It was our desire to arrange a situation which was "active" or "dynamic" rather than "passive"—a situation wherein the subject would have relatively few locomotor restrictions and could control his own movements in reference to the goal. There is in psychology no term which fits this type of behavior and we have, therefore, called it goal behavior. The purpose of this investigation was to determine if conditioning principles were operative in human goal behavior. The findings in this investigation support the thesis that Pavlovian conditioning principles are operative in human goal behavior. Generalization of inhibition, experimental extinction, and spontaneous recovery were found to occur and to display essentially the same characteristics as found by Pavlov. But differences as well as similarities were uncovered. For example, why is extinction longer in these studies, in respect to either responses or time, than in the traditional conditioned-reaction study? Our investigation also leads us to question the interpretation that extinction is the index of frustration.
B ECAUSE of the concentration of large industries in Rochester, New York, with such companies as Eastman Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, Ritter, and Taylor Instrument, there has been a steadily growing demand for training in the technical skills Trade training classes and technical schools in the city have grown rapidly, so rapidly in fact that the technical and industrial high school found it necessary in 1939 to establish objective criteria for the selection of the most capable pupils from the many who applied, because facilities were not available for the accommodation of all.A testing program was, therefore, established for the selection of pupils. Since individual tests of mechanical abilities, such as the Minnesota Mechanical Abilities Tests, could not t>e used because of the limitations of time and personnel, a battery of group tests was used The tests were: The Mac-•Quarrie Test of Mechanical Ability, The Revised Minnesota Paper Pormboard Test (Series AA), and the Revised Alpha Intelligence Examination (Wells revision No. 7) An intelligence test was included, since academic subjects are, of course, part of the curriculum in a technical-industrial high school and verbal intelligence is known to have discriminating value for academic courses 1 The author wishes to express his appreciation to the following persons in the Rochester Public Schools who made this study possible-Miss A.
severe." Let us not attempt to condemn by faint praise. The best that can be said for this book is that it is "easy reading" for the intelligent layman. In the opinion of this psychologist, Dr. Adamson has failed in her attempt to give an accurate account of modern psychiatric thought. If her representation of psychiatry is accurate, then much of psychiatry must be labeled as pure nonsense. It is said, for example, that the criminal character is an expression of repressed childish conflicts and that he is the victim of retained infantile mechanisms. Further on we read that "Probably the most effective general approach to the problem of crime is to treat it as a contagious disorder acquired by children chiefly from parental 'carriers.' " Such statements, unsupported as they are by scientific data, suggest naivete on the part of the author in accepting the doctrines of psychoanalysis without the critical point of view.The author has succeeded in accenting the psychoanalytic point of view rather than the psychiatric. Witness the interpretation of manic-depressive psychosis on page 48 where it is pointed out that those suffering from manic-depressive psychoses have personalities which yield first to the Super-Ego for a few weeks, months, or years, and then to their Id. Even the layman is forced to smile at the in absentia diagnoses which are made, especially that of the fictional character Don Juan who, it is said, is regarded by psychiatry as a latent homosexual.The reader gains the impression from the reading of this book that psychiatry is not a recent development, highly speculative, but rather a closed chapter of explanations, fully matured, not having required the binding ties of experimental methods, nor requiring them in the future. Statements are propounded as dogma; statistics are never cited. Terms are freely used without attempts at exact definition. Critical differences'
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