schi biografic

Watson was born in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, to Pickens Butler and Emma (ne
Roe) Watson.[4][7] His mother, Emma Watson, a very religious woman who adhered to
prohibitions against drinking, smoking, and dancing, named Watson after a prominent
Baptist minister in hopes that it would help him receive the call to preach the Gospel. In
bringing him up, she subjected Watson to harsh religious training that later led him to
develop a lifelong antipathy toward all forms of religion and to become an atheist.[8][9][10] His
alcoholic father left the family to live with two Indian women when Watson was 13 years
old (a transgression which Watson never forgave). [11] In an attempt to escape poverty,
Watsons mother sold their farm and brought Watson to Greenville, South Carolina,[4] to
provide him a better opportunity for success. [8] Moving from an isolated, rural location to
the large village of Greenville proved to be important for Watson by providing him the
opportunity to experience a variety of different types of people, which he used to cultivate
his theories on psychology. Watson understood that college was important to his success
as an individual: "I know now that I can never amount to anything in the educational
world unless I have better preparation at a real university." [12]
Despite his poor academic performance and having been arrested twice during high
school (first for fighting, then for discharging firearms within city limits), [8] Watson was
able to use his mother's connections to gain admission to Furman
University in Greenville, South Carolina. Watson considered himself to be a poor student.
Others called him a quiet kid, lazy, and insubordinate. [12] Watson completed a few
psychology courses at Furman, but did not excel. [4] He struggled to make the transition
from a rural to an urban area, which was expressed through his weak social skills.
A precocious student, he entered college at the age of 16, and left with a master's degree
at the age of 21. Watson made his way through college with significant effort, succeeding
in classes that other students simply failed. He held a few jobs on campus to pay for his
college expenses. He continued to see himself as "unsocial" and made few friends. After
graduating, he spent a year at "Batesburg Institute", the name he gave to a one-room
school in Greenville. He was principal, janitor, and handyman for the entire school.
After petitioning the President of the University of Chicago, Watson entered the
university. His successful petition to the president of the University of Chicago was
central to his ascent in to the psychology world. He began studying philosophy
under John Dewey on the recommendation of Furman professor, Gordon Moore. [13] The
combined influence of Dewey, James Rowland Angell, Henry Herbert Donaldson,
and Jacques Loeb led Watson to develop a highly descriptive, objective approach to the
analysis of behavior that he would later call "behaviorism." [14]
In Watsons college experience, he met professors and colleagues that would assist him
on his journey to becoming a well-known psychologist. These peers played an important
role in his success in developing psychology into a credible field of study and his
understanding of behaviorism. To Watson, behaviorism was a declaration of faith. It was
based on the idea that a methodology could transform psychology into a science. He
wanted to make psychology more scientifically acceptable. Later, Watson became
interested in the work of Ivan Pavlov (18491936), and eventually included a highly
simplified version of Pavlov's principles in his popular works. [15]

Activitate
Watson earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1903. [16] In his dissertation,
"Animal Education: An Experimental Study on the Psychical Development of the White
Rat, Correlated with the Growth of its Nervous System", [17] he described the relationship
between brain myelination and learning ability in rats at different ages. Watson showed
that the degree of myelination was largely related to wand learning. He discovered that
the kinesthetic sense controlled the behavior of rats running in mazes. In 1908, Watson
was offered and accepted a faculty position at Johns Hopkins University and was
immediately promoted to chair of the psychology department. [15]

Language, speech, and memory[edit]

Watson argued that mental activity could not be observed. In his book, Behaviorism,
Watson discussed his thoughts on what language really is, which leads to a discussion of
what words really are, and finally to an explanation of what memory is. They are all
manual (?) devices used by humans that result in thinking. By using anecdotes that
illustrate the behaviors and activities of mammals, Watson outlined his behaviorist views
on these topics.
Watson called language a "manipulative habit." He called it this because when we speak
language, the sound originates in our larynx, which is a body instrument that we
manipulate every time we talk in order to hear our "voice." As we change our throat
shape and tongue position, different sounds are made. Watson says when a baby first
cries, or first says "da" or "ma," that it is learning language. Watson also used an
experiment that he and his wife conducted, in which they conditioned a baby to say "da-
da" when he wanted his bottle. Although the baby was conditioned and was a success
for a short while, the conditioning was eventually lost. Watson does say, however, that as
the child got older, he would imitate Watson as a result of Watson imitating him. By three
years old, the child needed no help developing his vocabulary because he was learning
from others. Thus, language is imitative.
Watson goes on to claim that, "words are but substitutes for objects and situations". [21] In
his earlier baby experiment, the baby learned to say "da" when he wanted a bottle, or
"mama" when he wanted his mom, or "shoe-da" when he pointed to his fathers shoe.
Watson then argues that "we watch our chances and build upon these", [21] meaning
human babies have to form their language by applying sounds they have already formed.
This, Watson says, is why babies point to an object but call it a different word. Lastly,
Watson explains how a child learns to read words: a mom points at each word and reads
in a patterned manner, and eventually, because the child recognizes the word with the
sound, he or she learns to read it back.
This, according to Watson, is the start of memory. All of the ideas previously mentioned
are what Watson says make up our memory, and that we carry the memory we develop
throughout our lives. Watson tells the tale of Mr. Addison Sims and his friend in order to
illustrate these ideas. A friend of Mr. Sims' sees Mr. Sims on a street sidewalk and
exclaims: "Upon my life! Addison Sims of Seattle! I havent seen you since the Worlds
Fair in Chicago. Do you remember the gay parties we used to have in the old
Windermere Hotel?...".[21]Even after all of this, Mr. Sims cannot remember the man's
name, although they were old friends who used to encounter many of the same people,
places, and experiences together. Watson argued that if the two men were to do some of
their old shared activities and go to some of the old same places (the stimuli), then the
response (or memory) would occur.
Study of emotions[edit]
Watson was interested in the conditioning of emotions. Of course behaviorism putting an
emphasis on people's external behaviors, emotions were considered as mere physical
responses. Watson thought that, at birth, there are three unlearned emotional reactions:
Fear, rage and love.
Fear: According to Watson, there are only two stimuli evoking fear that are
unconditioned: A sudden noise and the loss of support (physical support). But because
older children are afraid of many things (Different animals, strange people etc...) it must
be that those fear provoking stimuli are learned. Watson stated that fear can be observed
by the following reaction with infants: Crying, breathing rapidly, closing their eyes or
jumping suddenly.[22]
Rage: Rage is an innate response to the body movement of the child being constrained.
If a very young child is held in a way that she cannot move at all then she will begin to
scream and stiffen her body. Later this reaction is applied to different situations. Children
get angry when they are forced to take a bath or clean their room. These situations
provoke rage because they are associated with physical restraint. [22]
Love: Watson said that love was an automatic response from infants when they were
stroked lightly, tickled or patted. The infant then responds with smiles and laughs and
other affectionate responses. According to Watson, infants do not love specific people
but they are conditioned to do so. Because the mother's face is progressively associated
with the patting and stroking it becomes the conditioned stimulus eliciting the affection
towards her. Affectionate feelings for other people later generate the same response
because they are somehow associated with the mother. [22]

sychological Care of Infant and Child and criticism of it[edit]

The 20th century marked the formation of qualitative distinctions between children and
adults.[25] Watson wrote the book Psychological Care of Infant and Child in 1928, with
help from his mistress, turned wife, Rosalie Rayner. Critics then determined that the
ideas mainly stemmed from Watsons beliefs because Rosalie later entitled a self-
penned article I am a Mother of Behaviorist Sons.[26] In the book, Watson explained that
behaviorists were starting to believe psychological care and analysis was required for
infants and children.[27] All of Watsons exclamations were due to his belief that children
should be treated as a young adult. In his book, he warns against the inevitable dangers
of a mother providing too much love and affection. Watson explains that love, along with
everything else as the behaviorist saw the world, is conditioned. Watson supports his
warnings by mentioning invalidism, saying that society does not overly comfort children
as they become young adults in the real world, so parents should not set up these
unrealistic expectations. Writer Suzanne Houk, Psychological Care of Infant and Child: A
Reflection of its Author and his Times, critiques Watsons views, analyzing his hope for a
businesslike and casual relationship between a mother and her child. [25] Watson
disapproved of thumb sucking, masturbation, homosexuality, and encouraged parents to
be honest with their children about sex.[28] Watson's reasoning for this was that, "all of the
weaknesses, reserves, fears, cautions, and inferiorities of our parents are stamped into
us with sledge hammer blows".[12] Watson inferred that emotional disabilities were a result
of personal treatment, not inherited.[12]
He deemed his slogan to be not more babies but better brought up babies. Watson
argued for the nurture side of the nature-nurture debate, claiming that the world would
benefit from extinguishing pregnancies for twenty years while enough data was gathered
to ensure an efficient child-rearing process. Further emphasizing nurture, Watson said
that nothing is instinctual; rather everything is built into a child through the interaction
with their environment. Parents therefore hold complete responsibility since they choose
what environment to allow their child to develop in. [27] Laura E. Berk, author of Infants and
Children: Prenatal Through Middle Childhood, examined the roots of the beliefs Watson
came to honor. Berk says that the experiment with Little Albert inspired Watsons
emphasis on environmental factors. Little Albert did not fear the rat and white rabbit until
he was conditioned to do so. From this experiment, Watson concluded that parents can
shape a childs behavior and development simply by a scheming control of all stimulus-
response associations.[29]
Although he wrote extensively on child-rearing in many popular magazines and in a
book, Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928), Watson later regretted having
written in the area, saying that "he did not know enough" to do a good job. Watson's
advice to treat children with respect, but with relative emotional detachment, has been
strongly criticized. J.M. ODonnell wrote The Origins of Behaviorism, where he deemed
Watsons views as radical calculations. ODonnells discontent stemmed partly from
Watsons description of a happy child, including that the child only cry when in physical
pain, can occupy himself through his problem-solving abilities, and that the child stray
from asking questions.[30] Behavior analysis of child development as a field is largely
thought to have begun with the writings of Watson.
Other critics were more wary of Watsons new interest and success in child psychology.
R. Dale Nance worried that Watsons personal indiscretions and difficult upbringings
could have affected his views in his book. He was raised on a poor farm in South
Carolina and had various family troubles, including abandonment by his father.
[31]
Suzanne Houk shared similar concerns. She mentions in her article that Watson only
shifted his focus to child-rearing when he was fired from Johns Hopkins University due to
his affair with Rosalie Rayner.[25]
Watson researched many topics in his career, but child-rearing became his most prized
interest. His book was extremely popular and many critics were surprised to see his
contemporaries come to accept his views. The book sold 100,000 copies after just a few
months of release.[26]
Watsons emphasis on child development was becoming a new phenomenon and
influenced some of his successors, but there were psychologists before him that delved
into the field as well. G. Stanley Hall became very well known for his 1904
book Adolescence. G. Stanley Halls beliefs differed from behaviorist Watson, believing
that heredity and genetically predetermined factors shaped most of ones behavior,
especially during childhood. His most famous concept, Storm and Stress Theory,
normalized adolescents tendency to act out with conflicting mood swings. [32] Whether
Watsons views were controversially radical or not, they garnered a lot of attention and
were accepted as valuable in his time.[vague]

"Little Albert" experiment (1920)[edit]

One might consider the experiment Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner carried out
to be one of the most controversial in psychology in 1920. It has become immortalized in
introductory psychology textbooks as the Little Albert experiment. The goal of the
experiment was to show how principles of, at the time recently discovered, classical
conditioningcould be applied to condition fear of a white rat into "Little Albert", a 9-month-
old boy. Watson and Rayner conditioned "Little Albert" by clanging an iron rod when a
white rat was presented. First, they presented to the boy a white rat and observed that
he was not afraid of it. Second, they presented him with a white rat and then clanged an
iron rod. "Little Albert" responded by crying. This second presentation was repeated
several times. Finally, Watson and Rayner presented the white rat by itself and the boy
showed fear. Later, in an attempt to see if the fear transferred to other objects, Watson
presented Albert with a rabbit, a dog, and a fur coat. He cried at the sight of all of them.
[34]
This study demonstrated how emotions could become conditioned responses. [35] As the
story of "Little Albert" has made the rounds, inaccuracies and inconsistencies have crept
in, some of them even due to Watson himself. [citation needed] Analyses of Watsons film footage
of Albert suggest that the infant was mentally and developmentally disabled. [36] An ethical
problem of this study is that Watson and Rayner did not uncondition "Little Albert". [37] In
2009, Beck and Levinson found records of a child, Douglas Merritte, who seemed to
have been Little Albert. They found that he had died from congenital hydrocephalus at
the age of 6. Thus, it cannot be concluded to what extent this study had an effect on
"Little Albert"'s life.[38] On 25 January 2012, Tom Bartlett of The Chronicle of Higher
Education published a report that questions whether John Watson knew of cognitive
abnormalities in Little Albert that would greatly skew the results of the experiment. [39] In
2014, however, the journals that initially endorsed Beck and Fridlund's claims about
Albert and Watson (the American Psychologist and History of Psychology) published
articles debunking those claims [40][41]
Deconditioning[edit]
Because "Little Albert" was an orphan and was taken out of town, Watson did not have
the time to decondition the child. This obviously has ethical implications, but Watson did
put in place a method for deconditioning fears. He worked with a colleague, Mary Cover
Jones, on a set of procedures aimed at eliminating the fears of another little boy, Peter.
Peter seemed to fear white rats and rabbits. Watson and Jones put Peter in his highchair
and gave him a nice afternoon snack. At the same time a white rabbit in a cage was put
in a distance that did not seem to disturb the child. The next day the rabbit was put
slightly closer until Peter showed signs of slight disturbance. This treatment was
repeated days after days until Peter could serenely eat his snack with the rabbit being
right next to him. Peter was even able to play with the rabbit afterwards. This form of
behavior modification is a technique today called systematic desensitization.[22]

contribuii la dezvoltarea domeniului

In 1913, Watson published the article "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It"
sometimes called "The Behaviorist Manifesto".[19] In this article, Watson outlined the major
features of his new philosophy of psychology, called "behaviorism". The first paragraph of
the article concisely described Watson's behaviorist position: "Psychology as the
behaviorist views it" is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its
theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential
part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness
with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness. The
behaviorist, in his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, recognizes no
dividing line between man and brute. The behavior of man, with all of its refinement and
complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorist's total scheme of investigation."
In 1913, Watson viewed Ivan Pavlov's conditioned reflex as primarily a physiological
mechanism controlling glandular secretions. He had already rejected Edward L.
Thorndike's "Law of Effect" (a precursor to B. F. Skinner's principle of reinforcement) due
to what Watson believed were unnecessary subjective elements. It was not until 1916
that Watson would recognize the more general significance of Pavlov's formulation and
make it the subject of his presidential address to the American Psychological
Association. The article is also notable for its strong defense of the objective scientific
status of applied psychology, which at the time was considered to be much inferior to the
established structuralist experimental psychology.
With his "behaviorism", Watson put the emphasis on external behavior of people and
their reactions on given situations, rather than the internal, mental state of those people.
In his opinion, the analysis of behaviors and reactions was the only objective method to
get insight in the human actions. This outlook, combined with the complementary ideas
of determinism, evolutionary continuism, and empiricism has contributed to what is now
called radical behaviorism. It was this new outlook that Watson claimed would lead
psychology into a new era. He claimed that before Wundt there was no psychology, and
that after Wundt there was only confusion and anarchy. It was Watson's new behaviorism
that would pave the way for further advancements in psychology.
Watson's behaviorism rejected the studying of consciousness. He was convinced that it
could not be studied, and that past attempts to do so have only been hindering the
advancement of psychological theories. He felt that introspection was faulty at best and
awarded researchers nothing but more issues. He pushed for psychology to no longer be
considered the science of the "mind". Instead, he stated that psychology should focus on
the "behavior" of the individual, not their consciousness.
Meanwhile, Watson served as the President of the Southern Society for Philosophy and
Psychology in 1915.[20]

limite ale demersului tiinific

The conditioning paradigm has certain limitations. Researchers have had a hard time
conditioning infants that are just a few months old. This might be because they have not
yet developed what Piaget calls "primary circular reactions". Because they cannot
coordinate sensory motor actions they cannot learn to make different associations
between their motoric behaviors and the environment. Another limitation concerns the
kind of conditioned stimuli humans can learn. When researchers attempt to condition
children to fear things such as curtains or wooden blocks they have had great difficulty.
Humans may be "innately disposed to fear certain stimuli"