Interpreting Cognitive Phenomena: Review of Donahoe and Palmer's Learning and Complex Behavior1
Year: 1995
Type: book-review
Abstract: The thing that was exciting about Keller and Schoenfeld's Principles of Psychology (1950) and Skinner's Science and Human Be- havior (1953) as textbooks was their system- atic treatment.A few general, basic principles were introduced at the beginning, explained, and given empirical justification.Then those basic principles were used to interpret a wide range of interesting, significant, and complex behavioral phenomena such as conceptualizing, solving problems, remembering, talking, self-regulating, knowing oneself, and func- tioning as a member of a social group.Psychological phenomena that had seemed dis- connected from each other could now be discussed in common terms.A student who studied one of these textbooks could come away with a broad but integrated view of psy- chology as a coherent science.The approach, now known as behavior analysis, continues to be well integrated and broad in scope.But for some reason, this breadth is not always well represented in text- books.2Understandably and appropriately, basic textbooks focus on fundamental principles and on the research designed to clarify those principles.That body of research has grown enormously over the years, and the is- sues have become more intricate and subtle.It is hard to cover the basic principles ade- quately in a course and still find time to show the wide-ranging applicability of those prin- ciples to the interpretation of complex hu- man behavior.It may also be the case, as Dins- moor (1989) has suggested, that textbook authors have become more conservative in their willingness to extrapolate.Whatever the
Author: Richard L. Shull
Institution: University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2099700792