Behaviorism vs. Cognitivism - Essay Example

?Behaviorism vs. Cognitivism. The primary aim of this paper is to outline the differences between two schools of academic psychology--behaviorism andcognitivism. I will first outline and explain two experiments purporting to explain human cognition by Jean Piaget. I will then explain how behaviorist B.F. Skinner might object to this methodology. Finally, I will address some possible responses to Skinner that Piaget could use to defend the scientific integrity of his experiments. Jean Piaget is often referred to in academic psychology as a “developmental cognitivist”. A developmental psychologist is one who scientifically studies changes in human personality, thinking and perceptions over the cross of a lifetime. Piaget’s research tends to focus on the development of human children--specifically the intelligence and cognitive capacities of children. Thus he can be said to be a cognitivist, in that he seeks to discover underlying thought processes by observing behavior. In two of his main works, The Construction of Reality in the Child, and The Child’s Conception of Number, Jean Piaget sets up a series of experiments, which purport to demonstrate the differences in cognitive and intellectual processes between adults and children. In the first experiment I am going to examine, Piaget attempts to explain the ability of children to discriminate between quantities of objects. He does this by placing two lines of candy next to each other--one with the candy arranged in a line spread further apart, and one with the same amount of candy in a line placed more closely together. The children are asked to determine which line contains a greater amount of candy. The results were that “Children between 2 years, 6 months old and 3 years, 2 months old correctly discriminate the relative number of objects in two rows; between 3 years, 2 months and 4 years, 6 months they indicate a longer row with fewer objects to have "more"; after 4 years, 6 months they again discriminate correctly” (Piaget). Piaget concluded that children gain the capacity to discriminate between quantities of objects at 2 years, 6 months, but for whatever reason, are unable to use this ability effectively for this task between ages 3 and 4. The second example of an experiment by Piaget I would like to discuss, seeks to demonstrate how children view the relationship between space and object: The child is presented with a model, about one square meter in size, representing three mountains in relief; he is to reconstruct the different perspectives in which a little doll views them in varying positions that follow a given order...when he is asked what the doll sees from a particular position the child describes what he himself sees from his own position without taking into account the obstacles which prevent the doll from seeing the same view. When he is shown several pictures from among which he is to choose the one which corresponds to the doll’s perspective, he chooses the one which represents his own (Piaget). This experiment shows that young children lack the capacity to understand spatial relationships, relative to an observer other than their own. The child does not attempt to envisage how a particular object might look from the perspective of the doll, but defaults back to a description from their first-person point of view. Piaget concludes that the behavior observed here could best be explained by the developmental stage the child has reached. He points out that “the egocentrism and objective relativity in question here concern only the relationships between the child and things, and nothing in sensorimotor action forces him to leave this narrow realm” (Piaget). In other words since the child has only reached the point in life where she always encounters objects in relation to herself, even if you ask questions about the relation between an object and another observer, the child will not understand. Behaviorism is a school of thought in psychology that can be thought of in contrast to cognitivism. Rather than observing behavior to determine underlying thought processes, it purports to explain human and animal behavior solely in terms of external physical stimuli, responses, learning histories, and (for certain types of behavior) reinforcements (SEP). There are several different brands of behaviorism, but for the purpose of this paper, we will talk about the type of behaviorism ascribed to by B.F. Skinner. Skinner believed that inner mental states and thoughts could not be studied by empirical science. He stated that “we cannot account for the behavior of any system while staying wholly inside it; eventually we must turn to forces operating upon the organism from without (Skinner 35). In other words, thinking is itself a behavior and thus cannot be used as an explanation for behavior. We must instead turn to external explanations for behavior. This type of research methodology can be thought of as contrary to that of Piaget, who aimed to derive conclusions about inner thoughts, through the observation of behavior. Thus it is likely Skinner would object to the conclusions Piaget derives from the aforementioned experiments. To the first experiment, Skinner would object that there is no evidence to determine when children obtain the ability to discriminate between quantities. Given the context of the experiment, you cannot determine why the children choose a particular line of candy over another. Perhaps between ages 3 and 4 when parents teach kids the words “more” and “less” they use examples of longer and shorter objects, and so children automatically respond to the longer line of candy when asked a question about its amount. Perhaps at age 4, parents teach children to count, and they learn to automatically choose the line with the greater number of pieces of candy. Regardless, the children are exhibiting a learned response pattern from previous encounters with external stimuli and there is no way of determining cause an effect with these stimuli and the children’s behavior in this experiment. In the second experiment, Skinner would object that you couldn’t explain the child’s behavior, by concluding they must not be intellectually developed enough to conceive of the relationship between objects from other perspectives. If the child is thinking of objects only in relation to herself, then you must derive an external cause for this behavior. For example, suppose children start considering how things look from different perspectives, when they develop the language and social skills to talk to other children about their personal perspective on things. Then you could design an experiment comparing students who have reached an age typical of this experience with children who have not, and conclude whether this experience caused them to respond differently to the questions in the experiment. Then there would be an external explanation for the children’s behavior. Piaget could reply to Skinner, by digging in his heels, and affirming that mental states are indeed distinct from external behavior, and that it is still scientific to derive conclusions about thought processes through observing behavior. There is no reason to assume that thought processes are simply behavior that have to be learned through exposure to certain stimuli over time. Suppose a specific thought process is only obtained through the full development of a certain part of the brain. Then no matter what the reinforcement history of the person being studied, they would not beginning thinking and responding to a situation in a particular way, until they reached that phase in their neuro-cognitive development. In this situation, the person’s behavior would be caused by a person’s physical development and the cognitive abilities that come from that development, and cannot be adequately explained through behaviorism. In my opinion strict behaviorism is counter-intuitive and false. There is no way of explaining human behavior, without considering the complex decision making processes humans use in their thinking, as a cause for that behavior. While it is true that some behavior can be attributed to repetition, reinforcement, and exposure to certain stimuli, these factors cannot explain the bulk of human behavior, which often arises from our own thought processes. Thus I think Piaget is safe from any criticisms from Skinner concerning the validity of studying cognitive processes, and these processes should remain the object of scientific inquiry. Works Cited J. Piaget, The Child's Conception of Number (Humanities, New York, 1952) Piaget, Jean, and Margaret Cook. The Construction of Reality in the Child. New York: Ballantine 1971. Print. Skinner, B. F. Science and Human Behavior. New York: Macmillan, 1953. Print. Graham, George, "Behaviorism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Read More