"The Stimulus” remains a Hypothetical Construct; or, Guessing At What Elicits Behavior

(Researchers) … have implicitly allowed their own behavior to define the stimulus… --- Blough & Millward, (1965) "Learning: Operant Conditioning and Verbal Learning," in Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 16

Our conclusions, even at the level of measurement and scaling (which seems such a firm foundation for theory building), are already a consequence of theory. A measurement or scaling model is actually a theory about behavior, admittedly on a miniature level, but nonetheless theory. -- Clyde H.Coombs (1964) Theory of Data, 5. New York. Wiley.

What “stimulus” is it that provokes anyone to harm, to kill, even, another human being? We are continually bathed in emanations from our sun as well as from distant stars. Are they part of our “stimulus environment”? Is it sunspots that cause felonies?

Parents, teachers, professors, law enforcers, juries and judges -- are all, not infrequently, profoundly self-centered. They judge the behavior of others on the basis of how they, each one of them, imagine that they personally would have or should have perceived, reacted, thought and responded.

So it is that they praise or punish, pass or fail, arrest or dismiss, convict or exonerate, commit or constrain persons under their domination to praise or to humiliation, to liberty or to incarceration or death.

It’s all too easy to talk about stimuli; after all, we’re educated, aren’t we? We’ve got the vocabulary! But it can be very hard to say what particular events, or aspects of events, constitute a stimulus.

Want to see if a rat can distinguish Mozart from Schubert? Put it into a Skinner box, starve it a bit and then feed it only if it presses the bar when an interval of Mozart’s music, not Schubert’s, is playing. The discriminatory behavior of the rat will help us identify whether or not, and to what extent, the music is a stimulus.

Having made the acquaintance of many an intelligent lab rat, I would bet its pressing responses would show a correlation with the snatch of music from the composer we have chosen to reward it for upon presentation. We will likely find out that some difference between the Mozart and the Schubert matters.

Is it color that matters? Not for us humans who hear only sound (but, perhaps so, if we have a rat with synaesthesia). Maybe one piece of music has a sound of a frequency that the other doesn’t. We’ll have to investigate that. The behavior per se doesn’t give us the answer. It just helps us focus the question: what precisely, if anything, is the stimulus?

And has the rat learned anything about Mozart or Schubert? Or even that one interval of sound or the other relates to them? What do you think? Wouldn't you have to put this to a test?

How much education, intellectual, physical or moral, is so much Schubert in a Skinner box?

For references and to examine the issues raised in this article further, see Can a Consistent Behaviorist Finish an Experiment?


Cordially -- EGR

Knowledge, Freedom, Wisdom: Are These the Point of Schooling?

edited 3/21/20

Who are a little wise, the best fools be. – John Donne

It is not accidental that we speak of sending our dogs to “obedience school.” Show horses, too, are schooled. Indeed, any circus animal that that is to perform in public receives “schooling.”

Such training is necessary since the natural impulses of dogs, horses, elephants and tigers are not attuned to cooperating with or supporting human social purposes believed to be desirable. So must it be thought to be the same with human children, to judge from our practices of compulsory schooling.

“But unless they go to school, kids would run wild and grow up to be, at best, anti-social ruffians.” Perhaps. But does this mean that incarcerating them for ever-increasing periods of time -- think of the movements to do away with recess, summer vacations and free Saturdays--, will make them (and us) healthy, wealthy and wise?

So what if they do learn a little math; and less writing? And even less history? Whose benefit is served if they learn to spout scientistic slogans about human nature and the universe? For example, “All human behavior is generated from the brain according to the laws of nature.” Or, “According to the latest research the universe is finite (or infinite, or multiple -- pick one or more).” How is it possible to take seriously supposedly “scientific” pronouncements about “all” of anything from individuals who inhabit a mere speck of dust in a remote corner of the (or “a”) universe during a minuscule interval of time?

The previous statement is not an attempt to beat up scientists: just the popularizers and propagandizers of “science” whose overextended conjectures end up in the schoolbooks students are exposed to (usually in textbook chapter summaries, or supporting materials). (See The Curse of Knowledge vs The Dunning--Kruger Effect: an instructor's dilemma.)

For good reason, public educators in our pluralistic society attempt to distinguish between religion and science in constructing curriculum. What they often miss, however, is that being skeptical, or anti-religious, does not, in and of itself, qualify an idea as being scientific.

To examine these issues further, see Questionable Assumptions in Social Decision Making


Cordially
--- EGR

What You Don’t Learn in Teacher Training: Effective Student Motivation

Everybody’s talkin’ at me.
I don’t hear a word they’re sayin’.
Only the echoes of my mind.
– Harry Nillson Aerial Ballet (1969)

Can you imagine anyone’ s attending a course called, “Controlling Your Smoking Habits” in a “school” called “Tobacco Growers' University?” How about attending a course called, “How Used Car Salesmen Lie” at the “Automotive Dealers Institute?”

I had a graduate student complain to me once that the facts and considerations that I presented in class tended to diminish her “enthusiasm” for entering the teaching profession. I asked her in response if she would go to a doctor who was enthusiastic but barely skilled rather than someone like the TV character, House: little charm, little optimism, but with a ton of competence and no b.s. Her choice was clear, and wise.

Suppose you had been explicitly trained in what might motivate kids of all ages to perform on command – “on command,” because this is what your supervisor, your principal, your school board members and your kids’ parents will expect you to do. (Not that they themselves could do it!)

If you had such knowledge of motivation you would soon discover how infrequently you could use it, because the behavioral foundations for its success were lacking both in the students and in the school environment. Kids who don’t try to read, or can't play without bullying, or are unwilling to pay attention to anything that doesn’t deal with gossip, toys, games, or movies – and for teenagers, sex and violence – are difficult to get involved consistently in classroom activities. (Let’s not even get into the typical class interruptions your administrators believe it to be a matter of life or death to make at any time of the day!)

Just as a skillful doctor could tell whether you have been not taking your medicine or straying from your exercise plan or diet, so would you, a motivational expert, be more likely to recognize the many outside influences that undermine a student’s motivation for school activities.

Just think about who and what those outside influences might be. Would they welcome your observations on how they interfere with or fail to support student motivation?

And, by the way, would the course you took called something like, “Classroom Management,” have been more honestly labeled, “Keeping Up Your Teacherly Enthusiasm While Your Class (and Career) is Going to Down the Tubes?” Would any university or college permit their "cash cow," the Department of Teacher Preparation -- or something similarly named -- risk rocking the boat by teaching its students how parents, politicians, school administrators and college professors all contribute to stultifying student motivation?

To examine these issues further, see Motivation: why is this a worry?


Cordially
--- EGR

If Only Educators Were Rocket Scientists…

It has long been taught by professors, professed by teachers, and parroted by politicians that most teaching is learned on the job, not in college. Well, one could argue, if trial-and-error teacher education is adequate, why not make it the law of the land? One of H.L. Mencken's zingers applies here, male chauvinism notwithstanding:

When the American pedagogue became a professional, and began to acquire a huge armamentarium of technic, the trade of teaching declined, for only inferior men were willing to undergo a long training in obvious balderdash.

I saw a good example of such balderdash at a teacher education workshop awhile back. After an interminable series of (presumably) unpaid advertisements for inferior software and spurious online services, we were compelled to play cutesy motivational games that supposedly enable limited-English children to learn, all of which ended in a bizarre kind of group hokey-pokey. I'm sorry, but if we are denying teaching certificates to intelligent young people because they refuse to submit to four years of that kind of . . . balderdash, Mencken is right and we are wrong.

To examine these issues further, see Highly Educated Teachers: is this what we need?


Cordially

-- WAC