Animal and Physiological Psychology

Abstract

The subject matter of this chapter does not really form a separate department of psychology. Physiological and animal psychologists are concerned with the same problems and the same theories as other psycho logists. Physiological psychology is distinctive, however, in its use of a particular kind of method and in its conviction that when one has postu lated some process intervening between sensory stimulation -and the consequent behavior (to permit theory to deal with facts that would otherwise be discrepant with it), one has the scientific obligation to sub ject the hypothesis to every feasible test, and to examine the properties of "intervening variables" as directly as possible. Otherwise, error may often be needlessly perpetuated.Animal psychology likewise is not a theoretically distinctive zone, but comparative psychology is distinctive in much the same way that physio logical psychology is; and it is comparative psychology that is discussed in the present chapter. Animal psychology is the psychology of learning, of perception, of emotion, even of thought, and its peculiarity is often only in the use of co-operative subjects that remain conveniently in cages and can be found when they are needed. COMPARATIVE STUDIESThe comparative method, theoretically, is analogous to the physiologi cal method, as 1 correlation of structure with function. Since evolution has provided animals with different structures, neural, sensory, or motor, one may proceed experimentally to discover what features of behavior vary with changes in a particular structure (especially in the central nervous system), just as one may modify structure by surgical operation within a single species and observe the correlated changes in behavior. It has proved difficult in practice to make much use of the comparative method, because one usually cannot separate out one structural variable while controlling others; the effect of size of cerebrum per se, for example, is not known because any great increase in the cerebrum is also accom panied by complex changes in sensory and niotor structures. Few exact studies of this kind have ever been made, but occasional'�ontributions have been of great value. , Another approach, in which the comparison is implicit but still impor tant, involves the study of lower animals in which behavior is (prC9ump tively) simpler. This includes the study of "instinctive" behavior, ann the history of psychology repeatedly shows that higher behavior patterns 1

Analyzing the effects of visual aesthetic of Web pages on users’ responses in online retailing using the VisAWI method

“…SOR has been broadly elucidated and adopted by past IS studies. SOR which was developed by Hebb (1950) in the 1950s posits that different kinds of stimuli known as organisms, affect cognitive processes of human thoughts and lead to a generation of behavioral responses. Stimuli are external or internal factors that can provoke perceivers either consciously or subconsciously into action.…”

Serine racemase as a prime target for age‐related memory deficits

“…Based on the initial postulate by Hebb (), the encoding of new memories is thought to be closely tied to adjustments in the strength of neuronal communication through mechanisms of functional plasticity. The first convincing experimental support for this postulate came in the early 1970s, when the long‐term potentiation (LTP) of synaptic transmission was characterized in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus in response to the transient high‐frequency activation of the perforant pathway (Bliss & Gardner‐Medwin, ; Bliss & Lomo, ).…”

Comparing memory-forming capabilities between laboratory-reared and wildLymnaea: learning in the wild, a heritable component of snail memory

“…We set out to determine whether rearing conditions during ontogeny influenced the ability to form LTM in Lymnaea in the hope of using our tractable model to study the interface between environment and memory. Exposure to enriched environments has been shown to result in use-induced cortical plasticity (Hebb, 1950;Hebb, 1951) leading to improved learning and memory (Berardi et al, 2007;Fischer et al, 2007;Harburger et al, 2007;Irvine and Abraham, 2005;Rosenzweig et al, 1993). These studies support a central dogma of neural development -that formation of neural circuits is guided by experience (Feller and Scanziani, 2005).…”