Counterpoint: Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
Associationism: Later Developments
This chapter focuses on how the mind acquires content or knowledge. One source of human knowledge arises from empiricism, according to which, “if you don’t experience it you don’t know it.” Another source of knowledge is revelation, which is based upon dogma and faith with this source of knowledge widespread today, as we see, for example, in almost all religious movements around the world. Positivism, according to which true human knowledge is only derived from public, reliable, and consensual observations absent any subjective assumptions. The last source of human knowledge is associationism, which is the central topic of this chapter. Basically, associationism, considered by some to be the first school of psychology, grows out of empiricism, and represents a set of formal rules for the combination of ideas or experiences in the mind.
As part of our treatment of the sources of knowledge we focus first on the positivism of Auguste Comte (1798–1857), his views on the stages of intellectual development of societies, his hierarchy of sciences, and his twisted journey into the dogmatism in almost all religious systems, which he argued so forcefully against. Thereafter, we present the work of Ernst Mach (1838–1916) who, unlike Comte, stressed the importance of studying the immediate, unanalyzed experiences of an observer as the key to understanding how the human mind acquires content. Comte argued for the study of the products of mind, namely, behaviors (precursor to behaviorism) while Mach argued for the study of immediate experiences (precursor to Gestalt psychology). Both were considered positivist due to their emphasis upon the importance of collecting data from observations rather than speculations or “what ifs.”
Our examination of the British empiricists begins with John Locke (1632–1704) and his unequivocal position that the mind acquires content only through experiences, that there are no innate ideas. Locke distinguished between primary (inherent in an object such as size or shape) and secondary (not given in an object but added as an operation of mind such as color or temperature) quality of ideas, and the processes of sensation and reflection. Locke’s work continues to have a profound impact not only upon psychology, but also politics, education, government, and public policy.
We next review the work of George Berkeley (1685–1753) who, unlike John Locke, did not distinguish between primary and secondary ideas and thus believed that all we know is our subjective experiences. Thus, a tree in the forest exists even though we may not experience it because it is experienced in the mind of God, and if it falls and we are there at that moment we hear the crashing sound; if we are not there when the tree falls there is no sound, although the tree existed. Berkeley, an Anglican clergyman, was arguing against the rising tide of materialism, which rejects the concept of God or any other metaphysical assumptions.
David Hume (1711–1776) continued in the tradition of the British empiricists yet was also the bridge to associationism given his emphasis upon the articulation of the three laws of associationism and his treatment of impressions (sensory stimulation) and ideas. David Hartley (1705–1757) is considered to be the “father” of British associationism, and the first to study the mind or psychological phenomena as a natural science by proposing a physiological model of association. We then turn to a review of the work of James Mill (1773–1836) (the father of John Stuart Mill), who attempted to tie together the motivational and cognitive dynamics of the mind, while his son argued for a science of human nature focused upon associationism.
Alexander Bain (1818–1903) is considered by some to be the first psychologist, the author of the first psychology textbooks, The Sense and the Intellect and Emotions and the Will, and the founder of Mind, which was the first periodical devoted entirely to psychology. Bain integrated mental and biological processes like David Hartley before him so that the laws of associationism applied to both the acquisition of ideas and voluntary behaviors. Thereafter, we treat briefly the work of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who was the continental counterpoint to the British empiricists and associationists because of his emphasis upon innate categories of thought such as the perception of time and space, which impose essential operations on the human mind rather than arguing for specific innate ideas such as the existence of God. We discuss briefly Kant’s concept of noumena or “things in themselves,” which precludes accurate knowledge of objects of the physical world because the categories of the mind act on the sensory data and render all of our experiences with the subjective imprint of the mind.
We then turn to a series of studies that have extended and confirmed empirically some of the key principles of associationism, as reflected in studies of the operation of memory systems, sensory conditioning, selective deprivation, repressed memories, and “the seven sins of memory,” especially absent-mindedness. For example, Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) conducted almost exclusively, with just himself as the only participant, his foundational studies of human memory with findings that are as accurate today, in general, as when he first reported them over 100 years ago. Thereafter, Brogden (1939) studied sensory conditioning in dogs, and was the first to show unequivocally that the simple contiguity of purely sensory events is connected in the mind. Richard Held and his colleagues (Held & Hein, 1963) demonstrated the profound, although not always irreversible, effects of selective environments and experiences upon critical perceptual and behavioral capacities, the bottom line of which is that restrictive and degraded environments produce profound and corrosive effects upon organisms, which in some cases are reversible. Lastly, we briefly examine repressed memories and absent-mindedness as important issues facing all of us today.
When you finish studying this chapter, you will be prepared to:
Most of us have been blessed with loving and supportive parents or other guardians who have given each of us a priceless foundation of positive experiences that influence our physical and psychological development throughout our lives. In fact, even if our parents are deceased, they are still in many ways an important part of us and we carry warm memories and images of them and their love and guidance. How did we acquire the knowledge of the love and caring of our parents, of our selves, and everything else we know about the world? Perhaps all we now know and will know in the future began very simply and quietly. In the first few days and weeks of our lives, when we were hungry and/or in discomfort we were nursed and held gently by our mother, her face was close to ours, her voice may have been soft and melodic, and we had contact comfort with her relaxed and caring demeanor. We learned to associate mother’s face, soft voice, and contact so that eventually the sound of her voice brought us some momentary comfort until she picked us up and we could see her face and be close to her. As the years go by, and perhaps we no longer see or hear our mother or other primary caretaker, we can still conjure up in our minds an image of her or him, and even experience a calming effect just from the memory of those earlier, quieter, sweeter, and tender times. In effect, our sensory experiences are the infrastructure of the mind and repeated sensations are knitted together or connected to create simple and complex ideas that may be with us forever.
This chapter is about the fundamental issue of how the mind acquires content, and then stores and retrieves that content. Many philosophers and psychologists have answered unequivocally that almost all we know arises from our experiences, that is, what is given to us initially by our senses, especially those of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling.
Those who subscribe to empiricism as the sole source of human knowledge state clearly that the mind acquires content as result of experience. Thus, there are no innate ideas such as ideas of space, time, good, evil, or God, all of which we can possibly learn about depending upon our experiences. Observation is the initial gateway to human knowledge so that inductive scientific inquiry (making many specific observations of a given phenomenon and only then reaching some general conclusion based upon the observations) is the preferred method to learn about nature, including human nature. Reason takes a backseat in the drive to acquire knowledge so that deductive scientific inquiry (starting with a general or broad premise or assumption and gathering specific observations relative to the general statement) is the less-preferred method of inquiry. Also, the environment is the primary source of content of the mind, and basically all humans begin life with comparable capacities so that claims of inherent advantage of royalty or the privileged are empty and invalid. Observations rule rather than kings and queens, deities or their spokespersons, and/or politicians.
Here knowledge is said to arise only to a special few or under special circumstances. Religious and cult systems rely on revelation as the primary source of truth and ultimate knowledge with designated individuals as those to whom such knowledge has been revealed or made available who in turn become spokespersons for true or expert knowledge. Observation takes a backseat to dogma and faith in particular persons and principles, and only those observations that support or extend the revealed knowledge are considered valid and acceptable.
This method for gaining knowledge was introduced by Auguste Comte (1798–1857). Comte was born and raised by his Catholic parents in the French city of Montpellier (Urmson, 1967). He entered the Ecole Polytechnique at Paris in 1816 where he was a good student as well as a troublemaker, and was dismissed along with his classmates in 1816 because they revolted against school policies and practices. In 1817, Comte went to work for Henri Saint-Simons (1760–1825), who influenced Comte to take a more elitist rather equalitarian view of humanity and society, and even though the two parted ways on a bitter note, Saint-Simons’ influence lasted a lifetime.
Comte published his six-volume magnum opus, titled Course of Positive Philosophy, over the period 1830–1842 (Urmson, 1967). Comte argued that according to positivism the only thing we can be certain about is that which is publicly observable and grounded in our sensory experiences. Positivism was true knowledge provided by our senses while all other knowledge derived by reason or revelation was nonsense (Robinson, 1986). Put simply, knowledge comes only from empirical observations. In effect, for Comte and his followers, science was now the arbiter of truth, taking the place of both religion, which sought true knowledge by recourse to some supernatural force or figure, and metaphysics or the attempt to explain the world of objects and experiences by recourse to some hidden or as yet known natural power or principles. In fact, by the late 1840s, for Comte and some others, science became “scientism,” which was to be the new global religion requiring unfaltering faith and adherence to positivism, similar to what was asked of believers in the other global religions, namely, Judaism, Christianity, or Muslim. Comte called his new religion “The Religion of Humanity,” with the central focus upon humanity rather than God, with scientists replacing philosophers and priests; and its followers would be drawn from the marginalized working-class men and women. Comte believed that societies passed through three stages of development based upon their explanatory system for the causes of natural events, namely, theological, metaphysical, and scientific explanations (Leahy, 1987). The theological system explained events by relying on invisible gods and spirits while the metaphysical system moved from gods/spirits to abstractions and other unobservable forces as, for example, Leibniz’s concept of monads (Urmson, 1967). The third system is scientific and switches emphasis from explanation to description, prediction, and control of natural events, that is, positivism rules. Societies evolve from one explanatory system to another when the wisest members see the next stage of development and lead the way, which usually involves dramatic changes in the thinking and behavior of members of the society. For Comte, science was to seek the lawful relationship between physical events, and only empirically or sensory-based observations were acceptable as scientific as long as they could be publicly confirmed. Lastly, Comte proposed a hierarchy of sciences with the first developed and most basic being mathematics followed by astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, biology, and the last developed and most comprehensive, namely, sociology. The term sociology was coined by Comte to refer to the comparative study of different societies in terms of their development in reference to his three explanatory systems with psychology excluded from his list of sciences as it focused upon the study of the individual, which is much less complex than the study of groups and societies. Comte believed that the individual can be best studied by means of physiology and biology, as reflected in the then contemporary work of phrenology, rather than through introspection, which was private and not directly observable by others and thus not a source of positivistic data (Leahy, 1987).
Ernst Mach (1838–1916) continued the development of positivism, although, unlike Comte, who stressed that science must focus on physical events that could be experienced by any interested observer, the focus for Mach must be upon the immediate experiences of the scientist. Mach’s version of positivism, is known as phenomenalism, which influenced the later development of Gestalt psychology that claimed the immediate unanalyzed experiences of the observer as the subject matter of psychology. Comtean positivism influenced the later development of behaviorism, which claimed observable behavior as the appropriate subject matter of psychology. For Mach, sensations were the key positivistic data, so mind could be studied by observing the immediate experiences of the individual; for Comte, behaviors ruled and mind could be studied by observing the products of the mind, namely, behaviors. Both were positivists as they stressed observation while they differed in terms of what needs to be observed—sensations for Mach and behaviors for Comte.
Logical positivism, developed in the 1920s, had a profound influence upon the subsequent development of psychology, especially when combined with the practice of operationalism, which mandates that theoretical constructs (e.g., motivation) be related to observable phenomena (Koch, 1959; Stevens, 1935). Briefly, logical positivism divided science into the observable and the theoretical domains, with the former focused upon empirical observations while the latter aimed at providing an explanation of the observed events. Thus, for example, if we observe a human or infrahuman who persists in the pursuit of food and once satisfied engages in other behaviors, and if again deprived of food, now for a longer period of time than before, resumes food-seeking behaviors with greater intensity and increasingly stereotyped behaviors based on previous experiences (the observations), we conclude that the organism is motivated (the theoretical term). Although we do not see motivation directly we infer its existence by operationally defining it as number of hours of food deprivation (independent variable), length of time of food-directed behaviors, and/or intensity of food-related behaviors (dependent variables). Logical positivism and operationalism were embraced enthusiastically by psychologists because they allowed for the study of many unobservable theoretical constructs such as anxiety, hope, learning, intelligence, and motivation in both human and infrahuman organisms without recourse to mentalism, since these and other psychological constructs (e.g., leadership, conflict, cooperation, thinking, decision making, and even love) were measured operationally.
Basically, associationism grows out of empiricism and represents a set of formal rules for the combination of ideas in the mind. Aristotle, in his Concerning Memory and Reminiscence, presented his theory that memory is a function of three primary associative processes. The first and fundamental process is contiguity (i.e., things that occur close together in time and/or space are linked in the mind), second is the process of similarity, and last is the process of contrast. Thus, if we were to see a roundish red object and hear almost simultaneously the sound “apple” when shown again the same object we might say “apple,” which is an almost inevitable outcome if the pairing of these two stimuli are repeated a few times. Our memories are important because they represent our experiences; these are impressed upon our mind, which is a blank slate or tabula rasa at birth so all we have in our mind is given by our sensory experiences.
We turn now to the British empiricists who in turn gave rise to the British association-ists, and, lastly, we will review some recent later developments of associationism that emphasized the linkage between behaviors rather than strictly focusing primarily upon the linkage of ideas.
The powerful intellectual forces of rationalism or the use of reason to develop knowledge rather than relying upon magical or religious systems to explain and understand the natural world (including human nature) in Western European philosophy in the 17th century were articulated by René Descartes (1596–1650), Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716). Thus, for example, Descartes advocated that the human mind is not made of matter but rather is immaterial and possessed certain innate ideas (e.g., knowledge of God, space, time, and motion). Baruch Spinoza advocated materialistic monism (mind like everything else is made of matter) and determinism or the view that all events in the natural world are determined (free will was an illusion) including our feelings, behaviors, and thoughts. Lastly, Leibniz argued that there is nothing in the mind that is not first in the senses except the mind itself. Thus, no ideas come from experience because ideas cannot be created by anything physical like a brain and what is in the mind is the potential to have ideas, which is actualized by our experiences. All these thinkers and tinkers wanted desperately to establish rational explanations of the natural world rather than to rely upon religious dogma or the revised and received works of Aristotle or Plato that characterized philosophical thought from about 500 to the start of the Renaissance around 1450.
John Locke was born in the small English village of Wrighton, obtained his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees from the University of Oxford in 1652, 1656, and 1674, respectively. Locke spent most of his life at Oxford except when he lived in Holland from 1684 to 1689, and he never married. He published his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1690 when he was 60 years of age, after working on it for 17 years and then revising it a number times with the fifth edition appearing posthumously in 1706, and he died peacefully at the home of friends in 1704 (Urmson, 1967). Although Locke wrote on diverse subjects including how the mind gains knowledge, politics, education, child rearing, and theology, he focused upon the core issue of how the mind acquires content.
According to Locke, the mind acquired content or ideas first and foremost by experience. An idea was a mental image that arose from either sensation or direct sensory simulation or reflection, or the mind’s ability to remember and think about the residual idea after termination of the sensory stimulus. He wrote that there were no innate ideas as advocated by Descartes, and all of the content of the mind arises from sensory experiences processed by the innate operations of the mind including perception, thinking, and memory, which are part of human nature and thus given before any experience. Locke cited a letter from an Irish scientist, William Molyneux (1656–1696), to further buttress his position that there were no innate ideas. In the letter, Molyneux asked rhetorically: if a person was born blind and had sight restored as an adult, could that person, by sight alone, distinguish between a cube and globe, which he or she had been able to do with only the sense of touch. Both Locke and Molyneux responded “no” at first; however, with subsequent visual experiences the answer became “yes.” The foundational ideas here are that the mind features plasticity, is shaped by experience; and that systematic educational experiences enrich and strengthen all minds, not just those of reigning royalty and other privileged members of a society.
Experience is the primary force for liberation of the individual and systematic experience or education can give rise to a just and equal social order for all citizens. Locke’s campaign was not only to oppose the innate ideas of the Cartesian philosophical system, but, much more importantly, to demonstrate the fallacy of innate moral principles that he considered the foundation of Christian morality and the infrastructure of dogmatism. Thus, those who did not believe in God were morally corrupt, could not be trusted, and were atheists who sought to “rob God” of existence, given the prevailing and dominant religious belief that God had implanted in the soul of all humans the idea of God. Locke argued that only experience brings knowledge and there are no innate moral truths, although a person could come to believe in God depending upon his or her experiences. Accordingly, he was considered by many leading figures of Christianity as dangerous and morally corrupt.
For Locke, experience trumps dogma! All knowledge comes from sensory experiences of external objects registered passively upon the mind as well as from reflection or awareness of the operations of our mind working on previous sensations. Thus, being aware of a bouquet of flowers might give rise to the idea of pleasant while the original sensations of the sight, fragrance, and hearing their name gave rise to the idea of flower. Simple ideas come passively to the mind. However, complex ideas arise as a result of the active combination of simple ideas by the mind so that the bouquet is now one of roses. Locke coined the phrase “the association of ideas,” although he did not state any laws of association as he thought the variety of associations of ideas was infinite.
Like others before him, Galilei Galileo, René Descartes, and his mentor at the University of Oxford, Robert Boyle (1627–1691), Locke distinguished between primary and secondary qualities of objects. Primary qualities give rise to ideas that are inherent properties of the object such as solidity, shape, motion, and size, while secondary qualities are not found in the object themselves and include temperature, color, sound, and taste. Locke gave the demonstration of the paradox of the basins to distinguish between primary and secondary qualities of objects. Prepare three basins of water with the cold for the left hand, the middle for tepid or lukewarm water, and hot water for the right hand. After a few minutes of soaking of the hands, place them both in the middle bowl of tepid water and observe that now the water feels warm to the left hand and cool to the right hand even though the actual temperature of the water remains unchanged. This demonstration indicates that there can be a difference between appearances and reality, and that the ideas arising from primary and secondary qualities of objects are equally vivid to the mind.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), an earlier British empiricist, whom we discussed in Chapter 4, believed in an absolute monarchy (a hereditary sovereign such as king, queen, or emperor with unlimited power) because he had little faith in the capacity of human nature for cooperation and altruism. On the other hand, Locke advocated for a constitutional monarchy which involved a social contract defending the natural and inalienable rights of every individual with the absolute right of the governed to overthrow the government if it violated the rights of the individual. Thus, Locke argued effectively for government by and for the people as well as education to enhance the quality of the citizenry and society as a whole.
George Berkeley was born in Kilkenny, Ireland, entered Dublin College at the age of 15, earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees when he was 20 and 22 years of age, respectively, was ordained as a deacon (a rank just below that of a priest) in the Anglican church at the age of 24, and published in the same year his first major work, An Essay Toward a New Theory of Vision (Gulick & Lawson, 1976; Urmson, 1967). In 1790, Berkeley published his most important work relative to psychology, titled A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. His scholarly reputation was firmly established by the time he was 30 years of age compared to John Locke, who did not publish his major work until the age of 60. Newly married, Berkeley sailed to Newport, Rhode Island, in 1728 as part of the first leg of his journey to establish a new college in Bermuda that was intended to educate the natives and colonists in America. It never got off the ground because of a lack of promised government funding and the miscalculation of the geographical access to Bermuda from the mainland. Berkeley was so impressed by his two-year stay in America that, after his return to London in 1731, he helped to establish the University of Pennsylvania, and contributed books to Yale and Harvard universities. Although Berkeley never made it to California, the city of Berkeley and the University of California-Berkeley were named after him. Bishop Berkeley died in 1734 while sipping tea and listening to a sermon read to him by his wife.
Berkeley’s writings focused upon three issues, namely, distance perception, dualism, and dogma. We do not directly perceive distance, but rather only become aware of distance as a result of the sensations arising from the movement of our eyes as objects move toward or away from us. It is well known that as an object moves toward an observer, the eyes converge and diverge as the object recedes from the observer (to demonstrate just move this book so it is about six inches or 15 millimeters from you and notice the muscular sensations arising from the rectus muscles of the eyes as the object moves toward and away from you). Berkeley stood in opposition to Descartes’ view that distance perception and some other ideas were part of human nature and, therefore, innate while standing in agreement with Locke that all the ideas in the mind are the result of experience.
However, it was on the matter of primary and secondary qualities that Berkeley differed with Locke because he believed this distinction created a dualism consisting of the world of objects (primary qualities) and the world of ideas or perceptions. Berkeley concluded that all that exists are our ideas or perceptions of the objects, and that in the absence of the perception objects do not exist, yet when a given object is not perceived by a given individual that object continues to exist because God (the ultimate perceiver) perceives it. In fact, Berkeley wrote that what we perceive are ideas in God’s mind so that with experience we perceive accurately the external world! In effect, esse est percipi or “to be is to be perceived.” This astounding position is known as mentalism, immaterialism, and subjective idealism and is reflected in part in the later development of Gestalt psychology that emphasized the primacy of the immediate or phenomenal experiences of the observer as the primary subject matter of psychology.
The third focus of Berkeley’s philosophy was upon the growing dogma of materialism, which leads to the dismissal of God as all in the world is matter that is governed by physical laws and there is no need to turn to supernatural forces. It is important to remember that Berkeley was a man of the cloth, and he wanted to address directly the philosophy of materialism. For Berkeley, all that exists is perceived, and, therefore, there is no need for a physical world. Berkeley is best remembered for his ardent support of empiricism, and making plain that ideas arise from a mixture of sensations that are combined through repetitive associations.
The last of the British empiricists, David Hume was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, attended the University of Edinburgh but left before he graduated. He then went to La Fleche, France, where René Descartes had studied, and completed his most famous work, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739). While there, he served as a secretary to an ambassador in Paris from 1763 to 1765, returned to Edinburgh in 1768, and died in 1776.
According to Hume, the content of the mind comes from impressions or sensory stimulation and ideas that are faint copies of impressions. In addition, there are simple and complex ideas: simple ideas arise from actual prior impressions while complex ideas arise from the association of simple ideas and need not reflect any combination of impressions, which can occur in the imagination. Thus, for example, we may have separate impressions of a lizard and a bird (i.e., we actually see a lizard and a bird, or two separate simple ideas) and perhaps later we have an idea of each arising from our memories, which may be combined by our imagination into the idea of a flying dragon that we have not actually perceived. Hume believed that ideas are combined by the three laws of association, namely, resemblance (e.g., thinking of an apple gives rise to the recollection of a pear, another fruit), contiguity (e.g., remembering a loved one gives rise to the time and/or place when and where you last met), and cause and effect (e.g., when we remember an accident we think of the person(s) and or event(s) just before it). Hume came eventually to consider cause and effect as the equivalent of contiguity so that he championed two laws of association, namely, resemblance and contiguity.
Hume concluded that we are only aware of the impressions and ideas in our minds, and thus have no rational proof of external objects that we come to believe exist as a result of the constancy and coherence of our impressions. Hume’s position is known as skepticism, which later stimulated the philosophical system of Immanuel Kant. Hume, in arguing that all we know is our own experiences, concluded that we can be certain of nothing and can only expect that future events will follow our past experiences, thus giving rise to our sense of certainty. In effect, Hume is calling for the establishment of a psychology that focuses upon the systematic study of our experiences and how we use them through learning to adapt to a wide variety of environments.
As we all know from our everyday experiences, ideas come in streams such that one thought or idea usually gives rise to another almost automatically. For example, perhaps you may remember that when in elementary school your teacher or classmate might have produced a screeching noise with chalk on a blackboard and now, years later, when you recall the incident or are in a classroom you may still experience the chills or become squeamish. Perhaps you may even experience a more intense reaction when you think of someone running their fingernails up and down the blackboard! Events derived originally from sensations that give rise to impressions become associated or connected in the mind, even though such events may have taken place years ago, and when now associated give rise not only to ideas but also to bodily and emotional reactions. This is due to associationism, which grew out of and extended British empiricism. According to Misiak and Sexton (1966), British associationism sought the following goals: (1) identify the laws of association, (2) analyze human consciousness and indicate how the contents can be explained by the laws of association, (3) break down the contents of mind into the most elementary components, and (4) identify the anatomical and physiological basis of mental phenomena.
David Hartley studied initially to become a minister like his father, but could not accept one of the 39 articles of faith required of ministers of the Anglican Church: eternal damnation if not repentant for sins. Accordingly, Hartley turned from the healing of souls to the healing of bodies, earned his medical degree at Cambridge University, and had a successful medical practice. In his spare time over a span of 18 years, he wrote his Observations of Man, which presented 91 propositions regarding the nature of the body and the mind. Hartley founded British associationism, and is considered by some to be the first to study the mind or psychological phenomena as a natural science by proposing a physiological model of association (Webb, 1988).
For Hartley, the main law of associationism is contiguity, which he stated in his propositions X for the mind and XI for the physical or bodily side of an experience such that when A, B, and C are presented closely together in time and/or space, A alone can give rise to B, C, or B and C together, especially the more frequently the elements are repeated together. Likewise, on the bodily side (Proposition XI), these three stimuli produce corresponding vibrations in the sensory nerves (i.e., impressions) that are transmitted to the brain yielding miniature vibrations (sensations). For Hartley, after sense impressions cease there remain miniature vibrations that Hartley called “Vibratuncles,” which are ideas or weaker copies of sensations. Hartley believed that after-images reflected the residual neural “Vibratuncles” as, for example, after staring for a few minutes at a waterfall and then looking to the rocks on the side and they appear to be moving upward, or looking at a candle flame and then closing the eyes and continuing to see the flame. Hartley extended associationism to account for behaviors that started out as involuntary responses to stimuli, such as when an object is put within the grasp of an infant, producing an automatic grasping response. Grasping then becomes associated with other objects and ideas so that it becomes selective as when reaching for a toy compared to the flame of a candle, which has been associated with intense heat and thus neural vibrations. Thus, by association grasping becomes voluntary, according to Hartley, which is the first attempt to explain not only the origin of ideas by association but also behaviors. Lastly, Hartley wrote that excessive vibrations caused pain while mild or modest vibrations gave rise to pleasure, and, as a result of our experiences particular events, people, and objects become associated with pleasure and pain. We learn to cherish those things that give us pleasure, hope for them when they are absent, and enjoy them when they are present.
Hartley’s model of neural vibrations is obviously inaccurate, yet for his time it represented a solid attempt to “neutralize” associationism; construct a model of the mind that was in accord with Isaac Newton’s (1642–1727) law of gravitation, according to which all objects in the universe attract each other so that everything is in movement or undergoing vibrations; and he attempted to explain not only how the mind acquired content or ideas, but also voluntary and involuntary behaviors.
James Mill (1773–1836) was the father, John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) the son, and together their work represented the culmination of British empiricism and associationism. Interestingly, James Mill attempted to fuse together into one system the motivational dynamics of the mind (i.e., utilitarianism) and the cognitive dynamics of the mind (i.e., associationism). As a result of his promising academic performances, James Mill entered the University of Edinburgh, studied for the Presbyterian ministry, and was licensed as a preacher in 1799, although he was unsuccessful in finding a parish as no one could understand his sermons. Accordingly, Mill moved to London in 1802 to work as a journalist and editor. In 1806 he began writing the History of British India, which was published in 1818 and was an immediate success that won him an administrative position with the East India Company (an extremely successful global trading company set up by the British government to bring luxury items such as teas, silk, and cashmere to England).
James Mill’s most important work for psychology was Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829), in which he stated that sensations and their copies or ideas are the basic ingredients of the human mind, ideas are associated or connected together exclusively by contiguity, and they are both equally vivid in the mind. Ideas arise from sensations, and the strength of the association of ideas is a function of their vividness and frequency with the latter more important for the linking together of ideas. In addition, Mill had met Jeremy Bentham (1748–1836) in 1808, and accepted his principle of utilitarianism, according to which humans are motivated by two sovereign forces, namely, pleasure and pain rather than reason. For Mill, free will is an illusion with the attention of the mind directed mechanically by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, as Bentham had advocated in his Introduction to Principles of Moral Legislation (1789). Mill endorsed Bentham’s principle that government must pursue policies and practices that assured “the greatest good for the greatest number.” In addition, education must assume the responsibility of molding the person’s mind. According to Mill, humans were pulled and pushed by the forces of pleasure and pain and our minds populated with ideas that were the result of our experiences with complex ideas arising from the association of simple ideas.
In 1823, at the age of 17, John took a position as a clerk working for his father at the East India Company. He became severely depressed at the age of 20, began to recover in his mid-20s, and at 30 he befriended and fell in love with Harriet Taylor, a married woman. He lived with her and her husband until the husband died, and at 43 John Stuart married Harriet. In their premarital relationship, John and Harriet had exchanged essays on issues of marriage and women’s rights with Taylor having more radical views on these issues than Mill. After they were married, Harriet published her own work. Harriet Taylor Mill died in Avignon, France, in November 1858, and for the remainder of his life John Stuart was an ardent advocate of women’s rights and introduced a women’s the right to vote bill in the British House of Commons. The bill failed, but John Stuart continued his interests in government and citizen participation as reflected in his important paper, Considerations on Representative Government (1861), which still informs debate about the roles of citizens, elected representatives, and public administrators in governmental processes.
In 1843, at the age of 37, John Stuart Mill published his most important work for psychology, A System of Logic, which went through eight editions, and included a chapter that, unlike Auguste Comte, advocated that a science of human nature was possible although such a science might not be as exact as physics. In as much as John Stuart Mill was the leading philosopher of science of his day, his work contributed significantly to the establishment of psychology as an independent science because others listened to what he had to say. He believed science consists of primary and secondary laws. Primary laws govern phenomena that can be observed, measured, and predicted precisely, such as the freezing point of water while secondary laws make measurement and prediction less precise but still possible in general because they are subject to primary laws. Thus, for phenomena governed by secondary laws, we can describe, measure, and predict them in general rather than specifically as is the case for phenomena governed only by primary laws.
Mill proposed that the first science of human nature would identify universal laws (primary laws) of the operation of the human mind, and the science he called ethology would identify the secondary laws of how the mind develops under specific contexts (i.e., individual differences).
John Stuart Mill identified the laws of the British empiricists and those of associationism as one set of primary laws of human nature. Accordingly, all ideas arise exclusively from our experiences, sensations give rise to ideas that are images that remain in the mind after the external stimulus is removed, ideas become associated as a result of primarily contiguity so that the closest in time and space are more likely associated together, and simple ideas are connected to form complex ideas. These are primary laws because they apply to all persons anywhere in the world. Interestingly, John Stuart Mill, unlike his father, distinguished between sensations and ideas, considering the former stronger than the latter, and he argued that complex ideas are not always an aggregate of simple ideas (mental physics) but could also arise from a fusion of an aggregate of simple ideas even though the simple ideas lose their identity and cannot be identified in the complex idea (e.g., the ideas of stars and sky may give rise to the idea of heaven). This notion of “mental chemistry” was later reflected in the work of Gestalt psychology and its mantra that “the whole is different from the sum of the parts.” We turn now to a friend of John Stuart Mill who is considered by some to be the first true psychologist.
Alexander Bain is considered by some historians of psychology to be the first psychologist compared to any of the philosophers and scholars we have presented up to this time. He authored what was considered the first two textbooks of psychology (1855 and 1859), which stood as the definitive psychology texts for 50 years in European and American universities, and to have founded Mind, which was the first periodical focused exclusively on psychology. Bain bridged the 19th and 20th centuries and was indeed the leading psychologist of the pre-scientific period of psychology, which ended in 1879 when Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) established the first formal psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig, Germany.
Alexander Bain was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, to parents of modest means, and, like his father, worked throughout most of his childhood to earn money for books and his education. He enrolled in Marischal College (it later became the University of Aberdeen) which, like other Scottish schools, accepted poor yet gifted students; he graduated with honors, and then moved to London to work as a freelance journalist. While in London, Bain befriended other intellectuals, including John Stuart Mill, with whom he became close friends. As a result of his sustained efforts and the assistance of influential friends, Bain published his two classic psychology texts, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and Emotions and the Will (1859). As a consequence of the publication of these two books, Bain won an appointment as professor of logic and rhetoric at the University of Aberdeen, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Basically, Bain, like David Hartley before him, integrated mental and biological processes, which he believed operated in parallel rather than interacting with each other (i.e., psychophysical parallelism). Bain endorsed the centrality of the law of contiguity for the association of ideas and added the unique twist that neurological changes were responsible for such associations, although he was not explicit about the nature of such changes. In addition, Bain argued that hedonism or the pursuit of pleasurable events and the avoidance or escape from painful ideas as well as unpleasant events transformed reflexive behaviors into voluntary behaviors under the direction of the same laws of association that applied for ideas. Thus, behaviors followed closely by positive consequences were more likely to be repeated than those followed by negative outcomes, which in many ways anticipates Edward Lee Thorndike’s (1874–1949) Law of Effect, treated later in this chapter. Bain’s work focused the laws of associationism upon behaviors rather than limiting the laws only to the association of ideas, and in so doing provided the bridge from armchair philosophical speculation that characterized all other earlier British empiricists and associationists to emphasize observations of behaviors and their associated consequences.
In summary, the British empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, and Hume) liberated us, in part, from our biological roots and the tyrannies of unchecked imperial forms of government, and pointed the way out of the major forces that compromise human potential, namely, ignorance and poverty, by indicating the importance of systematic educational opportunities for all citizens. These developments are due to the foundational idea that the human mind acquires content only through experiences rather than through biology alone or privileged ancestry. This foundational idea has had a profound impact upon the subsequent developments in psychology but also on how we construct our governments and the instruments of government as well as our educational institutions around the world. Likewise, the British associationists (Hartley, the family Mills, and Bain) provided the laws of associationism that explained how the mind comes, albeit passively, to possess simple and complex ideas, thus liberating humans from minds that are tethered solely to sensations and their faint copies or ideas, giving rise to an unbounded human mind. In addition, the incorporation of utlilitarianism into their philosophical systems allowed the association-ists to extend their laws of the mind to account for voluntary behaviors arising from their consequences, which informed much of psychology during the 20th century.
Immanuel Kant was born the son of a saddler in Konigsberg, Prussia, where he spent his entire life except for a few modest excursions. He enrolled in the University of Konigsberg in 1740, earned his doctorate in 1755, and lectured as a Privatdozent (private tutor) there for many years. He assumed the chair of logic and metaphysics in 1770, resigned from the university, where he spent his entire professional life, in 1797, and died of poor health in 1804. Kant never married nor traveled; his universe consisted of thoughts, and he wrote his famous books Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason in 1781 and 1788, respectively. Interestingly, students flocked to his classes and found Professor Kant to be an excellent lecturer despite the difficulty they had in reading his books. His influence upon German psychology has been profound and is most clearly reflected in Gestalt psychology (chapter 11).
Kant synthesized rationalism and empiricism, and believed, unlike David Hume, that some truths of the universe and the mind were certain and not based solely on subjective experience. Kant argued that certain categories of thought rather than specific ideas (unlike René Descartes, e.g., idea of God) were innate, given, or exist a priori (independent of experience). For Kant, sensory data were important, but the mind did not just passively receive such data that were then mechanically cobbled together into different associative patterns driven by the laws of association; rather, the mind acted or added something to the data before they became conscious knowledge. The perception of time was one of the categories of thought, according to which the concept of time is added to the sensory data. For example, we see a person running down a road, which yields a stream of sequential images on our retina, yet in any given retinal image there are no data that indicate it came before or after any other image in the sequence. Thus, according to Kant, the mind adds time to the sensory data. Likewise, for two or more sequential events to be associated it is essential that they be perceived as appearing at different times; otherwise, they just appear fused as a single sensation. The perception of space is also another categorical idea that is essential for the perception of two or more simultaneously presented sensations, which likewise can only be associated if the mind adds space to the sensory data. Hence, the empiricists were correct in asserting that sensations are essential for knowledge, although their position is incomplete because they failed to acknowledge, as did the rationalists, that the mind acts upon the sensory data to supply missing features from the sensations, such as the perception of time and space.
Kant believed that we could never achieve true knowledge of objects of the physical world, that is, “things in themselves” or noumena, because the categories of the mind act on the sensory data and render all of our experiences with the subjective imprint of the mind. All we know are “appearances,” and our mind creates the universe at least as we experience it. In as much as the mind is not a physical thing, Kant argued that the study of the mind or psychology can never be a science. In addition, when we introspect upon our experiences we change the nature of our consciousness, and thus do not give an accurate picture of the mind. Kant presented a philosophical system that integrated empiricism and rationalism, a process that is still ongoing in psychology today, as reflected, for example, by the study of the integrative roles of nature and nurture in developmental or cognitive processes.
We now review briefly some extensions of the foundational ideas of associationism as reflected in the systematic study of human memory, animal learning, selective environmental studies, and repressed memories. In effect, these relatively more recent studies represent a transition from a focus upon the association of ideas to human memory, the association of behaviors, and the robust impact of the environment for our understanding of animals and humans.
Ebbinghaus was the first to measure systematically human memory, as a result of the inspiration arising from reading Gustav Fechner’s (1801–1878) Elements of Psychophysics, which was published in 1860. He worked essentially alone, extending associationism by focusing upon the serial recall of lists of nonsense syllables with which he or others had little if any experience and therefore few prior associations, which afforded an unencumbered opportunity to study empirically the associations between the elements within the list. He argued that psychology could be considered a natural science and devised the completion test to measure the cognitive capacities of school children. He also determined the most effective operating hours for schools, and authored one of the most famous one-liners in the history of psychology, namely, “Psychology has a long past, yet its real history is short” (Ebbinghaus, 1908, p. 3). He was a cooperative, social, and engaging individual; his original findings have stood the test of time, and he did much to help to expand the development of psychology beyond the restrictions of laboratory psychology (Roback & Kiernan, 1969).
Hermann Ebbinghaus was born in Barmen near Bonn, Germany, entered the University of Bonn when he was 17 to study history, and then switched to philosophy. He earned his doctoral degree in 1873 from the University of Bonn. Ebbinghaus purchased a copy of Fechner’s Elements of Psychophysics and became convinced that he could study higher mental processes (i.e., memory) experimentally, as Fechner had studied the intensities of sensations and, contrary to Wundt’s position, that higher mental processes such as memory and language could only be studied from a cultural rather than a laboratory-based perspective. Ebbinghaus completed the bulk of his studies of memory in 1880, yet did not publish his findings in Concerning Memory: An Investigation in Experimental Psychology until 1885 so as to be certain of the validity of his results, since he had served as both experimenter and participant in collecting his data.
Ebbinghaus was a cofounder, along with Arthur König (1856–1901), of the Journal of Psychology and Physiology of the Sense Organs published in 1890, which provided an opportunity to publish a broad range of scientific psychological findings compared to Wundt’s journal, Philosophical Studies, which published almost exclusively findings from his laboratory at the University of Leipzig. Ebbinghaus was appointed to a professorship at the University of Breslau in 1894, and in 1902 he published his Principles of Psychology, which quickly became very popular because it was readable and thus introduced many to scientific psychology. In 1905, Ebbinghaus assumed a professorship at the University of Halle and died suddenly in 1909 from pneumonia. Throughout his career Ebbinghaus argued and demonstrated through his research that psychology is a science, that higher mental processes could be studied experimentally, and that from the most ancient subject of philosophy there will arise the newest science, namely, psychology. Although Ebbing-haus had no followers, did not establish a school of psychology, and worked pretty much alone in his classic studies of human memory, his work makes plain the foundational idea that psychology is a science that can study systematically a wide variety of phenomena (beyond simple sensations) and their relation to physiological structures and it is on an equal footing with other sciences such as chemistry and physics.
Prior to Ebbinghaus, memory was studied after it had been developed, primarily using introspection. He studied memory from start to finish and thus was able to look at its formation, as well as any changes in memory with the passage of time. For example, Ebbinghaus found that he could learn a list of seven nonsense syllables in one repetition while a list of 12 nonsense syllables required 17 repetitions before he could recall the entire list correctly in the order in which they were presented. Generally, the longer the list, the greater the number of repetitions required. Likewise, in general, spaced, active, and whole rather than massed, passive, and piecemeal learning yields better recall. Thus, the more one has to learn, the more time will be required, the more active the learning needs to be, and it is best to avoid breaking the material into small segments or packets that need at some time to be tied together. Remembering is not automatic or easy but is facilitated by the above practices. In terms of forgetting of nonsense syllables, forgetting proceeds rapidly for the first two days after original learning and then slows down over the next few days. As is well known from Ebbinghaus’ work and most likely from our personal experiences, over 50% of material learned is forgotten after 60 minutes and roughly 66% after 24 hours. If you want to remember something, always remember to repeat the material to be remembered.
In addition to his carefully controlled laboratory studies of psychological phenomena, Ebbinghaus also systematically investigated applied psychological problems. For example, in the 1890s German children were in school from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. without any breaks, and visible signs of fatigue appeared widespread as the day wore on. Ebbinghaus was commissioned to study the problem and he employed cognitive rather than sensory tests (e.g., the two-point threshold) of changes in performances during different intervals of the school day. Thus, Ebbinghaus devised the sentence completion test (e.g., ______ are always younger than their fathers) and analogy tests (e.g., July is to May as Saturday is to ______). Ebbinghaus found that based upon test results he was able to distinguish between children with good, average, and poor grades and interestingly, he thought his work was a measure of general intellectual abilities and his tests were employed as part of the tests of intelligence devised later by Alfred Binet (1857–1911).
Ebbinghaus advanced significantly the scientific study of associationism which many considered as the fundamental mechanism for the construction of ideas, although his work has been considered by some as eventually limiting the study of memory to restrictive laboratory conditions focused upon artificial materials rather than natural everyday conditions (Kintsch, 1985; Neisser, 1982; Slamecka, 1985). Interestingly, the nature of the changes of science over time informs us that with many pioneers in any field of study, early innovations are seen first as opening up new perspectives and methods for studying a given phenomenon while at some later time they are considered limiting and need to be expanded or abandoned.
In 1939, W. J. Brogden reported evidence of sensory conditioning in a three-phase study with dogs. In Phase I, a bell and a light were presented simultaneously for 200 times or pairings. Then in Phase II one of these two stimuli (e.g., the bell) served as the conditioned stimulus for conditioning forelimb extension with a mild electric shock, serving as the unconditioned stimulus. After a conditioned response was obtained, Phase III began, in which the other stimulus (i.e., the light) that had never been paired with the unconditioned stimulus but in Phase I had been paired with the bell now elicited the conditioned response, namely, forelimb extension. This experiment is significant because it makes plain the fundamental importance of cognitive associative learning and provides clear evidence, almost 2,000 years after Aristotle and more than 200 years after the associationists, that simple contiguity of purely sensory events are connected in the mind. Subsequent studies of sensory conditioning in humans were first disappointing, but later studies using a voluntary response (i.e., key pressing) rather than an involuntary response (i.e., galvanic skin response) yielded unequivocal evidence of sensory conditioning (Brogden, 1947; Chernikoff & Brogden, 1949; Karn, 1947).
In a series of animal studies, Richard Held and his colleagues examined the impact of selective environments upon developmental competencies and learning (Hein & Held, 1967; Held & Bauer, 1967; Held & Hein, 1963). In one study, Held and Hein (1963), working with ten-week-old kittens, exposed them to a selective environment for three hours per day for 42 consecutive days while for the remainder of each day they were housed individually in comfortable home cages with dim illumination. Normal everyday kittens at ten weeks of age exhibit eye blink responses to rapidly approaching objects and duck their heads as well to avoid collision with such a moving target. In addition, such kittens also extend their front legs when jumping from surfaces of differing height. In the Held and Hein (1963) study, kittens were paired in teams of two with one the “active kitten” and the other the “passive kitten” and both were placed in the same circular environment (like a huge metal drum) with the circular walls painted with vertical black and white strips. The active kitten was in a yoked harness attached at one end to a revolving bar overhead while the passive kitten rode in a gondola suspended from the overhead revolving bar. Thus, the active kitten could move in a circular path (i.e., walk in circles) with both kittens exposed to the same basic visual environment. At the end of 42 days of three hours per day or a total of 126 hours or 5.25 days of the above selective environmental experiences, the active kitten could perform easily and rapidly all of the visual-motor functions described above, while the passive kitten was unable to perform these previously present and critically important functions of interacting appropriately with rapidly moving visual targets such as eye blink and head ducking or extension of forelegs to assure a smooth landing when jumping from one surface to another. Interestingly, when the passive kitten was allowed to move around freely for about ten days, the above visual motor responses were reinstated and appeared indistinguishable for the most part from comparable responses of the so-called “active kitten.” The above findings make plain the profound effect of the environment or context upon basic psychological capacities.
For the early British associationists, conscious memory was an essential psychological process for understanding how the mind comes to acquire content and construct complex ideas while little treatment was given to the possibility of unconscious memories. The concept of repression assumes that something happens that is so shocking that the mind pushes the memory into the inaccessible unconscious mind and the memory of the event is banished from consciousness for a long time and perhaps even for a lifetime.
An important legal case went to trial in 1990 in which the jury returned a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder after one day of deliberations. The defendant was convicted of murdering, 20 years earlier, an eight-year-old girl, with the major evidence provided by his daughter whose memory of witnessing the murder had been repressed for more than 20 years. The above case made national headlines and represented the first instance in which a person was tried and convicted of murder on the basis of a freshly unearthed repressed memory.
Many clinical psychologists believe that repression operates for early traumatic memories (Bruhn, 1990), even though there is no controlled laboratory support for the concept of repression so it is important to be cautious in the use of repression as an interpretative concept for behaviors and experiences (Holmes, 1990). Loftus (1993) has studied systematically the concept of repressed memories, and has suggested that honestly believed repressed memories might be influenced by external factors in addition to internal psychological forces that impact memories. For example, one possible external factor is popular books about childhood sexual abuse readily available in bookstores, such as The Courage to Heal (Bass & Davis, 1988). Interestingly, this book was implicated in hundreds of alleged cases of sexual abuse in families (Wakefield & Underwager, 1992). Another potential external force that may influence recall of earlier abusive events comes from the work of Blume (Blume, 1990), who observed that many individuals who enter therapy without such memories appear to acquire them during therapy. Some therapists probe persistently for traumatic memories while others inquire about sexual abuse during every intake of a new patient. Thus, if discussion of incest goes on during the day, and day residue gets into one’s dreams at night, then it would not be surprising to observe that dreams of incest might result.
Lastly, Loftus (1993) has speculated that it may be possible to inject a whole event into someone’s mind (memory injection) for something that never happened. In the “lost in the mall” protocol, a 14-year-old boy was convinced by his older brother (who served as a confederate in the study) that when he was five years old he was lost in a shopping mall even though there was no evidence that he in fact had ever been lost in a mall. Further studies by Loftus and Hyman and their colleagues (Hyman & Pentland, 1996; Loftus & Pickrell, 1995; Mazzoni & Loftus, 1998) have established that although it is possible to implant false memories of different types of childhood experiences in a significant number of experimental participants there may be limits to the kinds of memories that can be implanted in such studies (Pezdek, Finger, & Hodge, 1997). It is important to be open to the possibility of the existence of repressed memories, which may be very real in the privacy of the therapeutic session, yet it is also important to continue to systematically study repressed memories when we are dealing with the reality of the courtroom.
Memory makes possible a sense of personal history, knowledge of facts and concepts, and the learning of complex skills. The systematic study of the darker side of memory moved to center stage in the 1990s as noted previously, with the public and legal focus upon the accuracy of recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (Read & Lindsay, 1997; Schacter, 1996). There is good reason to believe that although some recovered memories have been corroborated and appear to be valid, there are also good reasons to believe that many such memories are inaccurate (Schacter, 1996). Schacter (1999) has recently attempted to provide a broader framework for the study of human memory with his focus on what he terms “the seven sins of memory.” The first three sins all arise from different types of forgetting, namely, transience, or the decreasing accessibility of information over time; absent-mindedness, or the inattention or shallow processing at the time of encoding or during attempts to retrieve stored information; and blocking, or the temporary inaccessibility of information stored in memory. These are all sins of omission such that when individuals need to remember the desired information it is inaccessible or unavailable. The other three sins involve distortions or inaccuracy of memory, and include misattribution, or attributing a recollection or idea to the wrong source; suggestibility, or memories that are implanted as a result of leading questions or comments when attempting to recall a previous experience; and bias, involving retrospective distortions and unconscious influences that are related to current knowledge and beliefs. The seventh and final sin is persistence, or remembering information that we cannot forget even if we would like to forget.
In as much as each of us is subject to absent-mindedness, we present here a few studies of this frequent, at times frustrating, and fascinating form of forgetting in which we pay insufficient attention as a stimulus is encoded or because attended information is processed superficially. For example, the well-known depth-of-processing studies have found that divided attention at the time of encoding yields poor later memory for target information (Craik & Lockhart, 1972). Thus, when a person is asked to perform shallow encoding by counting, for example, the number of vowels in a list of words, rather than deep encoding such as putting each word in the list in a category, then memory is significantly better for deep processing. Likewise, shallow encoding seems to be responsible for an interesting phenomenon called “change blindness” (Simons & Levin, 1998). Change blindness arises when people fail to detect any altered features in a scene or object. Thus, for example, Levin and Simons (1997) showed a movie in which an actor performed a simple action, and, unbeknownst to the participants, the original actor was replaced by a new person. Interestingly, only one-third of the participants noticed the change. In a follow-up study, using a naturalistic setting, an experimenter asked a person on a college campus for directions, then two persons carrying a door passed between them such that the door momentarily occluded the first questioner while a new person was substituted and continued asking for directions. Incredibly, only seven out of 15 participants noticed the change of person asking directions!
In summary, Schacter (1999) and others (see, for example, Bjork & Bjork, 1988; Schooler & Anderson, 1997) have suggested that memoric lapses may be reflections of an adaptive memory system that is keyed into present contexts. Thus, for example, it may well be that it is no longer functional to remember old telephone numbers from weeks, months, or years ago or what outfit I wore on the first Tuesday of January in 1998 unless, of course, this information continues to be adaptive in present contexts. In short, you need to use stored information or otherwise you are most likely to lose it. There is only so much stuff we can cart around before we become bogged down and unable to act adaptively to present and future environmental demands.
This chapter focused on the intriguing and enduring issue of how the mind acquires content. We began with a brief treatment of the sources of human knowledge including empiricism, revelation, positivism, and associationism. We focused first on the positivism of August Comte, his views on the stages of intellectual development of societies, his hierarchy of sciences, and his twisted journey into the dogmatism in almost all religious systems, which he argued so forcefully against. Thereafter, we presented the work of Ernst Mach, who, unlike Comte, stressed the importance of studying the immediate, unanalyzed experiences of an observer as the key to understanding how the human mind acquires content. Comte argued for the study of the products of mind, namely, behaviors (precursor to behaviorism) while Mach argued for the study of immediate experiences (precursor to Gestalt psychology).
Our examination of the British empiricists began with John Locke and his unequivocal position that the mind acquires content only through experiences. Unlike John Locke, George Berkley did not distinguish between primary and secondary ideas and thus believed that all we know is our subjective experiences.
David Hume continued in the tradition of the British empiricists, yet he also bridged the gap to associationism by emphasizing the articulation of the three laws of associationism and its treatment of impressions (sensory stimulation) and ideas. We then studied David Hartley, who is considered to be the “father” of British associationism, and the first to study the mind or psychological phenomena as a natural science by proposing a physiological model of association. Thereafter, we turned to a review of the work of James Mill (the father of John Stuart Mill), who attempted to link the motivational and cognitive dynamics of the mind. John Stuart Mill argued for a science of human nature focused upon associationism.
We were introduced to Alexander Bain, considered by some to be the first psychologist, the author of the first psychology textbooks, The Sense and the Intellect and Emotions and the Will, and the founder of Mind, which was the first periodical devoted entirely to psychology. We briefly discussed the work of Immanuel Kant as the continental counterpoint to the British empiricists and associationists because of his emphasis upon innate categories of thought. We discussed Kant’s concept of noumena or “things in themselves,” which precludes accurate knowledge of objects of the physical world because the categories of the mind act on the sensory data and render all of our experiences with the subjective imprint of the mind. We then turned to a series of studies that have extended and confirmed empirically some of the key principles of associationism, as reflected in studies of the operation of memory systems, sensory conditioning, selective deprivation, repressed memories, and “the seven sins of memory,” especially absent-mindedness.