solutions should be subjected to strong refutation attempts
• The Memory Trace
  • Individual Trace Versus Trace System
    • Koffka's idea
      • Experience leaves a kind of residue in the brain: the memory trace
      • New experiences interact with older, similar traces
      • Eventually, individual traces combine into a larger ones while losing the smaller, individual ones
      • Example: throwing a baseball, the original, smaller traces (gripping, releasing, follow through) are lost to the larger trace of pitching
    • Memory, too, differs between gestalt (Pragnanz) and behavioristic (bundling) approaches
    • Behaviorists avoided sensation and perception and emphasized learning
    • Gestaltists studied sensation and perception, and once in USA, turned their attention to learning
• Evaluation of Gestalt Theory
  • Gestalts exist everywhere.
    • They can be simple ones such as the perception of a triangle.
    • They can be cognitive such as when a new solution suddenly emerges following a period of thought.
      • Obviously, for the gestaltists, learning was a cognitive phenomenon
    • They can be social such as when what others do forces people to reconsider their own cherished ideas or beliefs.
  • In all cases, however, the gestalts involved are integrated wholes and relationships between stimuli that cannot be understood by examining their constituent parts in isolation.
  • They can only be understood in toto, or as gestalts.
• Contributions
  • A molar view of psychology (FYI: Tolman too, had a molar view)
  • Introducing cognitive explanations
• Criticisms
  • Very little communicative and cooperative interchange with behaviorism

Kardas on Gestalt

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