Psychological Man

Constructivist developmental theory is needed in developmental neuroscience

“…All this governed by a principle of overdetermination that the activated schemesinformation-bearing circuits-follow. 2,14,21,41,76 This principle is related to Tolman's 77,78 and Freud's dynamic conceptions of motivation and behaviour, and can be explained by the spreading of neuronal activation among connected neurons, and by an organismic generalisation of Sherrington's neural principle of a final common path, 79,80 coupled with Edelman's model of brain's lateral inhibition. 81 This principle of overdetermination states that at any moment performance is determined by the dominant set of activated compatible processes (schemes), often in competition with other activated interfering processes.…”

Real‐time decision making and aggressive behavior in youth: a heuristic model of response evaluation and decision (RED)

“…In the cognitive literature, an expectancy has been described as a specific type of neural association that, upon being stimulated by situational cues, leads a person to make inferences about the probability of certain consequences [Atkinson, 1982;MacCorquodale and Meehl, 1953]. The concept of outcome expectancy as a cognitive influence on social behavior is evident in literature of the past several decades [e.g., Bandura, 1977bBandura, , 1986Goffman, 1969;Hilgard and Marquis, 1940;Mead, 1934;Tolman, 1938Tolman, , 1951. Huesmann [1988, p. 19] has stated that, in evaluating scripts for social behavior, "the child needs to be able to predict the consequences of utilizing" an alternative behavior before it is enacted.…”

“…At this step, we review the relevant literature on beliefs and judgments of aggressive youths and propose a heuristic model designed to account for response-comparison processes-This model is offered as a heuristic device by which the complexity of behavioral decision making may be considered, although it is not proposed that children actually complete mathematical calculations during response decision-making. The presented mathematical representations are analogous to the mathematical processes that Tolman [1938Tolman [ , 1951 proposed to explain walking and throwing a ball in that they are hypothesized to serve as a mathematical representation of response decision-making. In these domains, it is not proposed that children complete hundreds of calculations, even though their behavior may follow mathematic principles.…”

Matching behavior and deprivation

“…This particular invariance suggests that behavior ratios (cf. Herrnstein, 1961;Tolman, 1951) may provide an index that is robust in the face of changing deprivation levels, even within the course of an experimental session (Lydersen & Cheney, 1973), More importantly and for many purposes, such a measure avoids the difficult, if not insoluble problem of equating deprivation levels across species.In the context of concurrent reinforcement schedules, the behavior ratio has been the dependent variable of choice (see, e.g_, Baum and Rachlin, 1969; Rachlin,The authors wish to thank G. Opfer, M. Newsom, and, especially, P. Killeen for suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper_ This study was conducted while the first author was a Master's Degree candidate at Arizona State University. 4 1971).…”

“…This particular invariance suggests that behavior ratios (cf. Herrnstein, 1961;Tolman, 1951) may provide an index that is robust in the face of changing deprivation levels, even within the course of an experimental session (Lydersen & Cheney, 1973), More importantly and for many purposes, such a measure avoids the difficult, if not insoluble problem of equating deprivation levels across species.…”