[From Bruce Abbott (950604.1510 EST)]
Bill Powers (950603.1550 MDT)
That was a beautiful answer to my question about the transition from
traditional behaviorism to PCT. Your analogy to the Necker cube is
particularly powerful. It's been said often that PCT is a "valid
perspective" on behavior, but that there is something to be said for
other approaches, too, such as S-R. This gives the impression that if
you use the PCT perspective, you see one set of interesting phenomena,
while from another perspective you might see other phenomena that the
PCT view misses.
Thanks, Bill. But the critics are right. There is indeed "something to be
said" for other approaches: they're _wrong_.
To get into another theorist's shoes, you
have to do more than just pretend to accept different conclusions; you
have to see how the other guy's reasoning ties together a whole web of
observations and ideas in a way that invites belief. I think your
experiences with PCT might support this concept; as your experience with
phenomena seen from the PCT standpoint grew, it became more possible for
you to find a comfortable position in either camp. This, I think, tends
to remove the familiarity factor and makes it possible to look for other
criteria by which to compare the usefulness of the viewpoints.
The problem is that those who find the accepted paradigm compelling may be
unwilling to expend the (perhaps considerable) effort required to truly see
things from the other view's perspective. The current view seems to make
logical sense, appears to be supported by common sense and by considerable
data, and provides a framework for new research. You know what is known and
what questions need to be addressed next. You've invested quite a bit of
time and energy to thoroughly understand the current view and your
experience seems to show that it works. You have little reason to expect
that some other view will do better and every reason to want to continue
doing things the way you've always done them. So when some other proposal
comes along, you may give it a quick once-over, but you probably will not
invest the effort needed to really understand it and to work out its
implications. It's just human nature.
Re: shock controllability study
Interesting that apparently the rats did not seem to maintain a believe
that they were controlling -- maybe they didn't have one in the first
place.
Actually I took pains to make sure they would NOT have such a belief. When
the rats entered the condition in which they could not control the shock,
the lever they had used for this purpose in the controllable-shock condition
was retracted into the chamber wall. I didn't want people arguing that the
rats were indifferent between the controllable- and uncontrollable-shock
conditions because they "believed they still had control in the
uncontrollable condition."
Comparative PCT is going to be an interesting field because we
can do the same nonverbal experiments with people and different animals.
One day, when we call someone a bird-brain, we may know what we are
talking about.
It may even be a compliment. Anyone who has read about pigeon navigation or
looked at the ability if these birds to identify representatives of complex
categories in a picture cannot help but be impressed with the kinds of
things a "bird brain" can do.
Rick Marken (950503.1930) --
I like Bruce's analogy to the Necker cube, too, but I would suggest that
an even more appropriate analogy may be the three dimensional version of
this illusion, where an actual wire cube is viewed monocularly. The cube
alternates between two perspectives, as in the two-dimensional case,
but now one perspective is, in fact, correct.
Your point is well taken, but the analogy with the 3-D Necker cube breaks
down when you consider that the "correct" orientation is what people tend to
see first. In the many times I've done this demonstration it invariably
takes a bit of looking before they are able to perceive the "incorrect"
orientation so that the cube reverses its apparent direction of rotation.
(Apparently there are still subtle monocular cues present that help to guide
interpretation). With reference to reinforcement theory and PCT it is the
_incorrect_ orientation people seem to grasp most easily.
This study is described on pp. 67-75 of "Mind Readings" (Please read it,
Bruce. Pretty please. It's just $18.00. Cheap). In fact, it was exactly
like the shock-avoidance study Bruce described. There was no pretext
for the repeat run; like the rats, the subjects were suddenly dealing with
a variable over which they actually no longer had control. Only one subject
I tested noticed the change (I set it up so that there was no "hitch" in
cursor movement when the replay began). The results were just as you
described them -- the open-loop control actions would have produced little
or no control if they had actually had an effect on the cursor.
It's an interesting study but I'm afraid not quite parallel to mine. In my
study the rats knew when they did and did not have control over shock, but
did not care to control which situation they were in.
This discussion of Bruce Abbott's early PCT research reminded me of
other examples such research. In particular, I remember seeing a film
where an infant controls the focus of a picture by sucking on a nipple.
The goal of the study was (as I recall) to see whether infants (like two or
three moinths old, perhaps) could perceive focus; the assumption (I
presume) was that if they could, then "in focus" would be a reinforcer.
In the film, the infant does, indeed, keep a picture in focus by sucking
(Maggie Simpson eat you heart out).
A similar study I recall reading about allowed infants to control the motion
of an overhead mobile by sucking on a pacifier. When sucking produced the
motion, the amount of sucking increased enormously; when the contingency was
broken the sucking returned to baseline levels. These results, too, were
given a traditional reinforcement interpretation.
It was obvious that the infant was controlling a perception; there was
resistance to disturbance since the picture would fall out of focus when
the sucking eased up. Nevertheless, as I recall, this result was
interpreted in the context of reinforcement theory; "in focus"
reinforces sucking, resulting in high sucking rate. If this was the
interpretation, they could have quickly disabused themselves of this
notion by distrubing the picture _into_ focus occasionally and watching
what happened to the rate of sucking under those circumstances.
It's not that easy. If the "reinforcer" is having the picture in focus, and
the picture is already in focus, then the response does not _produce_ the
reinforcer and thus should not be maintained. Rather than being "disabused
of this notion" by the results of your suggested demonstration,
reinforcement theorists would have found support in them.
This study is described on pp. 67-75 of "Mind Readings" (Please read it,
Bruce. Pretty please. It's just $18.00. Cheap).
Oh, all right, if it'll make you happy. [What some people will do to sell a
book! (;-> ]
Regards,
Bruce