“Delayed Response” as Tested by three Methods and its Relation to Other Learning Situations

Cowles, John T.

doi:10.1080/00223980.1940.9917680

Cited by 13 publications

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“…Since the door as well as the light thus became a sign of food, and since the door was present both before and after the delay, no substitute was required. 7 At first glance, then, Hunter's method fails to meet our criterion. A closer analysis will be reserved for the simpler conditions taken up in the next section.…”

Section: Signals and Symbolsmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…According to this view the entire sequence, including the delay, is thought of as one response, reinforced only when a correct choice is rewarded by food. 7 Hunter was aware that spatial position cues were available but discounted their importance on the ground that they would have made it possible to delay indefinitely The fallacy of this view will appear in the light of Cowles's theory discussed below B. As Cowles has so acutely pointed out (7), the delayed response may be considered a case of transfer of a discrimination.…”

Section: Signals and Symbolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…7 Hunter was aware that spatial position cues were available but discounted their importance on the ground that they would have made it possible to delay indefinitely The fallacy of this view will appear in the light of Cowles's theory discussed below B. As Cowles has so acutely pointed out (7), the delayed response may be considered a case of transfer of a discrimination. The discrimination is learned in one trial; viz., the pre-delay presentation of critical stimulus combined with food or food-sign.…”

Section: Signals and Symbolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The sign of a symbol: a reply to Professor Allport.

Seward¹

1948

Psychological Review

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Section: Signals and Symbolsmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Signals and Symbolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Signals and Symbolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The sign of a symbol: a reply to Professor Allport.

Seward¹

1948

Psychological Review

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“…There was much interest in how the animals performed the tasks, particularly with respect to whether some bodily orientation was necessary to mediate the delay (e.g., McAllister, 1932;McCord, 1939b;Nissen, Carpenter, & Cowles, 1936;Tinklepaugh, 1928;Wilson, 1934aWilson, , 1934b. Cowles (1940) believed that performance in this situation was continuous with, and not qualitatively different from, that in other discrimination learning situations. McCord (1939aMcCord ( , 1939b inferred only that the process involved in mediating the delay must be central rather than peripheral.…”

Section: Delay Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative cognition in the 1930s

Dewsbury

2000

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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According to the received view of the history of psychology, behaviorism so dominated psychology prior to the 1960s that there was little research in animal cognition. A review of the research on animal cognition during the 1930s reveals a rich literature dealing with such topics as insight, reasoning, tool use, delay problems, oddity learning, abstraction, spatial cognition, and problem solving, among others. Material on "higher processes" or a related topic was prominent in the textbooks of the period. Tracing academic lineages reveals such teachers as Harvey Carr, Robert M. Yerkes, and Edward C. Tolman as sources of this interest. The alleged hegemony of strict behavioristic psychology, interpreted as excluding research on animal cognition, requires revision. Some possible reasons for this neglect are suggested.According to the received view of the history of the study of animal learning and cognition, there was much interest in animal cognition among early comparative psychologists, but that interest died with the advent ofbehaviorism, only to resurface with the "cognitive revolution" of the 1960s. According to a leading textbook in the field of comparative cognition, "it would not be exaggerating too greatly to say that from the 1920s until the 1960s or 1970s, American experimental psychology was virtually synonymous with behaviorism" (Roitblat, 1987, p. 52). Wasserman (1993) writes of "a long, fallow period [in the study of] the cognitive processes ofanimals" (p. 221). For Green (1996), "cognition simply was not a going concern in psychology before the I950s" (p. 35).As a critical part of this hegemony of behaviorism, it is argued, studies ofcognitive processes were excluded during this period, as behaviorists sought to explain complex processes as a reflection of more simple processes of learning and conditioning. Thus, "at the beginning of the 1900s psychologists' study of cognitive processes in animals narrowed into the study of associative learning... The subfield of animal cognition arose in the 1970s" (Shettleworth, 1998, p. 6), and "so long as behaviorism held sway-that is, during the 1920s, 1930s, and I940s-questions about the nature of human language, planning, problem solving, imagination, and the like could only be approached stealthily and with difficulty, ifthey were tolerated at all" (Gardner, 1985, p. II).This view of a "cognitive revolution," in the spirit of Thomas Kuhn, has been challenged by Leahey (1992), who pointed out that, during the years in question, behaviorism was less dominant than is portrayed by the received The author thanks Marc N. Branch, Thomas H. Leahey, and Herbert L. Roitblat for comments on an earlier version of this article. Correspondence should be addressed to D. A. Dewsbury, Department ofPsychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-2250 (e-mail: dewsbury@psych.ufl.edu). view. According to Leahey, "the central work of mentalistic psychology continued, but it was no longer thought of as the study of consciousness" (p. 313). Similarly, Greenwood (1999...

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“…To date, however, there have been reported no systematic tests of the effect of quantitatively varying actual food reinforcement upon the pre-delay trial. This blind spot in psychologists' scrutiny of important variables in various learning situations may be largely due to prevalent arbitrary delimitation of 'delayed response' 2 to be discussed forthwith.…”

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Discrimination learning and pre-delay reinforcement in 'delayed response.'

Cowles¹

1941

Psychological Review

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For references see (a, page 104, footnote 2). Crannell (5) has recently performed an experiment with rats with a set-up employing four alternative pathways, which were to be run successively in whatever order the rat selected, no second run of any one path being permitted. Delayed response tests were instituted by interposing a delay between the third and fourth runs, a correct post-delay response being the choice of the (fourth and remaining) pathway not previously chosen. Each run was rewarded with food. Successful delays up to 4 hours were observed, even though the animals did not maintain any stereotyped sequence of pre-delay runs in repeated tests. This progressive elimination of three paths constitutes the series of training trials which determines the rat's response after delay. The criticisms of Maier's experiment, by those denying it delayed response status, would undoubtedly be applied to this one.* This no-food situation is not to be confused with the 'latent learning' maze situation, in which the animal has never before associated the correct maze path with food reward. There is no 'latent learning' here, in the accepted sense.

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“Delayed Response” as Tested by three Methods and its Relation to Other Learning Situations

Cited by 13 publications

References 6 publications

The sign of a symbol: a reply to Professor Allport.

The sign of a symbol: a reply to Professor Allport.

Comparative cognition in the 1930s

Discrimination learning and pre-delay reinforcement in 'delayed response.'

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