Originally posted by Luís Henrique+June 15, 2007 11:53 pm--> (Luís Henrique @ June 15, 2007 11:53 pm)
[email protected] 15, 2007 10:55 pm
This is an explanation for habit formation.
No; that was an explanation for conditioned reflexes.[/b]
No, it was formulated by Dr. Watson in Behaviorism (p. 168) in this way to specifically explain the whole of habit-formation (law of habit). Dr. Watson was an older psychologist, but psychologists to this day use conditioned reflexes to explain the whole of habits:
"Some scientists regard conditioned reflexes as of fundamental importance in human development, especially in child training. They describe habits as consisting merely of patterns or systems of conditioned reflexes. "
Encyclopedia Britannica (http://www.britannica.com/ebi/article-207225)
I know for a fact that conditioned reflexes play a role in habit-formation because I see it in my own life. Dinner time usually comes around a show I watch on the TV (stim Y, I'm hungry), and when I started eating after I watched said TV show, I eventually started to want to eat when that TV show was playing, even when I really wasn't hungry. That's a habit, not a mere conditioned reflex. I really can't break my habits until them, and they are like this. At least I can't see what else it would be, in other words. I'm sure smokers would have other examples for other situations (it's not just that they're addicted to smoking, but they have to smoke at certain times).
Watson actually used his formula for conditioned-reflexes to explain a great many of things (an example being a child who touched a hot radiator and then didn't touch radiators again for two years, "habit formed by a single trial").
learning
... is much a more complex phenomenon than conditioned reflexes. You can't learn maths through conditioning - or the difference between the styles of Mozart and Haydn, or how to bake a cake.
Right. Most non-instinctual habits are a form of "learning." I should have said "this particular form of learning.
The reason I asked that particular question (whether this was a form of learning) was because Dr. Watson, Skinner et al. are debunked behaviorists, but nonetheless I've found that the explanation of how the environment, how imprinting, how our minds are blank slates makes a lot of sense. The difference of course between Watson and more modern psychologists is that modern psychologists would look at insights. I need to find some good refutations of behaviorism because it's supposedly "debunked."
It is true concerning conditioned reflexes; otherwise it is not true.
Luís Henrique
It seems to be somewhat true for habit-formation.