A re-evaluation of the concepts of maturation and learning as applied to the early development of behavior.

Abstract

An analysis of the relationship between external stimulation and inner growth in the development of behavior, particularly during the fetal and neonatal periods. Part I discusses the relation between organism and environment in the development of the special mechanisms for stimulus-released behavior. Part II deals with the contrast between responses released by internal and external environments––the role of motives in adaptive behavior. Part III suggests a tentative operational definition of both maturation and learning based on observed alteration of behavior in time. Since the changes due to so-called inner growth processes, i.e. maturation, are physiologically so like those from externally stimulated activity, i.e. learning, the two terms maturation and learning can be discarded in favor of a single description derived from empirical curves representing measured changes of behavior in time.

Displacement activity and motivational theory: A case study in the history of ethology.

“…It was to the latter problem that the early American behaviorists addressed themselves primarily, and current research on the effects of early experience upon adult behavior (Beach & Jaynes, 1954) is a direct descendant of the types of investigations carried out by Kuo (1932), Cruze (1935), andCarmichael (1936). These studies have had as their point of reference the perennial problem of the relative contributions of innate and acquired factors to the behavioral repertoire of organisms.…”

Ontogeny

“…4-8;Carmichael, 1936;Davids and Engen, 1975, p. 33;Gesell, 1948, p. 68, andGesell and Thompson, 1934, p. 294;Martin and Stendler, 1959, p. 99;Munn, 1965, p. 49;Mussen, 1963, pp. 13-14;Nash, 1970, p. 125;Pikunas, 1969, p. 35;Sants and Butcher, 1975;Stone, 1951;Suomi, 1977;Wrightsman and Sanford, 1975, pp.…”

“…Assuming one had an adequate description of learning, it would be perfectly acceptable to categorize psychological phenomena by this criterion. Carmichael (1936) came close to doing this when he suggested a procedure for identifying learned changes in behavior and labeled everything else "maturational." But my argument, of course, is that this residual class is not isomorphic with the classes formed when maturation is defined in other ways.…”

Structure or function in the definition of learning?

“…His objections seem to be chiefly these. 2 First, that learning is really inside of the organism (structure), and that the behavior which we have stressed is just the symptom or evidence of what goes on inside. Therefore, we are confusing symp-toms with facts.…”