Behavior : an introduction to comparative psychology / by John B. Watson.
- John B. Watson
- Date:
- 1914
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Behavior : an introduction to comparative psychology / by John B. Watson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![over the range of wave-lengths and intensities. If the food is directly illuminated we have no control over the relative absorptive powers of the food stuffs for the different wave- lengths. ]\Iany other objections to direct food method may be urged. While we admit that the exact methods tax the time and the patience of the experimenter greatly, yet their use is certainly to be recommended in all cases. It is to be hoped that some means of hastening the speed of the formation of sensory habits will shortly be found. At present the following devices are being tried out: (1) Attempts to increase the stimulating effect of the one or the other stimulus. E.g., we confront the animal with red and green and put a rotating sector in the path of the red. The sector is rotated so slowly that the red is made to flicker. If the animal, on his preliminary trials, is held by the flickering light and tends to seek it, we make red the positive or food color. If, on the other hand, another type of animal is frightened by the flickering red, we make green the positive or food color. Gradually the sector is made to rotate more and more rapidly until the flicker disappears. We are then ready to make our con- trol tests. (2) Attempts to increase the stimulating effect of one stimulus over the other by making the one differ from the other in several particulars. We may be working upon the animal's ability to respond to differences in the in- tensity of two white lights. Finding that the discrimina- tion arises slowly, we make the two stimuli differ in size and in form as well as in the brightness and then gradually eliminate all differences except that of intensity. (3) We may use only one stimulus and get the animal to respond either positively or negatively to that. We then very gradually introduce the second stimulus. III. Apparatus for Obtaining Specific Stimuli Apparatus for obtaining monochromatic light.—The apparatus for obtaining monochromatic light is somewhat complicated and expensive. If there were any other way](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21166729_0090.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
