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

Seward, John P.

doi:10.1037/h0053663

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…The more rapid acquisition of the RRLL that RLRL pattern of response appears to reflect the greater ease of modifying the second rather than the third item in the sequence RLLL, which is the first approximate solution by both the groups trained on single and double alternation. Seward's (1948) interpretation that symbolic behavior is not indispensable for successful alternation learning is confirmed by these results.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

“…In theoretical treatments of symbolic behavior in infrahuman animals, the fact that animals learn single alternation much more rapidly than double alternation is often emphasized (Osgood, 1953;Seward, 1948;Woodworth & Schlosberg, 1954). The empirical evidence for this generalization includes only one direct comparison of the difficulty of the two tasks (Hunter, 1920).…”

Section: Single Versus Double Alternation Learning By Cats' Shun-ichi...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Single versus double alternation learning by cats.

Yamaguchi¹,

Warren²

1961

Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

Section: Single Versus Double Alternation Learning By Cats' Shun-ichi...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Single versus double alternation learning by cats.

Yamaguchi¹,

Warren²

1961

Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology

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“…Many writers have emphasized the importance of language to man : we may take Kubie (in von Foerster 1952) as a recent example. And even though some S-R theorists, such as Seward (1948), have contended that no function is involved in speech which does not also appear in animals; yet there is clearly a quantitative difference between the incidence of such symbolic functions in man and that in other species. Hull (1952) makes it clear that he considers some of the inadequacies of S-R theory when applied to man to be due to the complications produced by language: for example, he appeals to language to explain the importance of latent learning in man as compared with animals.…”

Section: The Value Of Auditory Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More subtle is the function of speech as a ' symbol ', that is a process, generated by the organism itself, which stands for a sign as the sign stands for a physical object. But Seward (1948), acting on these definitions, has shown that some animal experiments demonstrate the presence of symbols in animals. We need not follow his argument in detail : the experiments are formal demonstrations of the behaviour of a domestic dog when given a plate.…”

Section: Verbal and Bodily Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

Review of Perception and Communication.

indicated¹

1989

Contemporary Psychology: A Journal of Reviews

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their action upon their common paths seem to lie at the very root of the great psychical forces of attention '. There are two reasons why this line of approach is particularly topical at the present day.The first of them is a theoretical one the current popularity of language, derived from communication theory, for the statement of psychological problems. Owing perhaps to the accident that psychologists working on hearing are naturally those in closest contact with telephone engineers, this popularity has been at its greatest in the auditory field. It may well be that too much has been expected from a purely linguistic device, which by itself will not provide the answer to the problems of psychology-Gregory (1953) has rightly pointed out that considering the brain as a computing machine produces the old problem of * atomism or Gestalt ? ' in the new language of ' digital or analogue }\ But new vocabularies do involve some shift in basic assumptions, and perhaps the point of permanent value which will remain in psychology if the fashion for communication theory wanes, will be the emphasis on problems of capacity.The latter, in communication theory, is a term representing the limiting quantity of information which can be transmitted through a given channel in a given time : if we send Morse code with a buzzer we cannot send a dot and a dash at the same time but must send them successively. An array of X buzzers would allow us to send x dots and dashes at once, provided we had a listener who could distinguish them.* The fact that any given channel has a limit is a matter of central importance to communication engineers, and it is correspondingly forced on the attention of psychologists who use their terms. Any hypothetical account of brain function must in future consider on the one hand the size of the brain (how many buzzers there are) and on the other hand the rate at which that brain will make reactions to a given set of incoming stimuli (the number of dots and dashes per second). * We will give an amplified account of capacity in Chapter 3, but still in non-technical and therefore inexact terms. For precise definitions of this and other terms in communication theory, reference should be made to the excellent glossary given by MacKay (in von Foerster 1952). All such terms are used in this book with MacKay's definitions, though they are introduced in popular language. 6 PERCEPTION AND COMMUNICATION This possibility, that one chain of events physically excludes another, has been somewhat neglected in physiology and psychology, though not of course completely. Sherrington is a siriking instance to the contrary, since his account of competition between different reflexes for common paths is essentially based on questions of capacity. But any account in which completely separate neural areas or pathways are postulated for different activities, neglects the possible use of the concept of capacity to explain the interference of these activities: and these types of account are common. Pavlovian theory, for instance, ...

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“…The choice of the double alternation problem is attributable to the role of symbolic behavior that has been reported for it, even though this reputation has not gone unchallenged (Seward, 1948). It was conceived to serve a position hi this battery of tests analogous to those of symbolic functioning used in some of the clinical studies.…”

Section: Behavioral Testsmentioning

confidence: 99%