Principles Of Experimental Psychology

Henri Pieron, Piron, Henri

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136334085
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

This is Volume XVI of twenty-one in the Individual Differences series with the library of Psychology. First published in 1929, this study looks at the principles of experimental psychology in terms of reaction processes, affective reactions, perceptive reactions, intellectual reactions and the utilization of experience.

Part One

The Reaction Processes and the Forms of Behaviour

CHAPTER I

The Conception of Reaction

WHEN a sudden change is produced in the surroundings of a living being, this change acts generally as a “stimulus” to the organism, that is to say, excites a response, which is a corresponding change carried over into its own activity, into the behaviour of the organism.

If I introduce a drop of acid into water containing Infusoria, the activity of these Infusoria changes in a certain manner. They will withdraw from the area where the change has been produced or they will go towards it, according to the nature and strength of the acid.

If I heat a culture broth containing bacteria, the microbes will become encysted and immobilized.

If I place, in a small quantity of blood in which leucocytes are circulating, some particles of starch, the white cells of the blood will absorb these particles after having broken them up into fragments and bathed them with dissolving juices.

The stimulated organism can displace itself, transform itself in relation to the stimulus or react to the stimulus, mechanically or chemically.

Besides these immediate reactions, the stimulus may bring about lasting modifications which will continue to manifest themselves in later behaviour.

I give some particles of carmine to Infusoria; they will surround the particles and then throw them out again. If I repeat this those which have tried to absorb the carmine will not do so again.

The first time the leucocytes are placed in the presence of certain bacteria, they will approach and surround them. When they encounter them again they will secrete bacteriolitic material.

Among these reactions, primitive and elementary as they appear—although their complexity is in reality extreme—arises the psychology which pictures in these obvious modifications of activity, the general behaviour of organisms.

At all levels organisms react to the same classes of stimuli; they present the same general classes of reaction. That which affects the more highly evolved sensory apparatus of the higher animals, affects even the relatively undifferentiated protoplasm of unicellular organisms. Mechanical stimuli (vibrations in particular) and chemical stimuli, the radiations which they set up when they are absorbed, heat or photo-chemical activities, all affect Infusoria as well as man. No class of stimuli is known to act on man which does not act to some degree on the protozoa, and vice versa.

In the same class, for all organisms (although the extreme limits may fluctuate, in particular with the ultra-violet radiations), belong the stimuli of light and heat, and those which do not arouse any activity at all.

From the point of view of modes of reaction we always find certain displacements, certain activities, relatively complex, affecting the environment so as to modify it, and also certain auto-modifications of a stimulated organism.

Are these auto-modifications then in the realm of behaviour, in the realm of psychology?

Following a toxic influence, when an animal immunizes itself, the modifications produced are not transferred in any apparent form into its total response; they are consequently outside the realm that we are picturing. Only activities such as those which permit of an escape from a new toxic influence belong to this domain. Increased resistance to a snake-bite, after being bitten, is not a psychological reaction; while subsequent flight from a snake, or learning the necessity of killing it, without letting it bite you, is.

Among the immunization phenomena in higher animals, however, there may be some reactions, which, taken on a different footing, belong to the study of behaviour; such for example, would be the attraction of phagocytes, which represents a definite modification of activity in such truly individualized organisms, capable of relative independence, as are the white blood cells.

On the other hand there are some transition forms between incontestable reactional changes of behaviour and internal changes which belong only to physiology and physio-pathology.

In all cases where glandular reactions are produced we have to do with these transition forms.

Weeping constitutes a glandular reaction, which is linked not only with mimetic phenomena but with a whole behaviour situation in which tears are a very obvious element. Salivation from the point of view of desire for food is less directly observable, but forms part of a definite complex activity.

A gastric or intestinal secretion will in certain cases remain a sufficiently isolated manifestation to escape an observer of behaviour, but very often it will lead to active manifestations, it will condition certain conduct. The motor phenomena of the stomach or the intestines, closely corresponding to these secretions, belongs also, at least indirectly, to the psychological complex. Finally, an internal secretion will more often be a mode of reaction of great psychological importance through the direct influence which it exercises on the general conduct. The influence of adrenin, and particularly of the secretion from the thyroid, the testicle or the ovary, is considerable. The responses of the glands represent an integral and very important part of the psychological reaction—of the modification carried over from the stimulation to the conduct.

Emotion, for certain theorists, consists of its own mode of reaction, implying essentially an auto-modification of the organism, under the form of “glandular behaviour.”

Thus the reactional activity which the psychologist studies may, in part, be built up by modifications which are not directly and immediately apparent, but which reveal themselves by indirect manifestations or by subsequent effects. It is not only in the form of glandular modifications but in the form of nervous modifications that this implicit behaviour may be realized.

Some forms of reaction are preparatory to further modifications of behaviour, in particular the reactions which prepare to fix something in memory. Some imply inhibitions, at the time, of immediate manifestations and elaborations of different responses. This is the case with phenomena of thought excited by an external event, which imply particular conduct, the exact nature of which escapes direct observation quite as much as testicular or adrenal secretion. It is necessary that these phenomena should pass over into specific reactions, verbal nearly always, in order that they may be followed. They must be reconstructed on the basis of more remote modifications, as in attempts at the “divination” of thought.

Up to the present we have considered that behaviour was only made up of responses to stimuli, that it was essentially reactional.

The stimulus-response circuit which describes behaviour is sometimes viewed under the form of energy. The response would then consist in the utilization of energy brought by the stimulus. Light energy received by the eye would be transformed into muscular contraction and restored under mechanical form and heat to the environment.

But in general the energy received is many million times less than the energy given off in the reaction. The stimulus only releases a discharge of accumulated energy in the tissues (lipoids from the nerve cells, carbohydrates from the muscles, glycogen from the reserves in the liver, etc.). The energy of responses is furnished by the nourishment acquired and has to do with the general cycle of metabolism. But the organism uses in a continuous manner a part of this energy for uninterrupted functions or for periodical functions which do not appear to require special stimuli; and it uses in a discontinuous manner another part, for functions which require the action of a factor suitable to set them going, especially for processes of the relational activity of behaviour.

Moreover the stimuli capable of releasing responses are not necessarily external processes. There exists among multi-cellular organisms a general internal condition, the proper changes in which—often following a reaction to an external stimulus—are capable of acting in their turn as sources of stimulation. Thus it is that changes in the position of the limbs, movements of the stomach, etc., represent psychogenic excitations which arouse perceptive reactions; the products of digestion in the blood often cause an impression of euphoria; hallucinations, that is, sensations which arise in the absence of the appropriate external stimuli, are caused by the direct influence on the nerve elements of toxic substances introduced internally through the blood or the lymph which bathe them, etc.

Some processes, apparently continuous or with their own periodicity, may be kept up in the organism by this cycle of auto-stimulation in which each response constitutes the source of a fresh excitation.

In the phenomena of thought, prolonged for some time, it may well be that the mental reactions which succeed each other are each thus aroused by the preceding reaction.

Nevertheless it is doubtful, in the case of mental activity and of unified activity of organisms, whether automatism can be continued indefinitely. It seems that external stimuli are necessary, at least from time to time and perhaps continually, in order to maintain synthetic and unified behaviour.

In that inferior form of mental activity which constitutes the dream and in absent-minded behaviour, sensory stimuli intervene to some degree. Experiments show that stimuli during sleep arouse mental reactions, although unadapted.

Some animals, if external influences are largely removed (in silence, in darkness or when immobilized), fall into an hypnotic state, characterized by the loss of all activity.¹ Boris Sidis has obtained the same effect among young children.

There have also been described among human adults very similar phenomena, of unconquerable torpor and sleep occurring in individuals affected by cutaneous anaesthesia, deprived of auditory and light stimuli. Reference may be made to the celebrated but dubious case reported by Strümpell, and observations by Féron, Bregmann, Paris and Laforgue, etc.

Behaviour may thus appear actually to be constituted by a reactional activity excited by rapid changes in the environment.

¹ Among reptiles and amphibians the suppression of cutaneous excitations, by entirely anaesthetizing or removing the skin, is sufficient to produce a state of inactivity approaching almost to coma, with suppression also of respiratory movements, so that strong stimuli will not awaken the activity of the animals (experiments by Ozono de Almeida and H. Piéron).

CHAPTER II

The Hereditary Forms of Behaviour

Reflexes and Automatisms

CERTAIN divisions are often distinguished among the reactional processes. Tropisms, reflexes, instinctive acts and intelligent acts have been suggested. Tropisms, according to the conception of Loeb, consist of reactions of orientation towards an excitant, which result in making symmetrical a formerly asymmetrical stimulation. The mechanism provides for direct transmission of the energy of the excitant into motor discharge. A butterfly receives more light in the left eye; the light energy is carried to the muscles of the wings on the other side; these act more energetically until the consequent rotation places the animal face to face with the source of light; and, from that moment, since the two sides of the body receive the same quantity of energy, rectilinear flight conducts the animal towards the light.

In reflexes the nervous system comes into play; there is an activity of the organism, a reaction, while in the tropism the organism appears to have submitted passively. However, according to McDougall, this reflex reaction is not adaptive (“purposive”). Adaptation, the direction of responses towards ends, manifests itself with instinct. Bergson regards instinct as an intuitive reaction of some sort, a manifestation of the spontaneity of the élan vital, entirely different from intelligent activities.

The sharp distinctions made among the reactional processes, however, are the work of theorists. They do not express facts but are speculative conceptions. The word tropism may be reserved for certain categories of reaction implying an orientation response, which is static or dynamic, depending upon the relation to the source of excitation. But these reactions are characteristically reflex. They always imply the participation of the nervous system when that has been differentiated. (The labyrinthine reactions of man are regarded by Loeb as tropisms.) We know that there is never transformation of light energy, which is weak, into motor energy, which is of a totally different order of intensity. Instead there is a release by the excitant of a discharge of the proper amount of energy. This is true in tropisms as in all other reflexes.

May not the reflex be differentiated from other reactions in that it does not have the purposefulness of the others? Although the reflexes are fixed in form, they generally have an evident function. A sudden noise sets up in the cat a reflex of the eyes which directs them towards the source of the sound, even when the cerebral cortex has been destroyed. On the other hand, even if harmful instincts are not common—for the species in which they are found disappear quickly—there are always sufficient examples to prevent adopting a differential criterion founded on purpose. There is the liking of certain mammals for deadly poisonous plants and the care taken by others for certain forms of parasites which are destructive of their colonies, etc.

With more reason the reflex may be contrasted with instinct as a partial reaction compared to a combined activity. Moreover, the division thus made corresponds to our need for classification. We quickly understand how all...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One The Reaction Processes and The Forms of Behaviour
• Part Two Affective Reactions and The Orientation of Conduct
• Part Three Perceptive Reactions and the Acquisition of Experience
• Part Four Intellectual Reactions and the Elaboration of Experience
• Part Five The Levels of Activity and The Utilization of Experience
• Part Six Mental Stages and Types
• Bibliography
• Index