The Handy Psychology Answer Book. Lisa J. Cohen

      What is a schema?

      A schema is a representation or a map of a pattern of events. It is essentially the building block of knowledge. Infants’ initial knowledge of the world is through action schemas or sensory-motor schemas. This means the child can only know the world through immediate sensation or direct action, such as bringing the thumb into the mouth or seeing bicycle wheels go round and round. Around nine months of age, these action schemas begin to exist in the mind alone. In other words, the child can think about the event when it is not actually occurring. The mental life of the child has begun. A mental representation of an event is called a conceptual schema. One sign of this is called object permanence, which occurs around nine months of age when an infant will look for an object after it is hidden from view, such as searching for a rattle after it is hidden behind a pillow.

      What are assimilation and accommodation?

      Assimilation and accommodation are the two ways that children gain new knowledge. In assimilation, the new is fitted into the old; in accommodation, the old is adapted to the new. This is the way that schemas develop. Accommodation means that a schema will become modified by new information. For example, an infant is handed a rattle that is shaped differently than any previously encountered rattles. Because of the different shape, the infant has to grasp it in a different way. Thus the schema of grasping the rattle has just accommodated to the new action.

      Assimilation is the complement of accommodation and refers to the way new information is adapted to previously existing schemas. For example, when presented with the new rattle, the infant tries to grasp it and shake it. This reflects an attempt to assimilate the new action with the pre-existing rattle schema. Throughout development, both processes occur simultaneously.

      How have Piaget’s theories been criticized?

      Piaget has been criticized for relying almost exclusively on the intellectual content of knowledge. Piaget paid little attention to the impact of culture, emotion, observational learning, and verbal instruction on cognitive development. Indeed, later research has shown that children’s (and adults’) knowledge of the world is greatly impacted by all of the above factors. Nonetheless, this does not invalidate Piaget’s contributions; it simply shows that his work is limited in scope. He cannot explain all of children’s mental life, but he did tell us a tremendous amount about early cognitive development.

      What role did Piaget’s children have in the development of his theories?

      Much of the fundamental ideas of Piaget’s work were based on his intense, methodical observations of his own three children, Jacqueline, Laurent, and Lucienne. Their mother, Valentine, was a trained psychologist herself and helped in these studies. In fact, she had been one of Piaget’s students. Although we can question what emotional impact this intense attention may have had on these children, Piaget’s investigations were never invasive or even particularly experimental. Relying on a naturalistic approach, for the most part he observed their natural behavior, questioned them about their understanding of natural events, or minimally modified their environment, for example by manipulating toys.

      MAJOR MOVEMENTS IN PSYCHOLOGY

      BEHAVIORISM

      What is behaviorism?

      Behaviorism is the school of psychology that considers observable behavior to be the only worthwhile object of study. Behaviorists believe mental phenomena are impossible to measure objectively and thus impossible to prove. They therefore focus on the processes underlying behavioral change, specifically classical conditioning (also known as associative or Pavlovian conditioning) and operant conditioning. These basic learning principles operate in humans and animals alike, or at least in mammals and birds.

      Major figures of behaviorism include John B. Watson (1878–1958), Edward Thorndike (1874–1947), and B.F. Skinner (1904–1990). Although Freudian psychoanalysis, educational psychology, and other mental schools of psychology continued to develop in tandem, behaviorism was the dominant force in American psychology until well into the middle of the twentieth century.

      What was Thorndike’s Law of Effect?

      Edward Thorndike (1874–1947) was originally a student of Henry James, although his research veered far from James’s fascination with consciousness. As a side note, he was also the author of the Thorndike dictionary. Thorndike turned to the study of chickens while still a graduate student and then expanded his research to observations of cats and dogs. By placing an animal in a puzzle box, or an enclosure with only one means of escape, he could study how the animal learned to escape the box. He observed that animals initially stumble on the escape route (e.g., stepping on a peddle or biting a string) through trial and error. With repeated trials, however, animals take less time to find their way out.

      Based on this research, Thorndike formulated two laws of learning. The Law of Effect states that the effect of an action will determine the likelihood that it will be repeated. In other words, if the response generates a satisfying effect (the cat pulls the string and the door opens), the cat is more likely to pull the string again. If the action generates a negative impact, the animal is less likely to repeat the action. This concept forms the bedrock of B.F. Skinner’s later theory of operant conditioning. Thorndike’s Law of Exercise likewise contributed to theories of associative conditioning. Here he stated that the strength of an association between a response and a stimulus will depend on the number of times they have been paired and the strength of their pairing. Thorndike thus took the associationism of philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and placed it into a scientific paradigm.

      What is the black box theory of the mind?

      In this view, the mind is no more than an opaque black box inserted between stimulus and response. As no one can see inside of it, it is not worthy of study. This extreme antimentalism of the behaviorists has been frequently criticized and was finally put to rest by the cognitive revolution in the 1960s. While the behaviorists made invaluable contributions to psychology regarding the fundamental principles of behavioral change, their devaluing and dismissal of subjective experience was extremely limiting.

      How do behaviorists understand learning?

      Behaviorism is best described as a theory of learning and, in fact, is often referred to as learning theory. However, the mental process of learning had to be translated into behavioral terms. Thus learning occurs when a new behavior is repeatedly and consistently performed in response to a given stimulus.

      Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov stumbled upon the principles of classical conditioning while studying digestive processes in dogs. Unintentionally, he taught dogs to salivate at cues that signaled the arrival of food. The dogs learned to associate the ring of a bell (and other sounds) with the food that typically followed it.

      What famous experiment did Ivan Pavlov perform using dogs?

      Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) was a Russian scientist who was originally interested in the digestive processes of animals. When trying to study how dogs digest food, he noticed the animals’ tendency to salivate at the sound or sight of their keeper shortly before feeding time. In other words, they salivated in the absence of actual food. Initially, this phenomenon was a nuisance, interfering with his study of digestion, but later it became the focus of his research. Pavlov’s studies provided the basis of the theory of classical conditioning, also known as associative or “Pavlovian” conditioning.