On Sat, 28 Sep 2013 08:36:24 -0700, Stephen Black wrote:
[snip]
Professor Black can believe whatever he wants for whatever
reasons he wants but I would just like to point out a few things:
(1) If the question about Pavlov is whether he ever used a
bell in his conditioning research, the answer is "Yes". Pavlov
says so in his 1906 paper but points out that it is a poor stimulus
to use -- if a bell had not been used in any experiments, how
would he know it was not an effective stimulus? In the
"Mechanics of the Mind" video on Vimeo I linked to in an
earlier post, we see someone ringing a hand bell and the dog's
startled response -- it seems clear that the disruptive effects
of a loud bell might affect conditioning. A softer bell would
probably work better but producing the appropriate sound
might be difficult at that time -- a metronome would produce
less startling and controllable (i.e., ability to change the frequency)
stimuli. Roger Thomas (1994; see:
http://www.cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/newpsy?5.63)
reports an experiment where an electric bell was used to
condition mice; the research was published in Science but
later retracted though it had also been presented
elsewhere; the reasons for the retraction are unclear but
I would not be surprised if one or both of the following were
factors: (a) results were too supportive of a Larmarckian and
Marxist position and (b) given the predictions of a Marxist
theory of how one generation's experience affected subsequent
generations, research assistants might have made sure that the
results turned out the "right way".
(2) Richard Littman (1994) has made a reasonable argument that in
the U.S./North America, John Watson was probably the person
who promoted the idea that a bell sound could be used as
a conditioned stimulus since that was what he used. See
Littman's argument here:
http://www.cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/newpsy?5.49
There should be no doubt that an appropriate bell sound can be
made into a conditioned stimulus, the apparent issue is who
promoted this as the paradigmatic way of thinking of classical
conditioning.
(3) It should be noted that there are at least *THREE* versions
of Pudvokin's film: (1) the Americanized version I linked to previously
at: http://vimeo.com/20583313 , (2) Jeff Wilson of Albion has
blogged about obtaining two Russian versions of Pudovkin's film
(see:
http://campus.albion.edu/wjwilson/2011/10/31/pudovkin-film-surfaces-on-youtube/
)
A short Russian version that runs for about 34 minutes and is
available on the YouTube; see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTc06C_fIJY ,
and (3) a longer version running about 43 or so minutes.
Wilson made a poster presentation about these films at the 2004
meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and his poster in PDF
format can be accessed here:
http://campus.albion.edu/wjwilson/files/2010/09/PUDOVPOS.pdf
Quoting from his poster:
|And yes, it appears that Pavlov /did/ use a bell, although the film
gives
|no indication that is ever served as a CS.
His blogpost on this can be accessed here:
http://campus.albion.edu/wjwilson/2011/10/31/pudovkin-film-surfaces-on-youtube/
I now leave this dead horse for others to beat.
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
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