John B. Watson's legacy: Learning and environment

Perspectives on Behavior Science, 2020

is a significant figure in the history of psychology. Although some scholars contest the thesis that he was the creator of the behaviorist movement, he was undoubtedly a great popularizer of behaviorism, and many of the psychologists who proposed new varieties of behaviorism admit that they were directly influenced by him. Most psychologists, and probably all behavior analysts, read and heard about Watson at some point in their apprenticeship. Nevertheless, Watson's works are usually misunderstood, mainly because most of his publications are unknown to the majority of psychologists and historians of psychology. The publication of a more complete and precise bibliography may help to solve this problem. This article presents an updated bibliography of John B. Watson's published works; it contains 209 entries, including 50 new ones compared with the last, and at that point the most developed, bibliography available. The bibliography we present here is offered to assist researchers, historians, and other scholars in taking a broader view of Watson's behaviorism and its impact on academic and lay audiences. Keywords John B. Watson. bibliography. classical behaviorism John B. Watson (1878-1958) was one of the best-known psychologists of the early 20 th century and one of the most influential psychologists of his generation (Buckley, 1989). During the 1990s, he was ranked among the 10 most notable psychologists by historians of psychology and chairpersons of psychology departments in American universities (Korn, Davis, & Davis, 1991). In the 2000s, he was ranked 17 th among the 99 most eminent psychologists of the 20 th century (

2021

The authors of this paper were invited to provide a chapter on how to teach “Developmental Psychology” (Daum & Manfredi, forthcoming) to the “International Handbook of Psychology Learning and Teaching” (Zumbach et al., forthcoming). When writing, the authors got lost in the details and wrote just a tiny little bit more than the editors asked for. In the end, we had to cut a substantial part of the chapter and decided to delete entire sections, one of them was the part on the “History of Developmental Psychology”. We nevertheless thought that the section could be of interest to somebody out there and put it as a preprint on the open science platform PsyArXiv. Enjoy reading.

Despite the attention given John B. Watson during the century since he introduced behaviorism, there remain questions about what he really contributed. He is still appropriately criticized for his arrogant selfpromotion and especially for his perceived emphasis on a simple S-R reflexology. However, we argue that the former was necessary at the time and that criticism of Watson on the second count only diverts attention from the genuine contributions that he did make. In support of these contentions we examine several aspects of his contributions that warrant clarification, namely, his promotion of applied comparative psychology, his views on the nature of mind, his originality, criticism from and respect afforded by contemporaries, his relation to recent interest in "the embodiment of mind," his treatment of thinking, and his appreciation of Freud's work. We organize our discussion around specific chapters of the two editions of Behaviorism, but in support of our arguments we include publications of Watson that are less well known. Those works develop some important points that are only briefly treated in both editions of Behaviorism.

In the long history of developmental psychology there have been thousands of articles, books, monographs and chapters written and a small number of these can be identified as "classics." These are studies that have helped shape the discipline and have had a major impact on its development. As Christian Jarrett, author of The Rough Guide to Psychology, has noted, "while other sciences have their cardinal theories … psychology's foundations are built not of theory, but with the rock of classic experiments" (2008, p. 756). Not surprisingly, the studies that have been selected are very well known within developmental psychology. They all continue to be cited in new articles and textbooks and their effect and influence remain undiminished. The studies have been carefully selected by the editors to represent a range of areas within developmental psychology: it is likely that some of them may not have been selected by a different editorial team, but we think that most of them would. STRUCTURE OF THE CHAPTERS A ll of the chapters begin with an account of the background to the classic study or review, in order to place them within their developmental and historical context-identifying the concerns and scientific perspectives that motivated the researchers. This is followed by a description of the classic paper, which in turn is followed by a discussion of the study's impact, which looks at ways in which ideas and findings were taken up by other researchers and ways in which these concepts and data influenced the field of developmental psychology and helped to shape its progress. However important a classic study may be, no paper in psychology can ever be considered perfect, and in the next section critiques of the studies are presented, discussing alternative interpretations and findings. The chapters conclude with an account of how the study advanced thinking and, importantly, how the field has subsequently advanced.

Interamerican Journal of Psychology, 2016

propósito tanto de humanizar su perfil así como desmitificar su figura para estar en mejor posición para entender el carácter original y contestatario de sus aportes. Se reseñan además las características más importantes de sus contribuciones para la evolución científica de la psicología (Kantor, 2005). Finalmente, se retoma la crítica del objeto de estudio propuesto por Watson, a la luz de la metateoría de Kantor (1959), Kantor (2005), Kantor y Smith (1975) y Kantor (1971a, 1971b), proporcionando dos ejemplos reconceptualizados con la teoría de campo: el experimento de Watson y Rayner (1920b) sobre el pequeño Alberto y uno del posmoderno mundo de la comunicación electrónica.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2019

In this article, I analyze how the relationship of developmental psychology with general psychology and cognitive science has unfolded. This historical analysis will provide a background for a critical examination of the present state of the art. I shall argue that the study of human mind is inherently connected with the study of its development. From the beginning of psychology as a discipline, general psychology and developmental psychology have followed parallel and relatively separated paths. This separation between adult and child studies has also persisted with the emergence of cognitive science. The reason is due essentially to methodological problems that have involved not only research methods but also the very object of inquiry. At present, things have evolved in many ways. Psychology and cognitive science have enlarged their scope to include change process and the interaction between mind and environment. On the other hand, the possibility of using experimental methods to study infancy has allowed us to realize the complexity of young humans. These facts have paved the way for new possibilities of convergence, which are eliciting interesting results, despite a number of ongoing problems related to methods.

The Behavior Analyst, 1996

Watson’s 1913 “behaviorist manifesto” had little effect in the years immediately following its publication. The inconspicuous but indefatigable rise of behaviorism was more of a barbarian invasion than a revolution, and the manifesto played the role of crystallizing sentiment and unifying diverse and tentative efforts under one flag. It also provided traditional psychology, the “low road,” with a favorite punching bag to spar with for mainstream favoritism, a situation which has not changed now a century later. Watson’s views often are misrepresented as naïve and simplistic and as a mere extrapolation of findings based on crude experiments with animals. But it was the objective methods of animal research, not the specific findings, that he sought to apply to human research. Critics and followers alike have often minimized his struggle as Watson tried to provide a psychology that could really account for complex human behavior. In this respect, one hundred years after the publication of the manifesto, behaviorism has yet to fulfill Watson’s promises for a genuinely scientific understanding of our complex subject matter.

The study of the development of living organisms generally, and humans, in particular, has itself developed and significantly so, as compared to past editions of this Handbook. For example, across just these early years of the 21st century, scholarship in developmental science has involved several important philosophical, theoretical, and methodological changes and, together, these changes constitute a paradigm shift for the field (Overton & Lerner, 2012). The outcome of this paradigm shift involves the reanalysis and rethinking of a number of issues in the field, followed by the generation of new data, and new powerful methodological tools. This chapter will illustrate several of these

Analysis of the origins of behaviorism and the contribution of John B. Watson