NP Re: Skinner

[jbor]

on 8/11/04 9:31 AM, Scott Badger wrote:

>> I can't even remember if I passed Pysch. 101.
> 
> Had to be a test subject, for the extra credit, to pass mine.....

I dropped out of Psych 1 because the Tests and Measurements (stats) strand
was so mind-numbing. Came back round to it again through History and
Philosophy of Science and, in latter times, Applied Linguistics.

But I do remember being a test subject for a friend who was doing his
Honours year in Psych. Basic behaviourist setup: darkened booth, aural or
visual stimuli (can't recall which), mild electric shocks if you pressed the
wrong button or pressed too slowly. One girl I knew fled the experiment
halfway through in tears. Another fell asleep in the booth. I guess quite a
few of our mates just treated it as a big joke and stuffed around.

What it did illustrate was that internal reliability is automatically up the
creek when you're dealing with human subjects, and I'd say it's particularly
so now that there are strict ethical constraints against covert observation.

> I thought
> Rob simply meant that (for a behaviourist) there is a causal relationship
> between stimulus and response - "variation" only so far as our understanding
> is limited. Usng your computer analogy, so long as all the ones and zeros at
> the bit/cellular level are known, the output/behavior could be predicted, by
> an all-knowing behaviourist.

Thanks, that's exactly what I meant. (I was beginning to think I was writing
in a foreign language!)

best