Edward Tolmen Biography
Psychology Online. NET in the city graduated from the local high school. He became interested in psychology, moved to Harvard and here, at Harvard University, received the degree of master in - gg. From G. Tolmen - Honored Professor in Retired. He held leading posts in a number of scientific societies in the United States, was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. The psychological system of Tolmen is based on the recognition of the compatibility of behaviorism with gestaltpsijagogy, deep psychology and other areas.
He argued that psychology should be behaviorist, but Watson considered the behaviorism of Watson. Watson’s scheme “Stimula - reaction” is, according to Tolmen, naive and insufficient to describe behavior, as it reduces the act of behavior to the totality of elementary answers to stimuli. At the same time, behavior as such loses its originality. The unit of behavior is a focused act using muscular movements organized around the goal and serviced and directed by cognitive moments.
Based on numerous experimental studies, various labyrinths were used by Tolmen put forward an idea of the system of internal processes of Internet Variables, wedging between the stimulus and response and determining behavior. These processes themselves should be investigated strictly objectively by their functional manifestation in behavior. Tolmen stated his concept of behavior in the capital work “Targeted behavior in animals and in humans” Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men.
New York - London, which also included materials from a number of his earlier studies.
This book remained the best and most important of all the works of Tolmen. An important place in the Tolmen system is occupied by the problem of learning, which is experimentally developed on animal rats. Tolmen put forward the idea that the body learns to establish semantic ties between stimuli - “which leads to what” - and what is learned is found in executive activity only partially.
Ultimately, as a result of learning, the body forms the “cognitive map” of all signs in the labyrinth situation and then orientates its behavior in it with the help of this “map”. To explain the experimental facts, Tolmen put forward such theoretical constructs as “Expectation”, “Hypotheses” hypotheses, “Sign-Gestalt” sign-gestalt, “Cognitive Maps” informative, or cognitive, maps, etc.
Tolmen's works became widespread and caused great interest and not only American psychology. The main works of Tolmen: Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men. New York - London,; Drives Toward War. A History of PSYCHOLOGY in Autobiography. New York Description of an American psychologist, one of the representatives of methodological behaviorism. Known for its studies of target and cognitive determinant of behavior, in particular, cognitive maps.
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