Conditioned reflexes and habit formation / by W. Horsley Gantt.

  • W. Horsley Gantt
Date:
[1932?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Conditioned reflexes and habit formation / by W. Horsley Gantt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    is not the immediate signal for the unconditioned stimulus but for another conditioned stimulus, and so on through the chain of conditioned stimuli till the unconditioned stimulus is reached. In the child, chains of much greater length have been elaborated. The child is more plastic than the dog, and in it conditioned reflexes are more readily and more easily lost. This is true for the food reflex, but there is doubtless a variation for the different unconditioned reflexes. The fund of unconditioned reflexes varies markedly in each animal, so that the results obtained by working with one unconditioned reflex may not be comparable in different species as a measure of intelligence, capability, etc. A child would hardly be expected to establish easily a positive conditioned food reflex to a worm, nor a fish as readily as a child an investigating reflex to a drawing on a piece of white paper. Although Pavlov has opened up a vast untrodden territory for exploration by his method of conditioned reflexes, and though we may find it of great aid in the investigation of psycho-biologic fields, we must remember that much caution and perseverance and further study is necessary before we can use it with confidence in the general explanation of phycho-biologic reactions (be¬ haviour). He says : It would be the height of presump¬ tion to regard these first steps in elucidating the physiology of the cortex as solving the intricate problem of the higher psychic activity in man, when in fact at the present stage of our work no detailed application of its results to man is yet permissible.”
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