The Ghost in the Machine Read Online Free PDF Page B

orthodox and the new approach can
be summed up by two key words: the chain versus the tree.
     
     
     
The Chain
     
     
The long extract which follows is representative of the orthodox
Behaviourist approach to language. It is taken from a textbook for
college students to which various professors at distinguished American
universities have contributed. [1] The author of the extract is himself
chairman of a psychology department. It was published in 1961; the
dialogue featured in the extract is adapted from an earlier textbook. I
mention these details to show that this text, fed to thousands of
students, is in the most respectable academic tradition. It is headed
'Complex Activities' and it is the only passage devoted to the glories
of human language in this entire textbook:*
     
We have said that learning either may be of the respondant
    [classical Pavlovian] or of the operant [Skinner, Hull] conditioning
    type. . . . The experimental data that we have presented in connection
    with our conditioning studies have, however, been limited to rather
    simple responses such as salivation [in dogs] and bar-pressing [by
    rats]. In our everyday life we seldom spend much time in thinking
    about such isolated responses, usually thinking of more gross
    activities, such as learning a poem, carrying on a conversation,
    solving a mechanical puzzle, learning our way around a new city,
    to name only a few. While the psychologist could study these more
    complicated activities, as is done to some extent, the general
    approach of psychology is to bring simpler responses into the
    laboratory for study. Once the psychologist discovers the principles
    of learning for simpler phenomena under the more ideal conditions
    of the laboratory, it is likely that he can apply these principles
    to the more complex activities as they occur in everyday life. The
    more complex phenomena are, after all, nothing but a series of
    simpler responses [sic.] Speaking to a friend is a good example of
    this. Suppose we have a conversation such as the following:

    He: 'What time is it?'
    She: 'Twelve o'clock.'
    He: 'Thank you.'
    She: 'Don't mention it.'
    He: 'What about lunch?'
    She: 'Fine.'

    Now this conversation can be analysed into separate S-R units. 'He'
    makes the first response, which is emitted probably to the stimulus of
    the sight of 'She'. When 'He' emits the operant, 'What time is it?',
    the muscular activity, of course, produces a sound, which also serves
    as a stimulus for 'She'. On the receipt of this stimulus, she emits an
    operant herself: 'Twelve o'clock', which in turn produces a stimulus
    to 'He'. And so on. The entire conversation may thus be diagrammed as:



    In such complex activity, then, we can see that what we really
    have is a series of S-R connections. The phenomenon of connecting a
    series of such S-R units is known as chaining, a process that should
    be apparent in any complex activity. We might note that there are a
    number of sources of reinforcement throughout the chaining process,
    in this example the most obvious being the reinforcement of 'She'
    by receiving an invitation for lunch and of 'He' by having the
    invitation accepted. In addition, as Keller and Schoenfeld point out,
    there are such sources of reinforcement as the hearer 'encouraging'
    the speaker to continue, the use that the conversationalists make
    of the information received (he finds out what time it is), etc.

    This example of the analysis of a complex activity is but one of
    numerous activities that we could discuss. You should continue to
    think of others yourself and try to diagram the chaining process for
    them. For instance, what would a diagram look like for a football
    end running downfield and catching a pass, for a pianist playing a
    piano, or for a girl knitting a sweater? [2]

* An extract from this text also appeared in The Act of Creation,
     p. 603.
     
And this is the end of what the student learns about 'complex human
activities'. The rest of this