Psicología

La enseñanza (o Entrenamiento) con pruebas discretas

2015-09-01T12:12:00.002-07:00

Se basa en la noción que la práctica ayuda a los niños a dominar un tema determinado. Se trata de una terapia estructurada que emplea un método de instrucción uno a uno y que comprende un aprendizaje intensivo de comportamientos específicos. Este aprendizaje intensivo de un comportamiento específico se llama “instrucción por repetición”. Estas prácticas refuerzan el aprendizaje porque emplean la repetición. El niño cumple una tarea muchas veces del mismo modo (usualmente 5 veces o más). La repetición es particularmente importante para aquellos niños que necesiten muchísima práctica para llegar a dominar una habilidad determinada. La repetición también fortalece la memoria de largo plazo. Los comportamientos específicos (el contacto visual, la atención enfocada y el aprendizaje de expresiones del rostro) se reducen a los pasos más básicos, y después, se inducen y se guían metódicamente. Los niños reciben un refuerzo positivo (por ejemplo: un choque de manos, un elogio verbal, o fichas que puedan cambiarse por juguetes) como recompensa por haber producido estos comportamientos.

Por ejemplo, un terapeuta y un niño están sentados en una mesa, y el terapeuta anima al niño a prestarle atención diciéndole, “Mírame”. El niño mira al terapeuta, y el terapeuta le premia con un choque de manos.

Análisis de la Conducta Aplicado "AAC"

2015-09-01T08:18:00.003-07:00

Las siglas “AAC” significan Análisis Aplicado de la Conducta. El AAC es un conjunto de principios que forman la base de muchos tratamientos conductuales de la conducta. El AAC está basado en la ciencia del aprendizaje y del comportamiento. Esta ciencia abarca o incluye “leyes” generales sobre el comportamiento y sobre el proceso del aprendizaje. Con el AAC, se aplican estas leyes a los tratamientos conductuales/ de la conducta de manera que aumenten los comportamientos útiles o deseados. Así mismo, el AAC aplica estos conocimientos para reducir aquellos comportamientos que puedan interferir con el aprendizaje o que puedan ser perjudiciales. La terapia AAC se emplea para mejorar las capacidades lingüísticas y comunicativas del paciente. También se utiliza para aumentar la atención, la concentración, las habilidades sociales, la memoria, y los resultados académicos. El AAC puede ser usado para reducir los comportamientos problemáticos.

El Director General de Sanidad de los Estados Unidos y la Asociación Americana de Psicología consideran el tratamiento AAC entre las prácticas más recomendables, basado en las evidencias. El estar “basado en evidencia” significa que el AAC ha cumplido criterios científicos de utilidad, calidad y eficacia.

La terapia de AAC incorpora muchas técnicas diferentes. Todas estas técnicas están concentradas en los antecedentes (lo que precede un comportamiento determinado) y en las consecuencias (lo que ocurre después de un comportamiento determinado). Una de estas técnicas es el “refuerzo positivo”. Cuando el paciente recibe algo que aprecia (una recompensa) después de un comportamiento determinado, es más probable que ese comportamiento se repita. El AAC emplea el refuerzo positivo de un modo que puede medirse, con el fin de conseguir un cambio significativo del comportamiento.

Algunas terapias basadas en los principios del AAC son la enseñanza con pruebas discretas, la enseñanza complementaria o enseñanza en el entorno natural, el comportamiento verbal, el entrenamiento en respuestas centrales, y el ejemplo de lenguaje natural (en inglés, discrete trial learning, incidental teaching o natural environment training, verbal behavior, pivotal response training, y natural language paradigm, respectivamente). Véase la página siguiente para más detalles. Todas estas terapias basadas en el AAC:

Son estructuradas
Reúnen datos sobre las capacidades o los comportamientos que pretenden conseguir
Proporcionan estrategias positivas para cambiar las respuestas y los comportamientos

El AAC se concentra en las estrategias del refuerzo positivo. Estas estrategias pueden ser útiles para los niños que tengan dificultades para aprender o para adquirir nuevas habilidades. Asimismo, el AAC puede dirigirse a los comportamientos problemáticos que interfieran con el funcionamiento mediante un proceso conocido como la evaluación funcional de la conducta (en inglés, functional behavioral assessment). Los principios y métodos del análisis de la conducta han sido usados eficazmente en muchas circunstancias con el objetivo de desarrollar una amplia variedad de habilidades en los alumnos con y sin discapacidades.

“La ciencia cognitiva es el creacionismo de la psicología.”

2015-08-31T09:24:00.004-07:00

Hola amigos y amigas les compartimos este vídeo de B. F. Skinner en donde el 10 de agosto de 1990, acude a la 98 convencion anual de la Asociacion Americana dePsicología, fue premiado por una vida dedicada a la psicología (Lifetime Contributions to Psycology), para ese entonces él ya se encontraba enfermo, en donde defendio los principios filosoficos y cientificos de nuestra tan amada ciencia. en este energico discuroso menciona una celebre frase “La ciencia cognitiva es el creacionismo de la psicología”, Skinner muere a los pocos días de defender la ciencia del comportamiento humano.

Establece una relación positiva

2015-08-31T08:37:00.002-07:00

Un elemento necesario para lograr un cambio positivo en el estilo y calidad de vida de la persona, que haga posible el objetivo de que la conducta problemática sea irrelevante es establecer una relación positiva (Carr, 1996). Una relación positiva se caracteriza por la cercanía y el agrado mutuo, e implica un incremento de la relación y de nuestra capacidad para ofrecer ayuda. Normalmente las personas que presentan alguna conducta problemática pueden sufrir, como consecuencia de ella, el distanciamiento, cuando no el aislamiento, de las demás persona, incluidos algunos profesionales de apoyo. Para establecer una relación positiva el primer paso es convertirnos en una señal de refuerzo positivo para la persona. Tratamos de que nos asocie a actividades personas o cosas valoradas por el individuo. Este proceso facilita que cambien los sentimientos de esa persona hacia nosotros y su forma de vernos como alguien con quien merece la pena relacionarse. La forma de iniciar este proceso es bien sencilla, se trata de proporcionar objetos, actividades y situaciones agradables para el individuo, sin pedir nada a cambio, si exigirle una manera específica de pedir lo que le estamos proporcionado. La idea es interactuar y compartir cosas agradables y crear asi una base donde enseñar alternativas a la conducta problemática. Si ponemos en marcha este proceso, muy pronto la persona nos atenderá más, estará más pendiente de lo que hacemos de cómo nos desplazamos, de a quién nos dirigimos, etc. A partir de este momento hay que asegurarse de uq el apropia persona iniciara interacciones hacia nosotros por sí mismo ¿cómo? Acercándonos a la persona, mirándola y esperando a que ella inicie cualquier acto que interpretemos con un intento por interactuar con nosotros. Esta estrategia se denomina “espera estructurada” porque previamente hemos establecido la estructura básica para la comunicación creando la expectativa en la persona de que le vamos a facilitar los objetos, actividades, etc. que desea.

La relación positiva consiste por tanto en demostrar a la persona, que estamos dispuestos a relacionarnos con ella y hacer que se sienta mejor en aquellos lugares donde conviva, aprenda o trabaje con nosotros. Pero par que esa relación sea estable a los demás (Carr, et. al. 1996). No se trata en este momento de enseñarla habilidades específicas de interacción social, aspecto que será abordado cuando hablemos del co9mponente de enseñanza de habilidades alternativas. Se trata, en esta fase, de analizar los elementos del aspecto físico de la persona que nos hacen más difícil iniciar contactos sociales con él o ella. Por ejemplo, puede que la persona cuide muy poco su forma de vestir, que no se peine nunca que no procure estar limpio, o que siempre tenga los mocos colgando. La apariencia personal no es algo superficial o accesorio, ya que cuando vemos a alguien cuyo aspecto nos desagrada es fácil tener expectativas más bajas sobre lo que puede hacer o aportar en un intercambio social. Además un mal aspecto físico es degradante y contraproducente, porque limita las posibilidades de acceder a experiencia sociales y por qué puede llevar a la persona a la marginación social. Cada uno de los miembros del equipo de apoyo debe analizar los aspectos específicos por lo que la persona con comportamientos problemático le resulta poco agradable y desarrollar estrategias concretas para eliminarlos. Por último, antes de tomar otras decisiones y acuerdos sobre otros elementos importantes para lograr un cambio positivo en el estilo de vida de la persona, cada miembro del equipo de apoyo ha de esforzarse por encontrar intereses comunes con la persona con comportamiento problemático. Así se lograra mejorar el estilo de nuestra relación con la persona, habrá más posibilidades de proporcionar experiencias enriquecedoras y será posible que la persona pueda experimentar un mayor control sobre su vida.

Texto extraido del manual de Apoyo Conductual Positvo de la junta de Castilla y León

Examen del estado presente novena edicion (PSE-9)

2013-04-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

Esta entrevista semiestructurada de 140 puntos fue desarrollada por Wing, Cooper y Sartorius (1974) para que la emplease la Organización Mundial de la Salud en su Estudio Piloto Internacional de la Esquizofrenia. se tarda de 90 a 120 minutos en administrarla; debe dirigirla un entrevistador formado, y tiene una fiabilidad entre calificadores excelente y buena validez. En la evaluación se emplean sólo respuestas del paciente (no se utilizan otras fuentes, tales como la familia), y los síntomas se evalúan en términos de los producidos durante el mes anterior a la entrevista. Un aspecto clave de esta evaluación se obtiene una gran cantidad de información psicopatológica. entre sus puntos se incluye información sobre las inquietudes de salud, tensión, ansiedad autónoma, pensamiento, animo deprimido, sociabilidad, apetito, libido, sueño, retardo, irritabilidad, estado de animo expansivo, habla obsesiones, despersonalización, trastornos de la percepción, lectura de los pensamientos, alucinaciones, delirios, sensorio, memoria, introspección, consumo de drogas, afecto y estado de ánimo.

Escala de Ansiedad Manifiesta para Niños - Revisada (Revised Children's Manifest Anxie- ty Scale, RCMAS; Reynolds y Richmond, 1978, citado en Sandín, 1997).

2013-04-13T17:28:00.002-07:00

Sus 37 ítems de respuesta sí/no permiten obtener una medida general de la ansiedad y tres medidas más específicas relacionadas con las dimensiones fisiológica, preocupaciones sociales/concentración y preocupación/hipersensibilidad; incluye además una escala de mentiras. A pesar de ser la escala más utilizada con niños, confunde la ansiedad con la depresión y con la hiperactividad y el déficit de atención, y es poco sensible al tratamiento. La versión española de Sosa y cols. (1993, citado en Sandín, 1997) no incluye la escala de mentiras y parece ser unifactorial. Inderbitzen-Nolan y Walters (2000) proporcionan valores normativos para chicos y chicas americanos de 11-14 años por una parte y 15-17 años por otra.

Inventario de Estado-Rasgo de Ansiedad (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, STAI; Spielberger y cols., 1983).

2013-04-13T17:22:00.005-07:00

Consta de dos formas dirigidas a evaluar el estado y el rasgo de ansiedad. La forma Estado va dirigida a evaluar el estado de ansiedad y consta de 20 ítems. El cliente contesta cómo se siente en este momento; para ello emplea una escala de intensidad de 1 (nada) a 4 (mucho). La forma Rasgo va dirigida a evaluar el rasgo de ansiedad, esto es, la disposición a responder con
ansiedad ante situaciones percibidas como amenazantes. Consta de 20 ítems y el cliente contesta cómo se siente generalmente; para ello emplea una escala de frecuencia de 1 (casi nunca) a 4 (casi
siempre). Este cuestionario es de uso muy frecuente, pero presenta al menos dos problemas: a) no considera explícitamente los aspectos somáticos y conductuales de la ansiedad, y b) parece medir tanto ansiedad como depresión. Bieling, Antony y Swinson (1998) analizaron factorialmente el
Inventario de Rasgo de Ansiedad y encontraron un factor de orden superior (afecto negativo) y dos de orden inferior: depresión (13 ítems) y ansiedad (7 ítems); este último no discriminó entre diversos grupos de trastornos de ansiedad. El instrumento ha sido publicado por TEA en su versión de 1970 (con escalas que van de 0 a 3) y puede consultarse también en Bobes y cols. (2002) y Echeburúa y cols. (1995).

9° Coloquio Nacional y 3° Internacional de Investigación Estudiantil en Psicología

2013-02-05T21:46:00.001-08:00

Del 20 al 22 de marzo se llevará acabo 9° Coloquio Nacional y 3° Internacional de Investigación Estudiantil en Psicología con el interés de promover la práctica científica en los estudiantes de Psicología desde nivel licenciatura, profesores y estudiantes organizan el Coloquio Nacional de Investigación Estudiantil en Psicología, dicho evento constituye un esfuerzo académico de gran valor para los estudiantes de todo el país, ya que es un espacio para la presentación, difusión y discusión de los trabajos realizados por estudiantes tanto de pre y posgrado. Ya que los organizadores de dicho evento tienen claro que es así como se forman los investigadores, es por ello que nuevamente nos damos a la tarea de ayudar a la difusión de dicho evento, debido a la importancia que representa para los estudiantes de psicología de todo el país y fuera de él.

Por lo cual hacemos una cordial invitación a las personas que visitan nuestro blog a integrarse a este proyecto y si tienen una investigación revisen la convocatoria del congreso y no duden en enviar su resumen. También hacemos una cordial invitación a que visiten la página oficial del congreso.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy Appliying Empirically Supported Techniques in Your Practice

2012-07-17T20:57:00.001-07:00

Hola amigos/as a continuación les comparto un libro que a mi parecer es muy bueno ya que contiene una serie de técnicas con apoyo empírico, fue editado por William T. O'Donohue y Jane E. Fisher y sin duda les serán de gran ayuda para la práctica clínica,

XX Congreso Mexicano de Psicología y al III congreso Iberoamericano de Psicología de la salud

2012-06-01T16:33:00.001-07:00

La Sociedad Mexicana de Psicología, A. C. y el Colegio Mexicano de Profesionistas de la Psicología A. C. convocan XX

 Congreso Mexicano de Psicología y al III congreso Iberoamericano de 
Psicología de la salud que tendrá lugar en las instalaciones 
del Centro de Convenciones y Exposiciones Campeche XXI, los días 17, 18 y
 19 de octubre de 2012 en Campeche, Campeche.

FECHAS LÍMITE

Fecha límite de envío de propuestas para la presentación de trabajos: 16 de junio presentación oral, 22 de junio presentación cartel.

Los lineamientos para inscribir tu trabajo de investigación y los costos del congreso se encuentran en la página http://www.psicologia.mx/
 la cual te invitamos a que visites ya que el interés de este blog es 
difundir el trabajo que realizan organizaciones e individuos a favor de 
nuestra tan amada ciencia, es por este motivo que nos hemos centrado en 
la publicación de noticias de psicología.

2 de abirl Día Mundial de concienciación sobre el autismo (WAAD)

2012-04-02T23:05:00.004-07:00

La Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas declaró por unanimidad el 2  de abril como Día Mundial de Concienciación sobre el Autismo (A/RES/62/139  )  para poner de relieve la necesidad de ayudar a mejorar las condiciones  de vida de los niños y adultos que sufren este trastorno.

A lo largo de su historia, el Sistema de las Naciones Unidas ha  promovido los derechos y el bienestar de los discapacitados, incluidos  los niños con discapacidades de desarrollo. En 2008, la Convención sobre  los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad entró en vigor,  reafirmando el principio fundamental de universalidad de los derechos  humanos para todos. 

Las actividades realizadas por el WAAD ayudan a incrementar y desarrollar el conocimiento del mundo acerca del autismo y difundir información acerca de la importancia del diagnostico precoz y la intervención temprana.

Además, WAAD celebra los talentos y habilidades únicas de las personas con autismo.

Artículo extraído de las siguientes páginas:

http://www.un.org/es/events/autismday/

Austism speaks, http://lightitupblue.org/Markslist/home.do

EABA Conferencia 2012 (Conference 2012)

2012-03-15T00:38:00.003-07:00

La Asociación Europea de Análisis de la Conducta realiza conferencias cada dos años en diferentes lugares de Europa La 6 ª Conferencia de la Asociación Europea de Análisis de Conducta se llevará a cabo en la hermosa ciudad de Lisboa, Portugal, en el Centro Cultural de Belem , del 6 al 9 septiembre 2012.

La organización del evento es un esfuerzo de EABA y ABA.

Para información más detallada visita la página oficial de EABA

Volante de EABA Conference

Guía rápida de Lisboa

Formulario de presentación en línea

An Analysis of Psychological Language Data

2011-12-18T18:41:00.000-08:00

Jacob Robert Kantor

Indiana University

And yet it is not incorrect to say that such widespread and important reactions as language consists of, have not been adequately treated by psychologists. True it is that Wundt has given us a two-volume treatise on language, but unfortunately that writer was mainly interested to place a structuralistic psychological foundation under the data of the philologist with the consequence that the treatise does not handle the facts of language as specifically psychological activities but rather as external manifestations of mental states or the social products of psychic processes. Likewise, the behaviorist has recently given some prominence to discussions of language, but he again has been merely concerned to establish the objectivity of thought by identifying it with expression; so that the behaviorist just as much as the introspectionist has foregone the treatment of language as distinct concrete adaptations to stimuli along with the other types of psychological reactions. In view of this situation the writer undertakes an analysis of language reactions as prominent and significant data of objective psychology.

2. Differentiation of Psychological from other Language Data. (1) The Anthropological Data. Close study of language phenomena impresses us seriously with the extreme necessity of differentiating the psychological facts of language from other language data, for obviously, language phenomena constitute the subject-matter of several humanistic sciences. Is not language just as essentially a cultural fact, a matter of historical development, of social custom as it is a series of specific responses to particular stimuli? Now it is precisely the circumstance that language belongs to different domains of investigation which makes it difficult to keep separate the different approaches to language study, but which at the same time makes it so rigorously imperative that such a distinction between different data be observed. Penalties in abundance pursue us when we confound the different types of language data, for then we almost inevitably misinterpret our facts. When we ask what it is that makes especially difficult the distinction of psychological language from anthropological language we find this answer, namely, that the data of anthropological language, that is to say, language customs and traditions, constitute genuine though potential phases of psychological behavior segments, to wit, stimuli to language responses. To be more explicit, it is undoubtedly true that when individuals are about to develop language reactions such development is subject to the conditioning pressure of customs and institutions developed by their groups, but until such institutions actually function as stimuli to language behavior they cannot be called psychological facts. The difficulty in keeping anthropological language in the form of institutional and cultural entities distinct from psychological facts arises from the circumstance that group language institutions are often activities, but be it noted that such behavior must be looked upon as the abstracted activities of groups and their various influences upon one another and not as the concrete responses of persons to specific stimuli.

Philological Language Data. Much the same care employed in distinguishing between the psychological and anthropological phases of language must be exercised in keeping distinct the psychological and philological aspects. For philological data and interpretations have to do mainly with fixed forms of socially prevalent language institutions and their periodic variation [1] and not at all with the concrete forms of language responses such as especially concern the psychologist. And so we may say that the philologist gets no closer to the psychologist's data than does the anthropologist, although the philologist may be exclusively concerned with the facts of some particular language, and not languages as social institutions. That is to say, the philologist may also deal with the institutional stimuli of genuine language reactions but this is only one kind of language fact, and one which, unless it is contained in an actual response situation, or behavior segment, consists of conventions of speech rather than speech itself. When the philologist's material is not part of a behavior segment, such as the contents of a book when it is not being read, this material may be considered as a physical object exactly like any other kind of physical thing. Not incorrect is it to say that the philologist is interested in evidences of speech, spoken or written, as well as in standards of speech and only very remotely concerned with the psychological adaptations constituting language behavior, for the latter involves much more than is comprised in customary speech. To be brief, the philologist is essentially interested in fixed modes of phonetic systems and their symbolic representation and not in actual responses to stimuli.

Because the philologist is interested in conventional sounds and their symbolization his data and interpretations cannot be directly accepted by the psychologist. In the first place, many of the philologist's problems fall without the province of psychology since they have developed entirely as historical facts; among such facts are the problems of gender, the development of inflection or analysis and the absence of words expressing abstract ideas. In the second place, the philologist is moved by his interest in the conventional to exclude interjectional reactions or to think of them as evolutionary prototypes of standardized speech, in other words, to place too great emphasis upon standard words whether as roots or affixes or as combinations of the two. And in the third place, the philologist assumes that language is a series of symbols for the communication of ideas through definite and even logical vehicles, namely, sentences. To accept the philologist's material manifestly would put the psychologist at a great disadvantage for it would cause him to overemphasize the crystallized products and results of historical reactions and to pay scant attention to actual present behavior.

Psychological Language Data.—In striking contrast to both of the above treatments of language, the psychologist must look upon language as a series of intimate actions of particular persons, speaking, reading, listening, gesturing and interjecting, in short, adaptive responses. [2] As a student of language the psychologist is not interested in the existence of language or languages even when those are considered as reactional products. That the psychologist's interest in language is a much more particularized one appears from the fact that even when the work of the anthropologist and philologist overlaps that of the psychologist, that is to say, when the former scientists handle language as psychological phenomena, they deal with transmissive action only, while the psychologist, on the other hand, must carefully take note of the receptive aspect of language also, to wit, the receiving response actions of language behavior.

In sum, from the psychological standpoint language comprises various sorts of adjustmental behavior, diverse adaptations to surrounding stimuli. Such reactions, in common with other types of psychological response, serve as definite means of accomplishing specific results. In consequence, for the psychologist language reactions are unique personal and practically serviceable or expressive reactions. Whatever is common or standard about such behavior is due entirely to the commonness and institutional character of the stimuli which condition the acquisition of the specific phases of language reactions and which call them out when they are acquired.

III. What are the Psychological Characteristics of Language?—Our first approach to a psychological investigation of language forces upon us the conviction that language is far from easy to define and therefore it is essential that we formulate as clear a criterion as possible to mark off language responses from other kinds of action. Upon reviewing many facts of language, we do, arrive, however, at this distinguishing mark which we believe rather definitely divides off language reactions from other kinds of psychological facts, to wit, that language reactions are inherently indirect or referential adaptations to stimuli.

In order to examine and establish this criterion it is best first to contrast language reactions with some of the most direct and immediate forms of responses. Such direct responses are illustrated by simple reflex action or complex esthetic reaction to a picture or other work of art, as well as thinking about some thing or person. Such acts have no further reference to present or non-present objects or persons; nothing else but the one directly functioning stimulus and response is involved in the behavior segment.

Generalizing the fact of indirectness of action which characterizes language behavior we might say that language involves at least two stimuli, one the adjustment stimulus, the thing, event or person talked about, referred or otherwise responded to, and the other the stimulus object or person provoking the action, whether talking, thinking or some sort of overt behavior.

Illustrative of the indirectness of language behavior is the ordinary conversation or communication reaction. 'A' desires some object picked up; he therefore offers 'B' a verbal or gestural stimulus which we may call the auxiliary stimulus, and which serves as the means to bring about �B's reaction to the book which may be called for our present purposes the adjustment stimulus. What is essentially language in this situation is the indirect action which �A' performs with respect to the object picked up. The specific means by which the indirect reaction is accomplished, whether through spoken words or pointing gestures makes no difference so far as the language features of the situation go.

Perhaps more clearly can we appreciate the operation of the indirect response when we alter our point of vantage from that of the speaker or the person who uses the language as an instrument to bring about an indirect response to a stimulus object, to that of the person who is involved in the actual carrying out of the reaction. Now while the second person adjusts himself directly to the stimulus object, say a book that he was told to pick up, he at the same time is involved in an indirect response to the request or speech stimulus.

But here we can imagine someone saying, "Is this action of picking up the book not a direct response on the part of ' B ' to the request of 'A' as stimulus?" Considerable ambiguity we must admit to exist here, but we believe only with respect to the name of the stimulus. For observe, that it is hardly probable that 'B' is in fact performing a direct action to 'A,' but rather to 'A' 's request. But if the latter is true, then because the action of 'A' (the command) is a referential act, 'B' 's response itself cannot but refer to the book and hence the request is only an auxiliary stimulus, and if we do not allow this then we may still say that the person who gives the command is not like an ordinary natural object in his role as stimulus. To an ordinary natural object we can only perform direct action, both where the object serves as a substitution or as an adjustment stimulus, while in the case of the person his significance as a stimulus lies precisely in the fact that he can refer to things aside from himself by means of conventional signs, which he and those with whom he communicates, have developed in common social situations. The two stimuli can equally well be analyzed when the person talks to himself as when he is reacting to another person. That means to say, that when I speak to myself about myself I am both adjustment and auxiliary stimulus to myself as acting person. Again, when I perform a direct reaction to some object, say a fright or startle response, to an automobile which barely misses striking me, that object or the accident situation may be both auxiliary and adjustment stimulus for a secondary or indirect reaction. It is possible of course that we can react directly to persons as we do to natural objects but in this case we should not attempt to consider any phase of tire situation as language.

Whilst the form of language which we have just been discussing and which we name communicative may fairly be called typical it is not by far the most important or the most widely prevalent of our language behavior. But certain it is, however, that in all behavior properly denominated language we can distinguish the two stimulating situations or circumstances. And upon the particular mode of contact with these two stimuli we can in our opinion establish the criterion of indirectness for language reactions.

Two types of indirectness or degrees of language reactions may be distinguished upon the basis of what might be called from a biological or social standpoint the absence of direct adjustments to stimuli, or perhaps the absence of any overtly adjustmental behavior. To illustrate, language in the form of casual conversation may be considered from a biological standpoint as not adaptive at all, while language in the form of instructions or commands may be thought of as indirectly adaptive from the same standpoint. In general, we might name the two degrees of indirect action (1) mediative and (2) referential language. The criterion for distinction is the closeness to a direct response, the referential being the farthest removed. And so we might consider as referential all the language behavior which we call ordinary conversation and the exclamatory reactions which substitute for direct reactions. Now although it is true that in tire case of some referential behavior a direct reaction to a stimulus is out of the question, in the sense that it need never occur, as for example casual conversation, still the criterion of indirectness is just as valid in such cases as when some direct reaction is possible. Under the division of mediative behavior we can place all the language reactions which are in some form or other connected with direct reactions, that is, those responses which are instrumental in provoking direct action or closely associated with it.

Since in practice language responses may be said to be related to direct action in four ways, namely, they may precede, accompany, follow, or substitute for direct action, it may serve to illustrate the indirect character of language reactions to discuss briefly the four different ways in which language behavior operates. We will find that the language responses that precede, accompany, or follow direct action belong under the mediative heading, while the substituting type of language reactions we will call referential, in that it need not bear directly upon any direct action.

(a) Language as Preceding Reactions.—Various forms of preceding language responses may be isolated. A very clear-cut case is that in which language is used to induce some one to perform a direct action upon some object. Here we have the ordinary case of instructional or directing language. We may call this a practical or instrumental use of language. In other cases our preceding language may be the overt or expressed wish, hope, or plan to perform some action with respect to some stimulus object or situation. While for theoretical purposes there is no difference between this expressive type of language and instrumental speech, in our practical circumstances their variations turn out to be quite significant. And this is true whether or not the preceding indirect language act is or is not followed by direct action. In case the direct action does not occur or in case there is a definite certainty that it will not occur we must place this preceding act in the class of referential language.

(b) Language as Accompanying Reactions.—To illustrate language as accompanying or simultaneously occurring indirect reactions we may take the case of responding to a picture by way of admiration or contempt and at the same time voicing or otherwise expressing or indicating what our direct response to this object is. Here of course the direct response may be the person's own thought or feeling responses which are accompanied by language expression.

(c) Language as Following Reactions.—What in many cases is very close to accompanying reactions may actually be indirect following responses and which may be very definitely determined by preceding direct responses. Exemplified are succeeding indirect responses in the act of telling someone what effect some object or situation has had upon one. The student who imparts to one of his companions the pangs he suffered during an examination is performing definitely succedent indirect reactions which are quite different from those indirect reactions which we assume to have accompanied the actual taking of the examination. To sing by way of glorifying, or bewailing what has happened are also indirect succedent responses. Of these succedent responses a large number may be subsumed under the heading of reference language reactions.

(d) Language as Substitute Reactions.—Let the reader observe that as a matter of fact our four conditions of indirect action resolve themselves into two general conditions. Indirect action (1) associated with (preceding, accompanying or following) other responses and indirect action (2) substituted for direct action. Our three aforementioned language types, as we stated in the beginning, belong of course under the first or associational heading and now we must illustrate indirect responses which substitute for or replace direct action. Substitutional language does not influence or need not necessarily have any influence at all on any direct action, nor on the other hand need such language itself be influenced by direct action, while in the associative type of language there may be such an influence. As an example of substitute reaction we may take the case of the person who, instead of rushing in to a burning building to rescue a child, may just exclaim in a variety of ways what he sees. The indirectness of language responses as we have been attempting to establish it, can be very readily and very convincingly observed during the formation of language habits by the infant.[3] The observer must be struck with the differences between the language responses and the necessities and desires of the infant as well as with the specific responses of the infant in satisfying those wants or of the person who aids in their accomplishment.[4] The indirectness of the reactions can perhaps no better be established than by the reflection upon the numerous ways in which the language reaction can be carried out, especially if we consider the different language reactions of different groups and the varying language responses of the members of any given group.

Lest our emphasis of the indirectness of language reactions be thought too persistent we proffer the defensive suggestion that because our task here is that of definitely marking off one type of psychological response from other sorts of psychological behavior, we cannot be too exact in our descriptions. Especially is this true since not only are language reactions, like all other psychological phenomena, specific responses to particular stimuli, but they are not always morphologically different from other types of behavior. Of a surety when we think of verbal responses as language we .cannot make many mistakes in differentiating what is, from what is not language, but just as surely must we realize that verbal responses are not by far the only kinds of language reaction nor are indeed verbal reactions always language activities.[5]

More essential still does it appear to us to specify what are the differences between language and other psychological behavior because we summarily reject those traditional conceptions of language which make it, from a psychological standpoint, into either (1) mental states called meanings, which are transferred from one mind to another, or which are aroused in one mind by another through the medium of speech, or into (2) verbal or other physical manifestations of various sorts of mental states. From our objective psychological standpoint language cannot in any sense be considered to be a series of ideas or the expression or communication of ideas or other mental states.

To conceive of language as definite behavior phenomena not only gives us a much closer approach to the actual workings of such facts but it also enables us to include under the category of language, and to provide descriptions of, many sorts of specific adaptations that would otherwise be excluded. As to the first point, consider that we avoid completely such embarrassing problems as how it is possible for the same physical material (sound waves or light waves) to produce such different effects as do sensory and verbal stimuli.[6] Such problems the mentalist must face because he . takes the media of stimulation such as light rays and air waves to be the stimuli themselves and so he must struggle to find a way out of this inexplicable situation.

When we think in terms of specific reactions to particular stimuli, whether persons, objects or events, we cannot subject ourselves to such insoluble enigmas. On the other hand, by rejecting the conception of language as an external manifestation of some kind of thought process we remove the necessity of limiting language action to such behavior as can be called intellectual or cognitive. All language need not fall under some sort of cognitive category as is the case when the declarative sentence is presumed to be the typical language function. By the same token language cannot be made into exclusive emotional or feeling expressions nor yet into expressions of merely the two kinds of states or experiences. Most serviceably and most validly must language reactions be considered as just such behavior phenomena as they happen to be, depending upon the way the stimulating situations condition them. From this standpoint the language reactions may be named in any way esteemed suitable by the consideration of the behavior situations in which they operate.

With a myriad voices, though with no intention at all has philological science as well as popular thought celebrated the indirectness of language reactions. This characterization of indirectness has been achieved by looking upon language responses and their graphic representations as symbols of meanings and as indicators of concepts or ideas. To us it is manifest that no matter what view we take concerning the nature of concepts or ideas we must consider them as forms of implicit or incipient processes. For our own part, of course, meanings, ideas, and concepts are also definite forms of psychological responses. That philological science and popular thought do not intentionally make language into indirect behavior we say, because as a matter of fact the symbolic character of language does not lie in any reference to mental or psychic processes as popular psychology would have it, but rather in the instrumental or mediative function of language responses. Not all language is meaning behavior, but it is true that an exceedingly large amount of our language reactions serve as means or instruments for bringing about or for carrying on other types of action or otherwise accomplishing our purposes; so that the referential or indirect character of language has been generally observed and recorded.

How such observations were made we may infer from the fact that when anyone speaks of things or events not present, or asks someone to do something, he must surely note that his action is indirect and referential with respect to the absent thing or the thing the other person acts upon. Were it generally appreciated that ideas and concepts are merely implicit reactions to stimuli, that is to say, actual responses, then it might be overtly appreciated that language constitutes indirect reactions connected with concepts and ideas as direct responses to the same stimuli objects. But whether concepts, meanings and ideas are properly or improperly defined in popular psychology, the very fact that they are connected with language indicates clearly that language is fairly universally recognized to be indirect behavior, especially when the popular view concerning ideas and meanings are correctly interpreted, which means for us interpreted as definite behavior acts.

But here a very important problem presents itself, namely, the connection of language and ideational or thought processes. How are these processes in fact related? Are they perhaps identical? Such an identity indeed suggests itself through the circumstance that both thought and language are mediate activities. Recently this identification has been very strenuously urged in an attempt to show that thoughts (concepts, ideas) are not mental substances or psychic processes. Certainly from an objective psychological standpoint thought cannot be considered as anything but adaptational responses to stimuli. Because of the close relation and apparent similarity between thought and language it will add greatly to our understanding of language to compare it with thought processes and if it is not identical with it to mark it off definitely from thinking. To the study of this relation between the two kinds of behavior we devote the next division of our study.

IV. Distinction between Language and Thought. — That thought and language cannot be identified must appear a most valid conclusion to anyone who reflects a moment upon the actual behavior types which are represented by these two psychological terms. Consider that the term thought covers a large range of psychological activities, such as planning, problem-solving, judging, evaluating, inferring, etc. Can anyone meaningfully assert that these forms of complex reactions are language responses much as we may employ language behavior (though perhaps no more than all other sorts together) in accomplishing such responses? Only a moment's reflection is sufficient to recall most convincingly that the various forms of thinking involve so many and such peculiar contacts with stimuli objects of all sorts, and with instruments for handling them, that it is impossible to call all such reactions language or even apply the term language to the typical phases of such activities.

In short, to call thinking language means rashly to overlook all the myriads of differences in the behavior situations. To name only one fact, is not language most typically, though obviously not exclusively, responses to persons as stimuli, but who would say that our thinking need necessarily have any close reference to persons or human affairs? Possibly one might be misled by the great place which printed and written materials play in our complex thinking and planning in the form of notes and records. To make the use of these verbal notes a basis for confusing thought and language is a grievous error. In the first place, what right have we to confuse verbal tools used in the process of thinking with that process or action, any more than we have to identify with thought itself any other tool (of which obviously there exists a great many) used in thinking. And in the second place, such a confusion of the records of thought with the activity of thinking itself is to mistake word symbols (which are no more language than any other sort of symbols) for the actual psychological process of language.

No one can deny that language is a most useful tool for the operation and development of our thinking; yet we must be so impressed with the fact that there are other modes of action which can be used in the planning, inferring and other thinking acts that we perform, that we cannot in any sense admit any general identity between language and thought. Even if we should admit, as we do without hesitation, that in some cases (perhaps not rare instances) the thinking and planning is purely linguistic (vocal or non-vocal, overt or implicit) we yet cannot allow the general identification, because thinking and planning may just as well consist of other kinds of reactions as well as words, or other kinds of language. Now as a matter of fact, in all cases of important or crucial thinking we have, since such behavior is initiated by and operates under the auspices of very complex situations, a host of reactions occurring, some of which may be language responses, but certainly include others which are not.

If it seems plausible at all to believe that thinking is not language, even when we add that it is not always nor necessarily so, then we might see further ground for rejecting the identification from the fact that certainly language operates along with, or in the service of other forms of adaptational behavior, besides thought. For instance, in communication we use language to inform others of what we desire, hope, fear, and do (in the form of overt action) as well as to make known what we think.

Assuming that we agree that we cannot identify thought and language responses because each of these classes of behavior refers to what are on the whole intrinsically different adaptational functions, then of necessity the two types of behavior are different in the specific way that they operate. Unlike language responses thinking reactions are direct adaptations to stimuli, although some form of thought action, especially simple implicit behavior, appears to be indirect. It is this fact of the misconstrued indirectness of thinking behavior (since there are a great many of the apparent indirect types of thinking) which no doubt is in great part responsible for the identification of language and thought. In three general ways, then, can thinking acts appear indirect, each of which we must examine in turn in order to determine the exact relation of thought to language.

1. Because much of our thinking represents delayed forms of behavior, that is to say, because many specific reaction systems operate in conjunction with a number of different stimuli comprising the different angles of the thinking stimulus or situation, these specific responses may appear as indirect, but such is in fact not the case. Let us examine the possible reasons for such a misapprehension. In the case of thinking behavior there is present a temporal and spatial element involved in the complex action of responding to the various stimuli provoking the thinking response. The hit or miss character of thinking implies such a condition. For instance, a man determining in which of many manners he can best ford a stream must probably make several movements or take several moments to decide upon the best way of doing it, but his reactions to these various stimuli are purely direct. On the contrary, in language behavior the one or the very few acts comprising the segment of action will all be indirect actions as we have indicated in the preceding section. The temporal disparity between stimulus and response which in thinking behavior provokes the opinion that such action is indirect when it is really direct, is wholly lacking in language behavior where the action is always indirect.

2. Again, thinking reactions may appear indirect through the fact that when they are most serviceable as adjustment responses they operate as precurrent thinking or planning reactions. Such reactions pave the way for a later reaction which will result in some definite change in the condition or existence of the adjustment stimulus object. The point is that thinking either precedes an overt action in the sense that the planning and deciding are accomplished before any actual work is done upon the objects and events with reference to which the thinking was done, or in a single segment of behavior the thought as a precurrent reaction system precedes the occurrence of the final or end reaction which it indeed conditions. In many cases, too, the characteristic of indirectness is attributed to thought reactions because no overt act at all need follow the implicit behavior. Our present interest is to point out that the implicit activity preceding overt action is in truth a direct response to the adjustment stimulus but because this reaction has to be aroused through the intervention of a substitute stimulus the immediate reaction must be thinking or implicit activity. But notice, that when the thinking or implicit reaction occurs, no matter how long before the overt act, it is itself a direct, though non-explicit response to the original or substituted—for object or situation.

In the case of language, on the contrary, our study has shown us that the adjustment stimulus object may be present and frequently is, when the language response is made, but the reaction to that object is referential and not direct. This is true because the final response can only be made through the means of an auxiliary stimulus. At this point it seems only fair to admit that possibly our term indirect does not fit language responses any better than it is suitable for thought reactions, but there is no question concerning the fact of difference in the two cases irrespective of what name is employed to express that difference.

In the attempt further to elucidate the differences between the actual indirectness of language reactions and the apparent indirectness of thinking reactions it might not be impermissible to digress a moment in order to point out that although the temporal relationship of stimulus and response is not a criterion of indirect behavior still it is evident that the various instances of indirect reactions (language) may be differently conditioned by the temporal relation of response and adjustment stimulus. That is to say, the degree of indirectness depends upon whether the indirect language response follows a direct response or an implicit response. If language is associated with an implicit response the degree of directness or indirectness with respect to the adjustment stimulus will be greater than if it follows an overt reaction. As we have just stated it so happens that in most cases of implicit behavior the adjustment stimulus is responded to through the mediation of a substitute stimulus other than the adjustment object, and thus it happens that when an indirect language response follows an implicit action the person is doubly removed from the adjustment stimulus. This means, then, that in this instance there is a greater temporal interval between the connection of the language act and the adjustment stimulus than in the cases in which the language acts follow overt responses. If we may call any language response a response of second intention, then possibly it will not be unfitting to call a language response associated with an implicit reaction a reaction of third intention. Possibly an illustration might assist in clarifying this analysis. A person burns himself on a hot iron and his immediate and first response is a withdrawal act (reflex). Immediately following the reflex act he makes some language responses (indirect) expressive of the pain he suffered. In this case the language activity follows an overt act (reflex) and is thus a language response of second intention. Later, this same person recalling the incident (implicit activity) communicates the details to his friend, or in other words performs a language response of third intention, since it follows the implicit activity of recalling the act of burning himself.

3. Possibly the most potent influence for identifying language and thought arises from the fact that thought is made identical with implicit action and especially because there obviously exists implicit language.[7] Now certainly some of our thought behavior may be considered to be merely implicit action, and patently language reactions are as much subject to implicit performance as any other sort of reaction, but these facts themselves contain arguments for not identifying thought and language. For observe that only a part of our thought behavior is merely implicit action, and furthermore, we have no more right to make implicit language synonymous with thought than any of the numerous other types of implicit action all of which may just as well as language be considered as thought. Moreover, as we shall presently see, implicit language cannot be considered as genuine language activity, and so while we might think of such reactions as thought we cannot think of them as language.

Now although implicit language must be considered to be non-problem-solving thought we cannot take such a fact to be indicative of the identity of language and thinking, since implicit language would be very little if at all serviceable for problem solving or any other active thinking process. In fact, it is possibly only in dreaming (day or night) that we perform implicit language activity to any extent and we need hardly comment on the striking contrast between such passive activity and the more active process of thinking. In all other cases than dreaming we can accomplish many things and more useful ones through the means of implicit non-language reactions (implicit construction, purchasing, etc.). Granting that language functions most typically and most serviceably as psychological behavior when it is most overt, while thought as implicit behavior can be most serviceable to the person and operate most typically when there is a minimum of overt activity,[8] then we may find in this fact a further basis for disbelief in the identity of thought and language. We are convinced that language most useful for thinking must be overt activity, an instrument for contact with things, the actual handling of materials and not the pale reflection of conversation. It is really because of the overt character of language on the one hand, and the implicit character of thinking on the other, and not because they are identical, that overt language and implicit responses are so frequently operating in combination so frequently, in fact, that it is even thought that they cannot operate separately. They cannot operate separately, it is said, in the sense that we cannot think without language, a statement, by the way, which may well be true in practice, but which carries with it no implication of inflexible necessity.[9] But at any rate, if it is true that language is more typical when overt, and much more useful for thought

Provided that it is granted us that implicit behavior constitutes direct action to stimuli, may we not say that a clear distinction between thought and language is established? And yet we must not be too sanguine of the validity of our argument. Those who still hold that thinking is implicit action may say, "But by implicit action in the discussion of language we mean sub-vocal behavior." Now subvocal behavior from the standpoint of our present objective position is of course indirect. Consequently, can it not be argued that thought as implicit or sub-vocal language behavior is therefore indirect and can be justifiably identified with language? We will immediately reply: Even accepting sub-vocal language responses as true language behavior, their functions in common with language in general, are usually quite different from thinking as we have already seen, and further, they need not in fact always be true functional language responses. Certainly when they are merely subvocally uttered words they seem to be purely conventional symbols. On the other hand, if one insists that sub-vocal actions are not considered true language but merely taken to be implicit action, then, as we have already argued, we have no more right to identify such implicit language responses with thought than we have to identify any of the other very numerous types of implicit action with thought. As a matter of fact, from our standpoint sub-vocal language reactions are not normally implicit actions but overt responses of expressive form.[10] In order to clear up this problem of what actually constitutes implicit behavior we might turn at this point to the consideration of such reactions. Preferably let us compare implicit action with actual language responses.

Implicit reactions comprise incipient or other forms of actually direct responses to objects which result in no immediate change of condition or existence in the stimulus object. Let us notice that the most typical forms of implicit reactions are partial or vestigial remnants of originally larger or complete reactions as is excellently exemplified in the partially implicit visual-perceptual reaction which may be considered as the seeing part or phase, or remainder of the original seeing-touching or other whole [11] reaction system. The distinction, then, between an implicit and explicit reaction is a functional one. In other words, an implicit act may be morphologically exactly like an overt act, but owing to the absence of the original stimulus object no effect is produced upon that object. Now it happens that because of the absence of the original object, or because first contacts with objects produce disruptive and inhibitory conditions, the later contacts with the same objects consist of modified reaction systems. These partial or totally implicit reaction systems take on their specific character of implicitness because of the person's mode of contact with the stimulus in question and not in any sense because of their non-visibility or lack of openness to the inspection of the acting person or someone else.

In this fact of the interpendence of response and stimulus, which of course is an inherently psychological phenomenon, we find the differentiating conditions which not only mark off overt from implicit behavior but also supply us with criteria for distinguishing one kind of implicit behavior from another. Thus when the original stimulus object is present in its customary setting we react to it in the same overt way as usual unless some interfering condition arises. When the original object is partially present, as when we can see but not touch it, then we perform a partially implicit response. When the object is entirely absent and we are made to respond to it through a substitution stimulus we have or may have an implicit action which is totally different from the original act though definitely derived from it. In case the same stimulus object substitutes for itself, which is a common occurrence as when a person makes us think of an experience we had with him some time ago, the resulting form of implicit action can be clearly made out to be a result of responding to the person in a previous setting through stimulation of the person in a present setting. In similar fashion, if we keep in mind the relation of stimulus and response we can differentiate between feeling reactions and other types of both implicit and overt behavior. While the stimulus object is present in the case of feeling responses the reaction systems consist of the mild or vigorous agitation of the person himself without directly producing any change in the stimulus object or in the person's relation to that object. Of course we have implicit feeling reactions and here the response is a vestigial remnant of the original reaction system induced by a substitution stimulus.

Implicit action, we may say, then, seems indirect because the original stimulus object is not present, or is not present in the same setting; but in either case, as we have previously made clear, the response has a direct adaptive bearing upon the adjustment stimulus. Our assumption is that implicit behavior constitutes direct adaptive responses in much the same way as the more striking cases of inhibition responses compose direct adaptive behavior. Contrariwise, in the case of typical language the action is overt and results or may result in some change in condition or existence of the stimulus, but the reaction is indirect because it is referential. Illustrative of such a situation is the operation of instrumental language responses.

Once more we may return to the distinguishing criterion between thought as implicit action, and language, bringing to bear upon the problem the facts concerning the relationship of stimulus and response. We suggest that while implicit responses are mediate and secondary reactions, that is to say, involve two forms of stimulation as do indirect language reactions, the contacts of the person with those stimuli in the two cases are so different that we must consider the respective actions to belong to different types of behavior. Differences in action and name between direct and indirect responses are due to the difference in character of the additional stimuli. Now what is the exact difference between the two kinds of additional stimuli? Our assumption is that implicit behavior is always a direct adaptation in spite of the fact that for its performance is required a substitute or additional stimulus. We call the additional stimulus substitutive because its only function is to call out the reaction to the adjustment stimulus, while the response is always made to the adjustment stimulus. Quite different is the auxiliary stimulus in language reactions which must operate along with and in synchronous addition to the adjustment stimulus. It is a genuine auxiliary stimulus operating as an integral factor in the total language activity. Furthermore we might even suggest that because in the case of implicit reactions the second stimulus merely substitutes for the adjustment stimulus, namely the thing or situation reacted to, there is really but one stimulus, while in the case of indirect or language reactions there arc always two stimuli for any specific reaction system. We have no hesitation, then, in asserting that language is not identical with thought, either when thought is considered as planning or problem-solving or when thought is made into merely implicit behavior.

Further evidence and of another sort, to establish the non-identity of language and implicit action or thought may be deduced from the following consideration, to wit, that the two types of action as responses to the same set of stimuli may definitely parallel each other without any sort of interference or conflict. Moreover is it not true that we can think of something beyond and entirely different from the thing or circumstance of which we are speaking, a condition which would be impossible if the two types of action were identical, since the person may be employing all of his language or thinking structures and mechanisms for performing one of the two simultaneously occurring forms of response?

Still another fact militates against our identification of language and thought (as implicit action). It is this, that our language reactions as far as their actual mode of operation is concerned are definitely acquired through social stimulation, whereas our implicit actions, though they may be symbolized, are to a great extent merely functions of our individual contacts with our surroundings. This individuality of response, it may be argued, is not any more true of thought than it is of language, for thought is also socially conditioned, but here the question arises whether we are not shifting our discussion from mere implicit action to the more complex forms of activity, namely, planning, or problem solving.

Neither thinking nor implicit action, then, is identical with language activity, and further, even if we agree that language is not inseparable from thought must we still say that language is the sole medium for the expression of thought or the actualization of implicit action? [12] Unhesitatingly we answer 'no,' and especially if by asking the question it is meant in any sense to establish any peculiar relationship between thought or implicit action and language responses. That thought need not be exclusively actualized through language is evident from the fact that because thinking is planning or problem-solving the expression of the reaction would doubtless occur in the form of actual overt responses made by way of changing some object or circumstance. Similarly, implicit action, being non-effective immediate action, would most likely have for its expression the actual initiation of some behavior affecting the previously absent and substituted for object which now has become available. Of a certainty, conditions are different in situations in which no final overt action is contemplated or possible, and in these situations the actualization of the thought or implicit action will be achieved through the medium of language. Possibly it may be objected that what we have referred to as actualization of thought is not what is usually meant by expression of thought, but what is meant by expression is rather communication or telling someone of what was thought. Certainly the communication of thought, although a very frequent form of human action, does not occur with such constancy considering the total number of possible cases of thought action as to make any thoroughgoing concomitancy possible. Very much of the thought of the world is set down in writing or expressed by word of mouth, but not all of it by far, nor perhaps half of it. As a matter of fact language being the typical form of indirect or referential behavior we can readily employ it in referring to our thought reactions as well as to all other sorts of actions and things. When communication occurs we must admit that we cannot conceive of any behavior that is in any sense nearly so effective for the purpose as is language.

Before concluding our discussion we might ask why should psychologists attempt to establish an identity or inseparable relation between thought and language? We believe the answer to lie in the suggestion that such an attempt is made in order to make thought a definite mode of psychological reaction and not an indefinite form of mental stuff or process. Admirable as is the motive for this identification and much as we approve of the attempt to bring psychological facts out of the clouds of unverifiable assertion, we must still withhold our assent from such an identifying procedure in the interests of other facts. What are the other facts? Briefly, all those complex and interesting developments and operation of the exceedingly effective indirect forms of psychological adaptation which we call language.

V. Modes of Language Reactions.—Because of the multiplicity of occasions for language adjustments and the consequent differences in their variety it is essential to provide some descriptive definiteness and order for such reactions. Two tasks especially here confront us. The first is to mark off what are actual language reactions from behavior which may closely resemble language and yet not be language. And secondly, we must distinguish between totally different modes of definitely established language reactions, for in failing to do this we might exclude from our enumeration of the facts of language authentic language reactions, as would be the case for example were we to confine language to merely verbal speech.

1. Morphological and Functional Language.—And first we must point out that upon a functional basis only can we accomplish our first classifactory purposes, namely to separate off language from non-language behavior. Even where we find behavior which is morphologically similar to other kinds of unmistakable language activities we must withhold from it the appellation of language unless it serves a language function. To put it differently, it must serve as indirect reactions or adjustments. Suppose I wish to have my typewriter operate more smoothly but cannot make the necessary changes myself; I must let my wishes be known to someone who is able to do it. My psychological adaptation is made by means of verbal speech or by pointing.

In contrast to this definite functional operation of language behavior it may happen that I may utter perfectly formed words or perform other genuinely linguistic reactions which will not at all serve as instrumental or even indirect adjustmental acts. These then we will exclude from the domain of functional language. An example would be the words we utter as replacement reactions in emotional situations. Along with the large number of reflexes which replace the absent final reaction system in emotional behavior segments we may utter words, mere verbalizations that are really acquired reflexes, which, owing to the fundamentally nonadjustmental character of emotional reactions, no more adapt the person to his surroundings than do the reflexes.[13]

Again, the use of words by infants in imitation of bits of conversation overheard also illustrates what is perfect language morphologically, but what at the same time is not in the least language functionally. It is possible also that words and phrases used by dissociated and otherwise abnormal persons (verbigeration) may exemplify morphological similarities to language responses but are certainly not themselves such behavior.

When we turn to other than verbal language reactions the criteria between language and other forms of behavior cannot be so well made out, since there is not the sharp division there between morphology and function that there is in the case of vocal language reactions. But since we assume the criterion of language to be the question whether the person performs an indirect response we can at least specify what are not language responses. For example, we can distinguish the true language reactions of the infant from its random acts that may be only morphologically language, if language at all. Thus the crying act of an infant may be considered both as a definite indirect action serving to communicate to someone its uncomfortable situation or as expressive of some such discomforting condition, but on the other hand the crying may be, from the language standpoint, purely random actions along with many other sorts of infant behavior which are merely indicative of superabundant energy.

And here an important suggestion surges in upon our exposition. In the form of a question it is this: what can we say of implicit language behavior, since by becoming implicit such behavior loses its function of indirect overt adjustment? To this query we can only answer that we trust accept the dictates of hard facts and agree that implicit language is not language, precisely as we say that spending money implicitly or partaking of a meal implicitly is not spending or eating. In our opinion we cannot avoid this conclusion much as we may consent to the proposition that implicit language reactions are morphologically just like definitely overt language responses.

To balance, as it were, this exclusion from the domain of language of a whole class of psychological reactions we must propose the unqualified inclusion of interjectional reactions in the realm of language. Especially is this inclusion to be urged in view of the fact that philologists either exclude or attempt to exclude interjections from language phenomena or else they tend to minimize the importance of such behavior. Why they do this is plain, since interjections are not conventionalized as are other forms of language. From the standpoint of reactions, however, such behavior answers as definitely and as effectively to the criteria of language behavior as any other sort of language reactions. To be more succinct, interjectional language reactions function as means or instruments to express the conditions of the person induced in him by various surrounding persons and events.

2. Expressive and Communicative Language.—Within the field of functional language, that is to say, definite language reactions, we may introduce a distinction of great importance; we may divide language into two large divisions, to each of which we may apply a distinctive term or name, to wit, expressive and communicative language.

(a) Expressive.—In general, we might characterize expressive language behavior by indicating that it comprises the individual's adjustment to stimuli which do not necessarily involve any relationship to another person. Expressive language reactions we may look upon, therefore, as in a sense the most illustrative of our indirect responses, since the exclusion of persons removes the possibility of a connection between language and any direct adjustment. But observe that when the reaction results in leaving a record, such a record may become a stimulus for some direct action on the part of the person and in consequence the original action may be considered as connected with a direct action. To illustrate, as I react favorably to a painting in an exhibition I express my admiration by writing 'wonderful' opposite the catalogue number of the painting. This expression may become a stimulus for my friend to purchase the picture.

Is it not easy to see that expressive language better illustrates indirectness of response because of the passivity of the reacting individual? Expressive language activity is more of the nature of self-recording behavior, the registration of how some object, event or person has affected us or how we should like or hope to have an event turn out, etc. Contrariwise, the communicative language reaction may take place through any number of intermediate persons as is illustrated by the passage of an order down through an ecclesiastical or military hierarchy. Certainly we can no better put the matter in hand than to say that expressive language actions stand as responses only; they do not serve as stimuli for other persons as is the case with at least some of the communicative language reactions.

Indirect, expressive language certainly is, but still it may involve the elaborate employment of tools or instruments (pen, picture) for its production, but here the instruments would be employed entirely to further the process of expression and not to effect some change in the adjustment stimulus object or to communicate in others the desire for such a change.

In all of this discussion let the reader beware, we are not using the term expression in the sense of a verbal or gestural manifestation of a mental state. Such a warning is doubtless superfluous from the standpoint of our exposition but the mentalistic way of looking at the matter is so prevalent that we cannot too frequently assert our departure from that tradition.

In quite another sense must we guard against a misconstruction concerning expressive language, namely, the idea that it expresses or is especially connected with emotions. In some sense this view is intimately associated with the general idea that language is the expression of mental states, for here it is assumed that an emotion is the mental state expressed. Now the patent reply to such a view is to assert that by means of expressive language the person performs actions involving what we may call ideas, desires, hopes as well as performing reactions that adjust him indirectly to events past, present or future. From the standpoint of the actual adjustmental situation expressive language is in no sense different from communicative language and in this statement we disagree with those who would make expressive language emotional as compared with communicative language which is assumed to be mainly or exclusively the expression of ideas.

Turning to the morphological feature of expressive language reactions we might expect, because of the commonness of verbal behavior, that expressive language will consist to a great extent of verbal reactions. But as a matter of fact, in comparison with communicative language, typical expressive reactions consist to a considerable degree of gestures of various sorts, facial expressions, smirking, sneering, crying, smiling, laughing, etc.

(b) Communicative.—In contrast to expressive reactions communicative language involves adjustment to some other person or persons and consists to a considerable degree of intentional and substitutive responses designed to bring about some change of an informational or overtly active sort in that other person with respect to the adjustment stimulus object or condition. We might indicate at this point that the criterion of communication depends upon the behavior of the second person rather than any result achieved by the first or stimulating person. In plainer words, we have communicative language when the transmissive or the first person's language reaction actually serves as a stimulus to arouse a response language reaction in the recipient. It follows, then at this particular point that the different phases of communicative language must be determined exclusively with reference to directly observable activities actually accomplished; that is to say, we need not consult the intentions or refer to the purposes of either person in the communicative situation. It is not a question whether they intended their language response to be heard or otherwise responded to. But we do not mean to exclude from our observations the distinction in communicative reactions between language spontaneously addressed to another person and language induced in the addressing person by a question or command of another individual. In the former case we consider the indirect reaction to be initiated by the adjustment stimulus (the thing spoken of) which reaction is then also conditioned by the auxiliary stimulus, namely the addressed person. The latter case, on the contrary, exhibits a reaction started off by the auxiliary stimulus (the person giving the command) which later, comparatively speaking, connects up with the adjustment stimulus (the object reacted to in the carrying out of the command). It must be observed, however, that the purpose of the first person is not essential as a characterizing feature of instrumental communicative language, for it may well be that my conversational reactions in which I relate to my friend the incidents of my trip abroad will serve as an instrumental stimulus for him to take the trip.

Purposes and intentions of individuals with respect to the adjustment stimulus do however make possible within the domain of communicative language the distinction between conversation and instrumental speech. Conversational language is communicative speech in which the transmissive individual is not planning any definite direct action with respect to the adjustment stimulus, while in instrumental communicative speech such a purpose and intention is manifest. That the purpose or intention refers to the changes with respect to the adjustment stimulus and not to the actions of the speaker is hardly necessary to make a point of.

In suggesting examples of communicative language we might mention verbal speech, and possibly song and music, as well as gestures (pointing), printing, writing, telegraphy, signaling, of various sorts, etc.

Poetry and other forms of literary production when considered as language reactions partake of both the expressive and communicative forms of language. As references to the esthetic adaptations of persons they are of course expressive reactions, but on the other hand they do serve to arouse reactions in other people in the sense that the language responses (poems, for instance) of the first person are at the same time communicative as well as expressive. These reactions as reactions may intentionally or unintentionally, but not accidentally, on the part of the reacting person inform the stimulated person of some fact or condition by means of some symbolic or instrumental, or at any rate, some indirect action.

Receptive and Transmissive Communicative Reactions.—Very essential it is to distinguish within the field of communicative language behavior between the receptive and transmissive sorts of reactions, a distinction made imperative by the fact that communicative language is interactional, that is, it involves two persons. It may well be in many cases that we are speaking of exactly the same act or the same sort of action, but in the one case the actor communicates with some one, whereas in the other, someone is being communicated with. Or we might say that in transmissive action the person's acts serve as stimuli to induce meaning reactions in a second person whose receptive action is at the same time a stimulus to the first person to perform a meaning action which again serves as a stimulus for the second, etc. In general, communicative language typifies the closest and most intensive interstimulation and interresponse activity:

Among the (1) transmissive responses we may name for illustrative purposes, speaking, writing, making signs, gestures, etc., while among the (z) receptive language reactions we may include hearing and seeing responses of all sorts.

As a final remark here it may be well to suggest that communicative language behavior is neither necessarily always more complex nor higher in the scale of human performances than the expressive language reactions. Quite the opposite, in fact, since some expressive language reactions such as poetry are by far as important as any kind of communicative behavior and certainly much more complex than most speech reactions. That this point is almost obvious is seen from the fact that much of the expressive action may be communicative as well as expressive.

In summing up the psychological facts which fall definitely under the heading of language behavior we find a large series of reaction types beginning with shoulder shrugging and other forms of gesturing which grow by combination and integration out of non-language expressive and manipulative actions and run up to the most complex and elaborate forms of verbal speech behavior.

VI. Types of Language Reaction Systems.—Not only can we differentiate between the various stimulus-response language situations as we did under the heading of modes, but we may also provide some arrangement of the vast amount of linguistic materials by classifying them according to the specific reaction systems involved. Naturally enough because of the similarities and overlappings in these reaction systems no hard and fast lines can be drawn between the different forms of language responses, still some order is possible. Accordingly, we plan to arrange a series of classes of language-reaction systems, a series founded on the differences between communicative language and which cuts across the boundaries between communicative and expressive speech. We base our classification on the communicative type of speech on the ground that not only will a greater simplicity and definiteness be achieved, but also, because no form of language activity need be neglected since under communicative language is represented every form of language act. Our greatest line of differentiation then will be that between the transmissive and receptive modes of action.

I. Primarily Transmissive Modes of Language. (a) Vocal Speech.[14] Very prominent in the list of all language reactions we find of course vocal speech. Not only has this type of language been developed as the most prominent form of expressive and communicative adaptation, but such language reactions have become connected with and instrumental to some of the most complex behavior of which the human being is capable. Vocal speech is an integral factor in all of our voluntary and thinking action, as well as our general social conduct. Under this heading we may place all the behavior phenomena which can be subsumed under the rubric of speech or talking.

In considering the graphic forms of sign and symbol making, that is to say writing and printing, we observe that a special virtue attaches to the fact that these reactions require an extension of the person's organic equipment for their performance. Not only can we thereby extend the scope of our immediate behavior as illustrated by the difference in transmitting information and other materials by word of mouth or gestures, but we also obtain thereby a more permanent record. It is not without the range of possibility that as Professor Warren [15] suggests, "the chief role of graphic language is to extend the range of communication in space and time." Think only of the information concerning ancient civilizations which the people of those times have supplied for us through the instrumentality of signs on bricks, clay tablets, monuments, etc.

(b) Vocal Gesture.—The vocal apparatus of the human individual not only is the instrument for our fully developed speech reactions but also for the simpler vocal gesturing, such as calling, crying, whistling, sighing, grunting in infants, singing and other forms. Vocal gesturing, while ordinarily expressive language behavior, can also function as definitely communicative expressive language reactions.

(c) Sub-vocal Speech.—Besides the overt and complete language behavior we have many kinds which are not audibly performed. Among such reactions are the silent speech and silent reading responses and more typically perhaps those language activities serving as phases of what are known as "mental" arithmetic, etc. By far the most of our complex behavior such as planning, brooding and various forms of thinking include many various forms of sub-vocal language. The student of language may well question whether these reactions may be considered as primarily transmissive, since we can very readily think of numerous instances in which they serve receptive functions, but in view of the fact that self-communication, in which they are transmissively employed, is so common, we include them here.

(d) Non-Vocal Gesturing.—Much of our language behavior goes on in the form of gestures; in fact since under this rubric we include most ofthe language reactions not involving vocal or verbal behavior the field of gestures is very large. Such behavior comprises a great variety of forms; here we have deaf and dumb language, the shoulder shrugging, facial gesturing and the movements of various parts of the body, eyes, arms, hands, head, etc.

Gestures are not only primary and exclusive language adaptations to various stimuli but they also function as adjunct responses along with other language reactions. Thus the motions of fingers, hands and arms, the shrugging of the shoulders and numerous sorts of facial expression may constitute the more or less essential accompaniments of vocal speech. So important are such accompanying reactions in many cases that without them the vocal reactions carry little or no significance. A field experiment in this connection involves the observation of the degree of understanding which we derive from listening to conversation both when it is and when it is not accompanied by gestural responses.

Possibly it is not beside the point to assert that gestural language represents almost every phase of human adjustment to stimuli. It may express and communicate thought, feeling, desire, the state of health, kind of disease, activity, and other forms of adjustment. By language gestures we perform almost every sort of adaptation that we can otherwise execute.

(e) Making Signs and Symbols.—Very numerous are those language reactions requiring some extension of the organism's natural equipment for their execution. While vocal and bodily gesturing involve merely our own elaborate organismic equipment other forms of language behavior involve the use of instruments such as a pencil, pen, graver, pennants, type and paper, skins, stones, and other impressible materials as well as sound-making (telegraph) and other types of mediating tools. Such instruments are employed not only for our own personal activities but also for our complex social responses since the most important technical and scientific information can be intentionally conveyed by the use of such instrumental reactions. Most interesting is it to observe that the language reactions in which we employ tools for sign-making are not in principle different from our complex verbal reactions. The latter also involve definite autonomous tools or instruments, that is to say, sound combinations or symbols. Are not the entire set of materials with which the philologist deals formal symbolic tools employed by specific groups of individuals as media of intercourse, tools which are modified and developed to suit their own specific needs? In comparing sign and symbol language with verbal responses we find the greatest difference to lie merely in the fact that the latter are performed exclusively with our own organismic equipment. Examples of this sign-symbol class of language responses are writing, printing, picture drawing as in the case of the cave dweller, using codes of all varieties, stamps and flowers, also wigwagging and signaling of all sorts.

While expressive language is not excluded from this type as witness the inclusion of picture and other forms of writing, these reactions on the whole serve to convey in a more formal manner than expressive behavior our ideas, wants, desires, etc.

II. Primarily Receptive Reactions.—While as a matter of fact the receptive language reactions consist mainly of definite seeing and hearing responses we might generalize all of the characteristically receptive reactions and group them under the heading of understanding. In so doing we not only generalize all the specific reactions but we separate off the understanding reactions which are precurrent to or anticipatory of final language reactions from the latter. This separation is made possible primarily by the fact that in the majority of cases the seeing or hearing acts are precurrent understanding reactions which may accompany other precurrent acts of an implicit or partially implicit nature, while the end reactions in a language behavior segment are overt reactions. We might point out also that the justification for separating the understanding reactions from the rest of the behavior segment lies in the possibility it affords us of a better comprehension of the whole series of factors.

Understanding responses are meaning reactions. That is to say, they function as means to the performance of some other act, and may be roughly said to consist of a realization or discrimination of the stimulus object or condition. This realization makes for an appropriate final response. The degree of realization ascribable to the meaning response depends upon whether the precurrent reactions in a behavior segment are or are not exclusively overt. As a matter of fact, the simplest sort of understanding reaction is one of which there is no discernible precurrent reaction at all but only the one overt reaction system. Such a case is illustrated by the incident in which pulling the hand away is practically a part of the hearing of the admonition to "look out for the saw." Or we might say that a simple reaction system includes the linguistic hearing act plus the reply, with whatever language that contains. If the stimulus calls out definite precurrent acts, but only overt ones, as is the case when we first exclaim, "Oh, a saw," and then pull our hand away, we must assume that there is a greater degree of understanding or comprehension of the situation involved. Even more understanding or comprehension of the stimulating situation must be ascribed to the precurrent receptive language reactions when they accompany or precede thinking actions. In these cases we have very complex behavior segments or behavior patterns which are combination thinking and language reactions. We wonder whether it is not owing to the strikingness of these complex combination responses that the mistake can be made of identifying language and thought. The reader must observe that in all of our illustrations we have assumed that the language reactions are indirectly adapting responses connected with direct overt and implicit responses. Such are the typical ways in which our language reactions operate, for they are in the final analysis always definite adaptational reactions and are thus conditioned by the stimulating auspices. Further, it must be observed that although in our illustrations we dealt with language understanding responses serving as precurrent functions such reactions may themselves be final responses.

(a) Reading and Comprehension [16] , Reactions.—To turn now to the more specific receptive language reactions we find here a series of specific types of understanding responses to a variety of different stimulating situations requiring different modes of contact such as visual, auditory or other sort. Reading, for example, covers a series of responses to language stimuli seen, while comprehension composes a number of responses to sounds heard, as in listening to verbal speech or other sound stimuli. The reaction systems operating here involve especially the visual and auditory receptor mechanisms, the optic and auditory neural pathways, localizable cortical mechanisms, all sorts of muscular mechanisms (eye, head, chest, laryngeal) and various speech processes. These different specific comprehension and seeing responses, it is well to observe, may involve different orders of action on the part of the responding individual. The stimuli of the comprehension and language reactions may be (1) intimate internal mechanisms in the sense of actual speech, or (2) partially external mechanisms as in the employment of signs or (3) mainly non-organismic mechanisms as in writing to a person or printing material for him.

The term reading, let us note, covers not only the ordinary acts of perusing print but all forms of visual reactions to linguistic stimuli. Thus, we may speak of reading facial expressions and gestures of all sorts besides lip reading in its various forms. In all these cases reading constitutes adjustment responses, while in other situations as in vocal speech conversation the reading of expression and gestures constitutes auxiliary reactions either as (1) additional responses to the speech stimuli or (2) as direct reactions to gestural expressions serving as the setting factors of the vocal speech stimuli.

What is meant by hearing is more definite and familiar and requires no further comment with the exception that we might suggest that just as in auditory reactions we find auxiliary visual components so in visual language reactions we may find auditory components, for example, implicit reactions to sound stimuli. As our last sentence indicates, we may think of reading as a general name for visual receptive language reactions, while the term comprehension serves in a similar capacity for all receptive auditory responses.

(b) Tactual Receptive Language Reactions.—Reading and writing constitute what we may well call the normal and usual forms of receptive language reactions. Besides these types we find also, though in unusual cases only, that tactual reactions are also made to the transmissive reactions or language stimuli. Examples are the reactions of the deaf and blind to the lip movements of other persons and to the raised types of blind printing.

VII. The Varied Character of Language Phenomena.—From our study of language phenomena we may readily derive the notion concerning the multiple character of such facts. Not only is a language response a definite adaptation to stimuli but it may at the same time itself be a stimulus for another response. Moreover, as we have already intimated, it is necessary to separate the psychological facts of language from the physical, social and other phases of language and incidentally bring into sharper relief the functional and dynamic character of language. Probably we can best accomplish this our present purpose by analyzing a word.

1. Non-Psychological Language Words. — (a) In the first place, a word may be considered merely as a purely physical or natural object which exists in nature exactly like any other physical thing and with the same characteristics. Here we mean to refer to a printed word (as it stands unread in a book) for example, or to a sound. Now of course in contrast with a physical object such as a stone we might say that the word as a physical object was invented or developed through some human agency, but this difference between a stone and a word is only relative, for surely all of the stones in our urban environment, at least, have been somehow transformed or modified through human agency, but this in no degree minimizes their physical or objective character.

(b) A word may be considered also as a human institution and now we refer to the word as a member of a specific series of language customs. Here the word has a very different potential function but still it may exist totally unused and little known. Such instances are all of the words in the Moeso-Gothic language which exists only in the Bible version made by Bishop Ulfilas.

(c) Another type of word which belongs to the class of the two previous words, namely non-psychological data, is the uttered word under certain circumstances. Now we are thinking of the word act, the act of speaking a word, which is merely morphologically language but not functionally so. Here we have random vocal actions which do not function either as an expressive or communicative adaptation. For instance, such a word as that uttered by a person when under the effect of ether. While these are undoubtedly psychological acts instead of natural or physical objects they are not data for the psychologist of language nor do they belong to the domain of psychological language behavior.

2. Words as Definite Psychological Data.—All three of the words we have just discussed may be considered as things and acts, but not as serving any specific language function; they are independent of any immediate language use. We will next consider the words serving in some sort of language adjustment. Now let it be understood that in this case we may still be referring to these other words but now they are, psychologically speaking, in some functional relationship. From a psychological standpoint it is only in case words are in a stimulus-response relationship that we think of them as definite psychological data. We may differentiate then between the following forms of stimuli and response words as psychological language data.

(a) Words as Stimuli.—Here we may speak of a printed word which serves as a definite stimulus to arouse a language response in some person, any kind of physical word which calls out an indirect reaction. This word we may look upon as a symbol, which presumably with or without the intention of anyone at this moment calls out a meaning or language response in some person.

Also under this division we have word acts serving as stimuli language functions. Here we include definite verbal utterances which bring about responses on the part of some person whether the individual himself or some other person. We may consider these word-acts as stimuli, irrespective of whether the person intends them to be such, and so we might indicate here that we have two classes of definite language function, named, respectively, expressive and transmissive stimulus word-acts. We may also observe that these words may operate as definite symbols in the same sense as the printed word. Probably in most cases in which the non-transmissive stimulus word-act operates, the total segment of behavior will not be language. That is to say, the word voluntarily performed by the person may still not serve to elicit a definite language response on the part of some other individual.

(b) Words as Responses.—Here we think of the phases of the word in its functional operation as a response to some sort of stimulus, whether language or not. Now these words may be definite overt responses as in the case of answering questions, or they may be sub-vocal or other forms of verbal meaning and understanding responses. They may operate as final acts or as precurrent responses to some other final response.

In summarizing this analysis of words as language data and the differentiation of them from various kinds of nonpsychological data, notice that we may speak of what from the every-day standpoint is considered the same word, but this same word is both physical and psychological, and may be at the same time both a stimulus and a response.

VIII. Summary.—(1) For objective psychology the problem of language is to place the prominent and pervasive linguistic reactions in their proper perspective with relation to the other coordinating functioning responses to stimuli and to avoid looking upon language as outer manifestations of mental states or the mere mechanics of speech.

(2) As a preliminary approach to the analysis of language we have distinguished between anthropological data (language as cultural products or entities; the philological data (language as fixed conventional modes of phonetic systems and their symbolic representation) and the psychological data (language as adjustmental behavior, that is, definite responses to stimuli). To a considerable extent the materials of the anthropologist and the philologist may be looked upon purely as stimuli when they are phases of psychological situations.

(3) A language act, being as definite a response as any other psychological act, must be somehow differentiated from other kinds of action. Our criterion is that language responses are inherently indirect or referential adaptations to stimuli, that is, they involve two stimuli, one the adjustment stimulus, or the thing, person or situation acted upon or reacted to (for example a book to be picked up), the other an auxiliary stimulus or the person using language (giving a command, for example, for the book to be picked up). Two kinds of indirect action we may find, which we named respectively (1) mediative (language reactions connected with a direct reaction), and (2) referential (language reactions not connected with a direct response), the mediative type being related to direct action in three ways, namely, preceding, accompanying, or following, and the referential type either substituting for direct action or being purely conversational.

(4) Because of the close relationship and apparent similarity between thought and language (a similarity which leads psychologists to identify the two), we compared these two types of behavior, pointing out that they constitute (a) different types of adaptive responses on the part of the person and (b) that the two operate very differently.

(a) Thinking acts are either (1) planning, problem-solving, etc., definite adaptations to problematic or difficult situations or (2) simple implicit responses, that is to say, responses to absent adjustment stimuli aroused by a substitute stimulus. When thinking acts fall under (1) they are clearly different from conversation or language communication. So far as (2) is concerned, all types and modes of behavior may be implicitly performed including thinking (problem-solving), and consequently thought is no more identical with speech than with drinking or smoking.

With respect to (b), whereas language is always indirect adaptation, thinking is always direct.

Other facts militating against the identification of language and thought are (a) we can think and speak, or otherwise linguistically react, simultaneously to the same stimuli without any interference whatever. Also we can react to two entirely different stimuli at the same time when frequently it is possible to assume that either would require the use of the whole set of the same response factors that would have to be used in the other action, and (b) language responses are different from thinking reactions (as implicit action at least) because they are more conventional.

To all of this discussion it should be added that from a morphological standpoint at different times thought and language may involve of course the same structural elements.

(5) Language reactions maybe divided into various modes, (1) morphological (not serving true language function) and (2) functional (acting as a definite language response); the latter divided into (a) expressive (not involving any adjustive relationship to another person), and (b) communicative (involving adjustment to some other person). Communicative reactions are divided into (1) transmissive (language reactions serving as language stimuli) and (2) receptive (language reactions serving as responses only). Much of the expressive action may be communicative also, provided it serves as a language stimulus for some other person.

(6) Language reaction systems can be classified on the basis of a communicative form of language into the following types: I. Primarily transmissive, (a) vocal speech, (b) vocal gesture, (c) sub-vocal speech, (d) non-vocal gesture, (e) making signs and symbols; II. primarily receptive language reactions or understanding responses, (a) reading and comprehension, and (b) tactual receptive language reactions.

(7) Finally to differentiate between the various characters of language phenomena we analyzed words as follows: I. non-psychological words—(a) as purely physical or natural objects, (b) as morphologically language but not functionally so, (c) as human institutions (language custom); II. psychological data-words, (a) words as stimuli, and (b) words as responses.

Notes

1. As exemplified by such laws as Grimm's, Grassmann's, Verner's, etc.

2. And so it is entirely incorrect from a psychological standpoint to define language as "a system of signs, different from the things signified, but able to suggest them" (James), for while this definition does touch some psychological language facts namely, signs, it excludes the essential features of language and replaces them with the data of philology,

3. See Watson's excellent description, 'Behavior,' 1914, p. 329 ff.

4. It is for this reason no doubt that Watson calls language reactions substitute responses, cf. ' Behavior,' 1914, p. 329 ff; ' Psychology,' 1919, p. 319 ff. We do not believe that substitution is a general characteristic of language reactions although such a description fits some language types.

5. For example, naming an object may no more be a language reaction than looking at it for all the laryngeal processes involved.

6. Such a problem is raised by Warren, 'Human Psychology,' 1919, p. 321.

7. Is it not this shifting from thinking as problem-solving, to thinking as implicit action which lies at the basis of Watson's identification of thought and language? Cf. Brit. J. of Psychol., 1920, 2, 89, et passim.when so operating, then it is almost obvious that we cannot identify the two.

8. Here we must distinguish between implicit action of any sort considered as thought, and implicit thinking. The latter, of course, because of the absence of any adequate stimuli, is about as ineffective a form of action as we can well imagine. Brooding and dreaming are examples in point. No one of course will confuse such implicit thinking with thought that goes on in terms of implicit action, say implicit military operation, even though the latter can be contrasted with thinking in overt terms, as in the setting up of a complex original scientific apparatus.

9. Otis, Arthur S., 'Do We Think in Words,' PSYCHOL. REV., 1920, 27, 339-449, has excellently described a number of situations in which thinking is doubtless a distinct process from verbal language. While this author may not have successfully combated Watson's view which he attacks, because the latter does not limit his linguistic thought actions to verbal responses, we still believe that thinking, whether problem-solving or merely implicit action is not the same kind of psychological phenomenon as language. Perhaps it will not be considered too presumptuous of us to believe that, in view of our total rejection of any but an organismic hypothesis of thinking activity, Watson may not disagree with our practical functional distinction between thinking and language.

10. See below the distinction between expressive and communicative language.

11. Different, we should perhaps say here, instead of whole, because every unit of reaction is a reaction system.

12. Expression of thought' is a faulty term, implying as it does the embodiment of a psychic stuff or process. When properly used it refers to the employment of language or other action during the act of thinking or informing someone of what thinking action we have been engaged in.

13. Cf. Kantor, 'A Naturalistic Description of Emotions,' Psychol. REV., 1921, 28,19-42,120-140.

14. It is not intended that this list should be arranged in the order of the importance of the reactions involved, since even in the absence of an objective standard it must be conceded that written language in cultured groups hardly stands second in functional value to vocal speech.

15. 'Human Psychology,' p. 319.

16. In the absence of a word to represent understanding responses for auditory stimuli corresponding to reading for visual stimuli the writer follows Professor Warren in using the term comprehension in a slightly technical sense. Cf. Warren, 'Human Psychology,' p. 320.

V CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL Y X NACIONAL DE PSICOLOGÍA CLÍNICA

2011-12-01T19:06:00.000-08:00

Este congreso es organizado por la Sociedad Española de Psicología conductual del 26 al 28 de abril del 2012, la sede del lugar será el Palacio de la Magdalena Calle de la Familia Real 39005, Santander.

Si quieres ser ponente de algún trabajo de investigacion la fecha límite es hasta el 10 de febrero del 2012, tendras que cubrir con ciertos requisitos, y curbrir tu cuota de inscripción.

La otra opción es que acudas a escuchar los trabajos o inscribirte a un taller. Cualquiera de las dos opciones es buena, así que no pierdas el tiempo he inscribete.

Cognitive-behavioral case formulation and treatment design A problem-solving approach

2011-12-01T18:38:00.000-08:00

Esta guía facil de usar, te ayudará a desarrolar planes de tratamiento en Terapia Cognitivo Conductual de 11 problemas psicológicos comunes (por ejemplo, trastorno depresivo mayor,ansiedad generalizada, trastorno límite de la personalidad, los problemas de la ira). Te invitamos a que lo hojees, encontraras que algunas hojas no estan permitidas verlas, tal vez despues de ver el indice te animes a comprarlo, lo cual seria muy bueno.

2012 Autism Conference

2011-11-22T21:03:00.000-08:00

Science-Based Social and Communication Strategies in Autism

Del viernes 27 de enero al domingo 29 de enero del 2012 la ABAI llevara acabo un conjunto de conferencias y talleres en la ciudad de Philadelphia, En donde el asistente tendra la oportunidad de conocer investigaciones acerca del autismo,tratamientos para el mismo.

Habra presentaciones de academicos prestigiados ademas de ello el asistente podra observar los diferentes stands y los libros que ahi se venderan.

La Sexta Conferencia Anual de Autismo presenta nueve expertos en relación con los datos pertinentes sobre los niños y adultos con autismo. Además, habrá dos sesiones de carteles que contienen un total de 139 carteles, ofreciendo asistentes a la conferencia la oportunidad de revisar la investigación más importante se llevó a cabo en todo el mundo en el área del autismo. ABAI también está ofreciendo dos talleres de 3 horas, titulados (1) Promoting Complex Social Skills in Individuals With Asperger's Disorder and High Functioning Autism and (2) Evidence-Based Communication Approaches for Children With Autism.

Libro: Psicologia clinica de la salud. Un enfoque conductual

2011-10-21T23:47:00.000-07:00

Libro: Introducción al enfoque ABA en autismo y retraso del desarrollo un manual para padres y educadores

2011-10-16T18:19:00.001-07:00

A continuación se muestra un libro de Claudio Trivisonno, y como su nombre lo indica es introductorio al enfoque ABA, su narrativa es fácil de entender. Me he dado la tarea de iniciar a revisarlo y lo encuentro interesante y por supuesto lo recomiendo.

Pueden visitar la pagina del Grupo "alter" ahí se encuentra la opción para que lo puedan adquirir, además de ello pueden saber más sobre el trabajo que ellos realizan en Argentina.

Cabe resaltar que los enfoques terapéuticos basados en ABA son los únicos tratamientos con evidencia científica de eficacia en la actualidad. La difusión de estos trabajos resultan de mucha importancia, los blogs que difunden el análisis de la conducta deben apoyarlos, para que cada día más y más personas conozcan los alcances del análisis de la conducta y erradicar mitos acerca del mismo. Existen muchos tratamientos pero no cuentan con la evidencia científica que avale su eficacia por lo tanto no son recomendados.

Conferencia de Skinner

2011-10-06T22:05:00.000-07:00

Hola, amig@s a continuación les mostramos unos vídeos de una conferencia impartida por B. F. Skinner

Caja ABA

2011-10-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

La universidad de Oviedo presentó la herramienta denominada "Caja ABA" la cual es el resultado del proyecto científico SCIENCE AND THE TREATMENT OF AUTISM: A multimedia package for parents and professionals (STAMPPP), que busca dar a conocer a padres y educadores de niños autistas la terapia más efectiva para mejorar el aprendizaje y la calidad de vida en los niños afectados .

La caja contiene:

 Manual sobre el método ABA

 Un DVD  con vídeos de profesionales y de padres

 CD-ROM con recursos  variados

 Un cuaderno para registrar conductas

 Un bolígrafo

 Una mascota del proyecto

El grupo investigador es dirigido por Luis Antonio Pérez González, es el único en España que investiga con la metodología ABA y que participa en el proyecto STAMPP, el cual es un programa Leonardo da Vinci de difusion de la Unión Europea que fue dirigido por el  Dr. Mickey Keenan, de la Universidad del Ulster, y en el que  participaron investigadores del Reino Unido, Alemania  y Noruega.

Este material se distribuirá en España,  Reino Unido, Alemania y Noruega

Un dato importante que cabe resaltar el vicerrector de investigación ya que destacó el trabajo en equipo del departamento de psicología, que ha recibido tres premios internacionales por parte de la Asociación Internacional de Análisis de la  Conducta (ABAI) y se ha convertido en una referencia a nivel europeo e  internacional. 

La  Universidad de Oviedo dispone de mil cajas ABA que se destinarán a  agrupaciones profesionales, a colegios y a asociaciones de padres de  toda España. 

Master en Intervención ABA en Autismo y Trastornos del Desarrollo modalidad a distancia

2011-09-29T21:07:00.000-07:00

ABA  España nos ofrece la master en la modalidad a distancia uno de los  principales atractivos del programa es el acceso a la acreditacion de la   Behavior Analyst Certification  Board,  Inc. La cual aprueba los contenidos sobre análisis de la conducta, así  como el programa de practicas, y certifica a los profesionales de la intervención ABA en todo el globo.

ABA España en sus objetivos principales se encuentra la difusión internacional del análisis de la conducta y facilitar el accesos a sus programas en otros países, ABA España a diseñado la modalidad a distancia a través de la plataforma e-learning Moodle de ABA España, la cual posibilita_

Recibir los materiales docentes de todas las clases
Ver vídeos didácticos sobre los contenidos de las clases
Realizar los exámenes y recibir los resultados
Interactuar con los profesores y resto de alumnos a través de chats y tutorías

Los   alumnos tendrán la posibilidad de realizar tutorías telefónicas o por   Skype previa petición. La superación del curso requerirá aprobar las   pruebas de adquisición de habilidades específicas de cada una de las   clases. Estas pruebas evalúan el grado de conocimientos adquiridos por   el alumno correspondientes al programa teórico. 

Proyecto Kiwix

2011-09-24T14:55:00.000-07:00

Que tal amigos y amigas platicando con mi a amigo nierox me entere del proyecto Kiwix cuyo objetivo principal es brindar conocimiento de manera offline, lo cual se refiere a tener acceso a la informacion sin conexion a internet. los creadores creadores son partidiarios al igual que abcbehavior de que todo el mundo debe tener acceso a la información no importando sus creencias, etnia, color, región en donde vive, etc. En México existen numerosas comunidades marginadas y este proyecto te brinda la oportunidad de brindarles el acceso a la información, tu como prestador de servicio social o como trabajador de la comunidad puedes solidarizarte e instalar este software libre en los ordenadores y apoyar a tu prójimo.

Kiwix es un lector de contenidos multimedia especializado en disponer Wikipedia sin conexión a Internet (ver características). Esto se lleva a cabo, mediante la lectura del contenido del proyecto almacenado en un archivo de formato ZIM, que no es más que el contenido de la wikipedia comprimido. La versión Kiwix-serve funciona como servidor local HTTP.

Estamos en constante crecimiento y trabajamos juntos para brindar las últimas actualizaciones de archivos ZIM para varios idiomas, si deseas colaborar puedes utilizar esta guía. Siempre estaremos atentos por si necesitas ayuda y para guiarte en el proceso de creación de archivos ZIM. Actualmente, es posible leer cualquier proyecto wikimedia, y no solamente wikipedia para la cual fue en un principio diseñado. Kiwix es un proyecto software libre liberado bajo GPL3. Está conformado principalmente por colaboradores, no poseemos apoyo financiero y no tenemos animo de lucro. Confiamos en la comunidad y trabajamos por pasión.

En la pagina del proyecto podemos ver los archivos .zim que podemos descargar. El idioma español cuenta con todos los artículos hasta septiembre del 2010 y pesa 7 GB (Descargar vía torrent). Si tu hablas otro idioma puedes visitar la página oficial del proyecto donde podras encontrarlo en varios idiomas.

An Analysis of Psychological Language Data

2011-09-16T22:55:00.000-07:00

Jacob Robert Kantor
Indiana University

Descargar en versión pdf.

1. The Problem of Language. If we include under the heading of language all of its varieties of expressive and communicative behavior we will find language to be not far from our most pervasive form of action. Not a moment of our lives passes but that we perform a great many language reactions, either alone or in conjunction with other types of behavior. Consider that language reactions comprise not only speaking and reading but also are essentially involved in such complex behavior as musing, desiring, thinking, dreaming, planning and willing; in fact we might say that language responses not only constitute important exclusive adaptations to stimuli but parallel and complement almost all of our complex behavior.

And yet it is not incorrect to say that such widespread and important reactions as language consists of, have not been adequately treated by psychologists. True it is that Wundt has given us a two-volume treatise on language, but unfortunately that writer was mainly interested to place a structuralistic psychological foundation under the data of the philologist with the consequence that the treatise does not handle the facts of language as specifically psychological activities but rather as external manifestations of mental states or the social products of psychic processes. Likewise, the behaviorist has recently given some prominence to discussions of language, but he again has been merely concerned to establish the objectivity of thought by identifying it with expression; so that the behaviorist just as much as the introspectionist has foregone the treatment of language as distinct concrete adaptations to stimuli along with the other types of psychological reactions. In view of this situation the writer undertakes an analysis of language reactions as prominent and significant data of objective psychology.

2. Differentiation of Psychological from other Language Data. (1) The Anthropological Data. Close study of language phenomena impresses us seriously with the extreme necessity of differentiating the psychological facts of language from other language data, for obviously, language phenomena constitute the subject-matter of several humanistic sciences. Is not language just as essentially a cultural fact, a matter of historical development, of social custom as it is a series of specific responses to particular stimuli? Now it is precisely the circumstance that language belongs to different domains of investigation which makes it difficult to keep separate the different approaches to language study, but which at the same time makes it so rigorously imperative that such a distinction between different data be observed. Penalties in abundance pursue us when we confound the different types of language data, for then we almost inevitably misinterpret our facts. When we ask what it is that makes especially difficult the distinction of psychological language from anthropological language we find this answer, namely, that the data of anthropological language, that is to say, language customs and traditions, constitute genuine though potential phases of psychological behavior segments, to wit, stimuli to language responses. To be more explicit, it is undoubtedly true that when individuals are about to develop language reactions such development is subject to the conditioning pressure of customs and institutions developed by their groups, but until such institutions actually function as stimuli to language behavior they cannot be called psychological facts. The difficulty in keeping anthropological language in the form of institutional and cultural entities distinct from psychological facts arises from the circumstance that group language institutions are often activities, but be it noted that such behavior must be looked upon as the abstracted activities of groups and their various influences upon one another and not as the concrete responses of persons to specific stimuli.

Philological Language Data. Much the same care employed in distinguishing between the psychological and anthropological phases of language must be exercised in keeping distinct the psychological and philological aspects. For philological data and interpretations have to do mainly with fixed forms of socially prevalent language institutions and their periodic variation [1] and not at all with the concrete forms of language responses such as especially concern the psychologist. And so we may say that the philologist gets no closer to the psychologist's data than does the anthropologist, although the philologist may be exclusively concerned with the facts of some particular language, and not languages as social institutions. That is to say, the philologist may also deal with the institutional stimuli of genuine language reactions but this is only one kind of language fact, and one which, unless it is contained in an actual response situation, or behavior segment, consists of conventions of speech rather than speech itself. When the philologist's material is not part of a behavior segment, such as the contents of a book when it is not being read, this material may be considered as a physical object exactly like any other kind of physical thing. Not incorrect is it to say that the philologist is interested in evidences of speech, spoken or written, as well as in standards of speech and only very remotely concerned with the psychological adaptations constituting language behavior, for the latter involves much more than is comprised in customary speech. To be brief, the philologist is essentially interested in fixed modes of phonetic systems and their symbolic representation and not in actual responses to stimuli.

Because the philologist is interested in conventional sounds and their symbolization his data and interpretations cannot be directly accepted by the psychologist. In the first place, many of the philologist's problems fall without the province of psychology since they have developed entirely as historical facts; among such facts are the problems of gender, the development of inflection or analysis and the absence of words expressing abstract ideas. In the second place, the philologist is moved by his interest in the conventional to exclude interjectional reactions or to think of them as evolutionary prototypes of standardized speech, in other words, to place too great emphasis upon standard words whether as roots or affixes or as combinations of the two. And in the third place, the philologist assumes that language is a series of symbols for the communication of ideas through definite and even logical vehicles, namely, sentences. To accept the philologist's material manifestly would put the psychologist at a great disadvantage for it would cause him to overemphasize the crystallized products and results of historical reactions and to pay scant attention to actual present behavior.

Psychological Language Data.—In striking contrast to both of the above treatments of language, the psychologist must look upon language as a series of intimate actions of particular persons, speaking, reading, listening, gesturing and interjecting, in short, adaptive responses. [2] As a student of language the psychologist is not interested in the existence of language or languages even when those are considered as reactional products. That the psychologist's interest in language is a much more particularized one appears from the fact that even when the work of the anthropologist and philologist overlaps that of the psychologist, that is to say, when the former scientists handle language as psychological phenomena, they deal with transmissive action only, while the psychologist, on the other hand, must carefully take note of the receptive aspect of language also, to wit, the receiving response actions of language behavior.
In sum, from the psychological standpoint language comprises various sorts of adjustmental behavior, diverse adaptations to surrounding stimuli. Such reactions, in common with other types of psychological response, serve as definite means of accomplishing specific results. In consequence, for the psychologist language reactions are unique personal and practically serviceable or expressive reactions. Whatever is common or standard about such behavior is due entirely to the commonness and institutional character of the stimuli which condition the acquisition of the specific phases of language reactions and which call them out when they are acquired.

III. What are the Psychological Characteristics of Language?—Our first approach to a psychological investigation of language forces upon us the conviction that language is far from easy to define and therefore it is essential that we formulate as clear a criterion as possible to mark off language responses from other kinds of action. Upon reviewing many facts of language, we do, arrive, however, at this distinguishing mark which we believe rather definitely divides off language reactions from other kinds of psychological facts, to wit, that language reactions are inherently indirect or referential adaptations to stimuli.

In order to examine and establish this criterion it is best first to contrast language reactions with some of the most direct and immediate forms of responses. Such direct responses are illustrated by simple reflex action or complex esthetic reaction to a picture or other work of art, as well as thinking about some thing or person. Such acts have no further reference to present or non-present objects or persons; nothing else but the one directly functioning stimulus and response is involved in the behavior segment.
Generalizing the fact of indirectness of action which characterizes language behavior we might say that language involves at least two stimuli, one the adjustment stimulus, the thing, event or person talked about, referred or otherwise responded to, and the other the stimulus object or person provoking the action, whether talking, thinking or some sort of overt behavior.
Illustrative of the indirectness of language behavior is the ordinary conversation or communication reaction. 'A' desires some object picked up; he therefore offers 'B' a verbal or gestural stimulus which we may call the auxiliary stimulus, and which serves as the means to bring about �B's reaction to the book which may be called for our present purposes the adjustment stimulus. What is essentially language in this situation is the indirect action which �A' performs with respect to the object picked up. The specific means by which the indirect reaction is accomplished, whether through spoken words or pointing gestures makes no difference so far as the language features of the situation go.

Perhaps more clearly can we appreciate the operation of the indirect response when we alter our point of vantage from that of the speaker or the person who uses the language as an instrument to bring about an indirect response to a stimulus object, to that of the person who is involved in the actual carrying out of the reaction. Now while the second person adjusts himself directly to the stimulus object, say a book that he was told to pick up, he at the same time is involved in an indirect response to the request or speech stimulus.
But here we can imagine someone saying, "Is this action of picking up the book not a direct response on the part of ' B ' to the request of 'A' as stimulus?" Considerable ambiguity we must admit to exist here, but we believe only with respect to the name of the stimulus. For observe, that it is hardly probable that 'B' is in fact performing a direct action to 'A,' but rather to 'A' 's request. But if the latter is true, then because the action of 'A' (the command) is a referential act, 'B' 's response itself cannot but refer to the book and hence the request is only an auxiliary stimulus, and if we do not allow this then we may still say that the person who gives the command is not like an ordinary natural object in his role as stimulus. To an ordinary natural object we can only perform direct action, both where the object serves as a substitution or as an adjustment stimulus, while in the case of the person his significance as a stimulus lies precisely in the fact that he can refer to things aside from himself by means of conventional signs, which he and those with whom he communicates, have developed in common social situations. The two stimuli can equally well be analyzed when the person talks to himself as when he is reacting to another person. That means to say, that when I speak to myself about myself I am both adjustment and auxiliary stimulus to myself as acting person. Again, when I perform a direct reaction to some object, say a fright or startle response, to an automobile which barely misses striking me, that object or the accident situation may be both auxiliary and adjustment stimulus for a secondary or indirect reaction. It is possible of course that we can react directly to persons as we do to natural objects but in this case we should not attempt to consider any phase of tire situation as language.

Whilst the form of language which we have just been discussing and which we name communicative may fairly be called typical it is not by far the most important or the most widely prevalent of our language behavior. But certain it is, however, that in all behavior properly denominated language we can distinguish the two stimulating situations or circumstances. And upon the particular mode of contact with these two stimuli we can in our opinion establish the criterion of indirectness for language reactions.

Two types of indirectness or degrees of language reactions may be distinguished upon the basis of what might be called from a biological or social standpoint the absence of direct adjustments to stimuli, or perhaps the absence of any overtly adjustmental behavior. To illustrate, language in the form of casual conversation may be considered from a biological standpoint as not adaptive at all, while language in the form of instructions or commands may be thought of as indirectly adaptive from the same standpoint. In general, we might name the two degrees of indirect action (1) mediative and (2) referential language. The criterion for distinction is the closeness to a direct response, the referential being the farthest removed. And so we might consider as referential all the language behavior which we call ordinary conversation and the exclamatory reactions which substitute for direct reactions. Now although it is true that in tire case of some referential behavior a direct reaction to a stimulus is out of the question, in the sense that it need never occur, as for example casual conversation, still the criterion of indirectness is just as valid in such cases as when some direct reaction is possible. Under the division of mediative behavior we can place all the language reactions which are in some form or other connected with direct reactions, that is, those responses which are instrumental in provoking direct action or closely associated with it.

Since in practice language responses may be said to be related to direct action in four ways, namely, they may precede, accompany, follow, or substitute for direct action, it may serve to illustrate the indirect character of language reactions to discuss briefly the four different ways in which language behavior operates. We will find that the language responses that precede, accompany, or follow direct action belong under the mediative heading, while the substituting type of language reactions we will call referential, in that it need not bear directly upon any direct action.

(a) Language as Preceding Reactions.—Various forms of preceding language responses may be isolated. A very clear-cut case is that in which language is used to induce some one to perform a direct action upon some object. Here we have the ordinary case of instructional or directing language. We may call this a practical or instrumental use of language. In other cases our preceding language may be the overt or expressed wish, hope, or plan to perform some action with respect to some stimulus object or situation. While for theoretical purposes there is no difference between this expressive type of language and instrumental speech, in our practical circumstances their variations turn out to be quite significant. And this is true whether or not the preceding indirect language act is or is not followed by direct action. In case the direct action does not occur or in case there is a definite certainty that it will not occur we must place this preceding act in the class of referential language.

(b) Language as Accompanying Reactions.—To illustrate language as accompanying or simultaneously occurring indirect reactions we may take the case of responding to a picture by way of admiration or contempt and at the same time voicing or otherwise expressing or indicating what our direct response to this object is. Here of course the direct response may be the person's own thought or feeling responses which are accompanied by language expression.

(c) Language as Following Reactions.—What in many cases is very close to accompanying reactions may actually be indirect following responses and which may be very definitely determined by preceding direct responses. Exemplified are succeeding indirect responses in the act of telling someone what effect some object or situation has had upon one. The student who imparts to one of his companions the pangs he suffered during an examination is performing definitely succedent indirect reactions which are quite different from those indirect reactions which we assume to have accompanied the actual taking of the examination. To sing by way of glorifying, or bewailing what has happened are also indirect succedent responses. Of these succedent responses a large number may be subsumed under the heading of reference language reactions.

(d) Language as Substitute Reactions.—Let the reader observe that as a matter of fact our four conditions of indirect action resolve themselves into two general conditions. Indirect action (1) associated with (preceding, accompanying or following) other responses and indirect action (2) substituted for direct action. Our three aforementioned language types, as we stated in the beginning, belong of course under the first or associational heading and now we must illustrate indirect responses which substitute for or replace direct action. Substitutional language does not influence or need not necessarily have any influence at all on any direct action, nor on the other hand need such language itself be influenced by direct action, while in the associative type of language there may be such an influence. As an example of substitute reaction we may take the case of the person who, instead of rushing in to a burning building to rescue a child, may just exclaim in a variety of ways what he sees. The indirectness of language responses as we have been attempting to establish it, can be very readily and very convincingly observed during the formation of language habits by the infant.[3] The observer must be struck with the differences between the language responses and the necessities and desires of the infant as well as with the specific responses of the infant in satisfying those wants or of the person who aids in their accomplishment.[4] The indirectness of the reactions can perhaps no better be established than by the reflection upon the numerous ways in which the language reaction can be carried out, especially if we consider the different language reactions of different groups and the varying language responses of the members of any given group.

Lest our emphasis of the indirectness of language reactions be thought too persistent we proffer the defensive suggestion that because our task here is that of definitely marking off one type of psychological response from other sorts of psychological behavior, we cannot be too exact in our descriptions. Especially is this true since not only are language reactions, like all other psychological phenomena, specific responses to particular stimuli, but they are not always morphologically different from other types of behavior. Of a surety when we think of verbal responses as language we .cannot make many mistakes in differentiating what is, from what is not language, but just as surely must we realize that verbal responses are not by far the only kinds of language reaction nor are indeed verbal reactions always language activities.[5]

More essential still does it appear to us to specify what are the differences between language and other psychological behavior because we summarily reject those traditional conceptions of language which make it, from a psychological standpoint, into either (1) mental states called meanings, which are transferred from one mind to another, or which are aroused in one mind by another through the medium of speech, or into (2) verbal or other physical manifestations of various sorts of mental states. From our objective psychological standpoint language cannot in any sense be considered to be a series of ideas or the expression or communication of ideas or other mental states.

To conceive of language as definite behavior phenomena not only gives us a much closer approach to the actual workings of such facts but it also enables us to include under the category of language, and to provide descriptions of, many sorts of specific adaptations that would otherwise be excluded. As to the first point, consider that we avoid completely such embarrassing problems as how it is possible for the same physical material (sound waves or light waves) to produce such different effects as do sensory and verbal stimuli.[6] Such problems the mentalist must face because he . takes the media of stimulation such as light rays and air waves to be the stimuli themselves and so he must struggle to find a way out of this inexplicable situation.

When we think in terms of specific reactions to particular stimuli, whether persons, objects or events, we cannot subject ourselves to such insoluble enigmas. On the other hand, by rejecting the conception of language as an external manifestation of some kind of thought process we remove the necessity of limiting language action to such behavior as can be called intellectual or cognitive. All language need not fall under some sort of cognitive category as is the case when the declarative sentence is presumed to be the typical language function. By the same token language cannot be made into exclusive emotional or feeling expressions nor yet into expressions of merely the two kinds of states or experiences. Most serviceably and most validly must language reactions be considered as just such behavior phenomena as they happen to be, depending upon the way the stimulating situations condition them. From this standpoint the language reactions may be named in any way esteemed suitable by the consideration of the behavior situations in which they operate.

With a myriad voices, though with no intention at all has philological science as well as popular thought celebrated the indirectness of language reactions. This characterization of indirectness has been achieved by looking upon language responses and their graphic representations as symbols of meanings and as indicators of concepts or ideas. To us it is manifest that no matter what view we take concerning the nature of concepts or ideas we must consider them as forms of implicit or incipient processes. For our own part, of course, meanings, ideas, and concepts are also definite forms of psychological responses. That philological science and popular thought do not intentionally make language into indirect behavior we say, because as a matter of fact the symbolic character of language does not lie in any reference to mental or psychic processes as popular psychology would have it, but rather in the instrumental or mediative function of language responses. Not all language is meaning behavior, but it is true that an exceedingly large amount of our language reactions serve as means or instruments for bringing about or for carrying on other types of action or otherwise accomplishing our purposes; so that the referential or indirect character of language has been generally observed and recorded.

How such observations were made we may infer from the fact that when anyone speaks of things or events not present, or asks someone to do something, he must surely note that his action is indirect and referential with respect to the absent thing or the thing the other person acts upon. Were it generally appreciated that ideas and concepts are merely implicit reactions to stimuli, that is to say, actual responses, then it might be overtly appreciated that language constitutes indirect reactions connected with concepts and ideas as direct responses to the same stimuli objects. But whether concepts, meanings and ideas are properly or improperly defined in popular psychology, the very fact that they are connected with language indicates clearly that language is fairly universally recognized to be indirect behavior, especially when the popular view concerning ideas and meanings are correctly interpreted, which means for us interpreted as definite behavior acts.

But here a very important problem presents itself, namely, the connection of language and ideational or thought processes. How are these processes in fact related? Are they perhaps identical? Such an identity indeed suggests itself through the circumstance that both thought and language are mediate activities. Recently this identification has been very strenuously urged in an attempt to show that thoughts (concepts, ideas) are not mental substances or psychic processes. Certainly from an objective psychological standpoint thought cannot be considered as anything but adaptational responses to stimuli. Because of the close relation and apparent similarity between thought and language it will add greatly to our understanding of language to compare it with thought processes and if it is not identical with it to mark it off definitely from thinking. To the study of this relation between the two kinds of behavior we devote the next division of our study.

IV. Distinction between Language and Thought. — That thought and language cannot be identified must appear a most valid conclusion to anyone who reflects a moment upon the actual behavior types which are represented by these two psychological terms. Consider that the term thought covers a large range of psychological activities, such as planning, problem-solving, judging, evaluating, inferring, etc. Can anyone meaningfully assert that these forms of complex reactions are language responses much as we may employ language behavior (though perhaps no more than all other sorts together) in accomplishing such responses? Only a moment's reflection is sufficient to recall most convincingly that the various forms of thinking involve so many and such peculiar contacts with stimuli objects of all sorts, and with instruments for handling them, that it is impossible to call all such reactions language or even apply the term language to the typical phases of such activities.

In short, to call thinking language means rashly to overlook all the myriads of differences in the behavior situations. To name only one fact, is not language most typically, though obviously not exclusively, responses to persons as stimuli, but who would say that our thinking need necessarily have any close reference to persons or human affairs? Possibly one might be misled by the great place which printed and written materials play in our complex thinking and planning in the form of notes and records. To make the use of these verbal notes a basis for confusing thought and language is a grievous error. In the first place, what right have we to confuse verbal tools used in the process of thinking with that process or action, any more than we have to identify with thought itself any other tool (of which obviously there exists a great many) used in thinking. And in the second place, such a confusion of the records of thought with the activity of thinking itself is to mistake word symbols (which are no more language than any other sort of symbols) for the actual psychological process of language.

No one can deny that language is a most useful tool for the operation and development of our thinking; yet we must be so impressed with the fact that there are other modes of action which can be used in the planning, inferring and other thinking acts that we perform, that we cannot in any sense admit any general identity between language and thought. Even if we should admit, as we do without hesitation, that in some cases (perhaps not rare instances) the thinking and planning is purely linguistic (vocal or non-vocal, overt or implicit) we yet cannot allow the general identification, because thinking and planning may just as well consist of other kinds of reactions as well as words, or other kinds of language. Now as a matter of fact, in all cases of important or crucial thinking we have, since such behavior is initiated by and operates under the auspices of very complex situations, a host of reactions occurring, some of which may be language responses, but certainly include others which are not.

If it seems plausible at all to believe that thinking is not language, even when we add that it is not always nor necessarily so, then we might see further ground for rejecting the identification from the fact that certainly language operates along with, or in the service of other forms of adaptational behavior, besides thought. For instance, in communication we use language to inform others of what we desire, hope, fear, and do (in the form of overt action) as well as to make known what we think.

Assuming that we agree that we cannot identify thought and language responses because each of these classes of behavior refers to what are on the whole intrinsically different adaptational functions, then of necessity the two types of behavior are different in the specific way that they operate. Unlike language responses thinking reactions are direct adaptations to stimuli, although some form of thought action, especially simple implicit behavior, appears to be indirect. It is this fact of the misconstrued indirectness of thinking behavior (since there are a great many of the apparent indirect types of thinking) which no doubt is in great part responsible for the identification of language and thought. In three general ways, then, can thinking acts appear indirect, each of which we must examine in turn in order to determine the exact relation of thought to language.

1. Because much of our thinking represents delayed forms of behavior, that is to say, because many specific reaction systems operate in conjunction with a number of different stimuli comprising the different angles of the thinking stimulus or situation, these specific responses may appear as indirect, but such is in fact not the case. Let us examine the possible reasons for such a misapprehension. In the case of thinking behavior there is present a temporal and spatial element involved in the complex action of responding to the various stimuli provoking the thinking response. The hit or miss character of thinking implies such a condition. For instance, a man determining in which of many manners he can best ford a stream must probably make several movements or take several moments to decide upon the best way of doing it, but his reactions to these various stimuli are purely direct. On the contrary, in language behavior the one or the very few acts comprising the segment of action will all be indirect actions as we have indicated in the preceding section. The temporal disparity between stimulus and response which in thinking behavior provokes the opinion that such action is indirect when it is really direct, is wholly lacking in language behavior where the action is always indirect.

2. Again, thinking reactions may appear indirect through the fact that when they are most serviceable as adjustment responses they operate as precurrent thinking or planning reactions. Such reactions pave the way for a later reaction which will result in some definite change in the condition or existence of the adjustment stimulus object. The point is that thinking either precedes an overt action in the sense that the planning and deciding are accomplished before any actual work is done upon the objects and events with reference to which the thinking was done, or in a single segment of behavior the thought as a precurrent reaction system precedes the occurrence of the final or end reaction which it indeed conditions. In many cases, too, the characteristic of indirectness is attributed to thought reactions because no overt act at all need follow the implicit behavior. Our present interest is to point out that the implicit activity preceding overt action is in truth a direct response to the adjustment stimulus but because this reaction has to be aroused through the intervention of a substitute stimulus the immediate reaction must be thinking or implicit activity. But notice, that when the thinking or implicit reaction occurs, no matter how long before the overt act, it is itself a direct, though non-explicit response to the original or substituted—for object or situation.

In the case of language, on the contrary, our study has shown us that the adjustment stimulus object may be present and frequently is, when the language response is made, but the reaction to that object is referential and not direct. This is true because the final response can only be made through the means of an auxiliary stimulus. At this point it seems only fair to admit that possibly our term indirect does not fit language responses any better than it is suitable for thought reactions, but there is no question concerning the fact of difference in the two cases irrespective of what name is employed to express that difference.

In the attempt further to elucidate the differences between the actual indirectness of language reactions and the apparent indirectness of thinking reactions it might not be impermissible to digress a moment in order to point out that although the temporal relationship of stimulus and response is not a criterion of indirect behavior still it is evident that the various instances of indirect reactions (language) may be differently conditioned by the temporal relation of response and adjustment stimulus. That is to say, the degree of indirectness depends upon whether the indirect language response follows a direct response or an implicit response. If language is associated with an implicit response the degree of directness or indirectness with respect to the adjustment stimulus will be greater than if it follows an overt reaction. As we have just stated it so happens that in most cases of implicit behavior the adjustment stimulus is responded to through the mediation of a substitute stimulus other than the adjustment object, and thus it happens that when an indirect language response follows an implicit action the person is doubly removed from the adjustment stimulus. This means, then, that in this instance there is a greater temporal interval between the connection of the language act and the adjustment stimulus than in the cases in which the language acts follow overt responses. If we may call any language response a response of second intention, then possibly it will not be unfitting to call a language response associated with an implicit reaction a reaction of third intention. Possibly an illustration might assist in clarifying this analysis. A person burns himself on a hot iron and his immediate and first response is a withdrawal act (reflex). Immediately following the reflex act he makes some language responses (indirect) expressive of the pain he suffered. In this case the language activity follows an overt act (reflex) and is thus a language response of second intention. Later, this same person recalling the incident (implicit activity) communicates the details to his friend, or in other words performs a language response of third intention, since it follows the implicit activity of recalling the act of burning himself.

3. Possibly the most potent influence for identifying language and thought arises from the fact that thought is made identical with implicit action and especially because there obviously exists implicit language.[7] Now certainly some of our thought behavior may be considered to be merely implicit action, and patently language reactions are as much subject to implicit performance as any other sort of reaction, but these facts themselves contain arguments for not identifying thought and language. For observe that only a part of our thought behavior is merely implicit action, and furthermore, we have no more right to make implicit language synonymous with thought than any of the numerous other types of implicit action all of which may just as well as language be considered as thought. Moreover, as we shall presently see, implicit language cannot be considered as genuine language activity, and so while we might think of such reactions as thought we cannot think of them as language.

Now although implicit language must be considered to be non-problem-solving thought we cannot take such a fact to be indicative of the identity of language and thinking, since implicit language would be very little if at all serviceable for problem solving or any other active thinking process. In fact, it is possibly only in dreaming (day or night) that we perform implicit language activity to any extent and we need hardly comment on the striking contrast between such passive activity and the more active process of thinking. In all other cases than dreaming we can accomplish many things and more useful ones through the means of implicit non-language reactions (implicit construction, purchasing, etc.). Granting that language functions most typically and most serviceably as psychological behavior when it is most overt, while thought as implicit behavior can be most serviceable to the person and operate most typically when there is a minimum of overt activity,[8] then we may find in this fact a further basis for disbelief in the identity of thought and language. We are convinced that language most useful for thinking must be overt activity, an instrument for contact with things, the actual handling of materials and not the pale reflection of conversation. It is really because of the overt character of language on the one hand, and the implicit character of thinking on the other, and not because they are identical, that overt language and implicit responses are so frequently operating in combination so frequently, in fact, that it is even thought that they cannot operate separately. They cannot operate separately, it is said, in the sense that we cannot think without language, a statement, by the way, which may well be true in practice, but which carries with it no implication of inflexible necessity.[9] But at any rate, if it is true that language is more typical when overt, and much more useful for thought

Provided that it is granted us that implicit behavior constitutes direct action to stimuli, may we not say that a clear distinction between thought and language is established? And yet we must not be too sanguine of the validity of our argument. Those who still hold that thinking is implicit action may say, "But by implicit action in the discussion of language we mean sub-vocal behavior." Now subvocal behavior from the standpoint of our present objective position is of course indirect. Consequently, can it not be argued that thought as implicit or sub-vocal language behavior is therefore indirect and can be justifiably identified with language? We will immediately reply: Even accepting sub-vocal language responses as true language behavior, their functions in common with language in general, are usually quite different from thinking as we have already seen, and further, they need not in fact always be true functional language responses. Certainly when they are merely subvocally uttered words they seem to be purely conventional symbols. On the other hand, if one insists that sub-vocal actions are not considered true language but merely taken to be implicit action, then, as we have already argued, we have no more right to identify such implicit language responses with thought than we have to identify any of the other very numerous types of implicit action with thought. As a matter of fact, from our standpoint sub-vocal language reactions are not normally implicit actions but overt responses of expressive form.[10] In order to clear up this problem of what actually constitutes implicit behavior we might turn at this point to the consideration of such reactions. Preferably let us compare implicit action with actual language responses.

Implicit reactions comprise incipient or other forms of actually direct responses to objects which result in no immediate change of condition or existence in the stimulus object. Let us notice that the most typical forms of implicit reactions are partial or vestigial remnants of originally larger or complete reactions as is excellently exemplified in the partially implicit visual-perceptual reaction which may be considered as the seeing part or phase, or remainder of the original seeing-touching or other whole [11] reaction system. The distinction, then, between an implicit and explicit reaction is a functional one. In other words, an implicit act may be morphologically exactly like an overt act, but owing to the absence of the original stimulus object no effect is produced upon that object. Now it happens that because of the absence of the original object, or because first contacts with objects produce disruptive and inhibitory conditions, the later contacts with the same objects consist of modified reaction systems. These partial or totally implicit reaction systems take on their specific character of implicitness because of the person's mode of contact with the stimulus in question and not in any sense because of their non-visibility or lack of openness to the inspection of the acting person or someone else.

In this fact of the interpendence of response and stimulus, which of course is an inherently psychological phenomenon, we find the differentiating conditions which not only mark off overt from implicit behavior but also supply us with criteria for distinguishing one kind of implicit behavior from another. Thus when the original stimulus object is present in its customary setting we react to it in the same overt way as usual unless some interfering condition arises. When the original object is partially present, as when we can see but not touch it, then we perform a partially implicit response. When the object is entirely absent and we are made to respond to it through a substitution stimulus we have or may have an implicit action which is totally different from the original act though definitely derived from it. In case the same stimulus object substitutes for itself, which is a common occurrence as when a person makes us think of an experience we had with him some time ago, the resulting form of implicit action can be clearly made out to be a result of responding to the person in a previous setting through stimulation of the person in a present setting. In similar fashion, if we keep in mind the relation of stimulus and response we can differentiate between feeling reactions and other types of both implicit and overt behavior. While the stimulus object is present in the case of feeling responses the reaction systems consist of the mild or vigorous agitation of the person himself without directly producing any change in the stimulus object or in the person's relation to that object. Of course we have implicit feeling reactions and here the response is a vestigial remnant of the original reaction system induced by a substitution stimulus.

Implicit action, we may say, then, seems indirect because the original stimulus object is not present, or is not present in the same setting; but in either case, as we have previously made clear, the response has a direct adaptive bearing upon the adjustment stimulus. Our assumption is that implicit behavior constitutes direct adaptive responses in much the same way as the more striking cases of inhibition responses compose direct adaptive behavior. Contrariwise, in the case of typical language the action is overt and results or may result in some change in condition or existence of the stimulus, but the reaction is indirect because it is referential. Illustrative of such a situation is the operation of instrumental language responses.

Once more we may return to the distinguishing criterion between thought as implicit action, and language, bringing to bear upon the problem the facts concerning the relationship of stimulus and response. We suggest that while implicit responses are mediate and secondary reactions, that is to say, involve two forms of stimulation as do indirect language reactions, the contacts of the person with those stimuli in the two cases are so different that we must consider the respective actions to belong to different types of behavior. Differences in action and name between direct and indirect responses are due to the difference in character of the additional stimuli. Now what is the exact difference between the two kinds of additional stimuli? Our assumption is that implicit behavior is always a direct adaptation in spite of the fact that for its performance is required a substitute or additional stimulus. We call the additional stimulus substitutive because its only function is to call out the reaction to the adjustment stimulus, while the response is always made to the adjustment stimulus. Quite different is the auxiliary stimulus in language reactions which must operate along with and in synchronous addition to the adjustment stimulus. It is a genuine auxiliary stimulus operating as an integral factor in the total language activity. Furthermore we might even suggest that because in the case of implicit reactions the second stimulus merely substitutes for the adjustment stimulus, namely the thing or situation reacted to, there is really but one stimulus, while in the case of indirect or language reactions there arc always two stimuli for any specific reaction system. We have no hesitation, then, in asserting that language is not identical with thought, either when thought is considered as planning or problem-solving or when thought is made into merely implicit behavior.

Further evidence and of another sort, to establish the non-identity of language and implicit action or thought may be deduced from the following consideration, to wit, that the two types of action as responses to the same set of stimuli may definitely parallel each other without any sort of interference or conflict. Moreover is it not true that we can think of something beyond and entirely different from the thing or circumstance of which we are speaking, a condition which would be impossible if the two types of action were identical, since the person may be employing all of his language or thinking structures and mechanisms for performing one of the two simultaneously occurring forms of response?

Still another fact militates against our identification of language and thought (as implicit action). It is this, that our language reactions as far as their actual mode of operation is concerned are definitely acquired through social stimulation, whereas our implicit actions, though they may be symbolized, are to a great extent merely functions of our individual contacts with our surroundings. This individuality of response, it may be argued, is not any more true of thought than it is of language, for thought is also socially conditioned, but here the question arises whether we are not shifting our discussion from mere implicit action to the more complex forms of activity, namely, planning, or problem solving.

Neither thinking nor implicit action, then, is identical with language activity, and further, even if we agree that language is not inseparable from thought must we still say that language is the sole medium for the expression of thought or the actualization of implicit action? [12] Unhesitatingly we answer 'no,' and especially if by asking the question it is meant in any sense to establish any peculiar relationship between thought or implicit action and language responses. That thought need not be exclusively actualized through language is evident from the fact that because thinking is planning or problem-solving the expression of the reaction would doubtless occur in the form of actual overt responses made by way of changing some object or circumstance. Similarly, implicit action, being non-effective immediate action, would most likely have for its expression the actual initiation of some behavior affecting the previously absent and substituted for object which now has become available. Of a certainty, conditions are different in situations in which no final overt action is contemplated or possible, and in these situations the actualization of the thought or implicit action will be achieved through the medium of language. Possibly it may be objected that what we have referred to as actualization of thought is not what is usually meant by expression of thought, but what is meant by expression is rather communication or telling someone of what was thought. Certainly the communication of thought, although a very frequent form of human action, does not occur with such constancy considering the total number of possible cases of thought action as to make any thoroughgoing concomitancy possible. Very much of the thought of the world is set down in writing or expressed by word of mouth, but not all of it by far, nor perhaps half of it. As a matter of fact language being the typical form of indirect or referential behavior we can readily employ it in referring to our thought reactions as well as to all other sorts of actions and things. When communication occurs we must admit that we cannot conceive of any behavior that is in any sense nearly so effective for the purpose as is language.

Before concluding our discussion we might ask why should psychologists attempt to establish an identity or inseparable relation between thought and language? We believe the answer to lie in the suggestion that such an attempt is made in order to make thought a definite mode of psychological reaction and not an indefinite form of mental stuff or process. Admirable as is the motive for this identification and much as we approve of the attempt to bring psychological facts out of the clouds of unverifiable assertion, we must still withhold our assent from such an identifying procedure in the interests of other facts. What are the other facts? Briefly, all those complex and interesting developments and operation of the exceedingly effective indirect forms of psychological adaptation which we call language.

V. Modes of Language Reactions.—Because of the multiplicity of occasions for language adjustments and the consequent differences in their variety it is essential to provide some descriptive definiteness and order for such reactions. Two tasks especially here confront us. The first is to mark off what are actual language reactions from behavior which may closely resemble language and yet not be language. And secondly, we must distinguish between totally different modes of definitely established language reactions, for in failing to do this we might exclude from our enumeration of the facts of language authentic language reactions, as would be the case for example were we to confine language to merely verbal speech.

1. Morphological and Functional Language.—And first we must point out that upon a functional basis only can we accomplish our first classifactory purposes, namely to separate off language from non-language behavior. Even where we find behavior which is morphologically similar to other kinds of unmistakable language activities we must withhold from it the appellation of language unless it serves a language function. To put it differently, it must serve as indirect reactions or adjustments. Suppose I wish to have my typewriter operate more smoothly but cannot make the necessary changes myself; I must let my wishes be known to someone who is able to do it. My psychological adaptation is made by means of verbal speech or by pointing.
In contrast to this definite functional operation of language behavior it may happen that I may utter perfectly formed words or perform other genuinely linguistic reactions which will not at all serve as instrumental or even indirect adjustmental acts. These then we will exclude from the domain of functional language. An example would be the words we utter as replacement reactions in emotional situations. Along with the large number of reflexes which replace the absent final reaction system in emotional behavior segments we may utter words, mere verbalizations that are really acquired reflexes, which, owing to the fundamentally nonadjustmental character of emotional reactions, no more adapt the person to his surroundings than do the reflexes.[13]

Again, the use of words by infants in imitation of bits of conversation overheard also illustrates what is perfect language morphologically, but what at the same time is not in the least language functionally. It is possible also that words and phrases used by dissociated and otherwise abnormal persons (verbigeration) may exemplify morphological similarities to language responses but are certainly not themselves such behavior.

When we turn to other than verbal language reactions the criteria between language and other forms of behavior cannot be so well made out, since there is not the sharp division there between morphology and function that there is in the case of vocal language reactions. But since we assume the criterion of language to be the question whether the person performs an indirect response we can at least specify what are not language responses. For example, we can distinguish the true language reactions of the infant from its random acts that may be only morphologically language, if language at all. Thus the crying act of an infant may be considered both as a definite indirect action serving to communicate to someone its uncomfortable situation or as expressive of some such discomforting condition, but on the other hand the crying may be, from the language standpoint, purely random actions along with many other sorts of infant behavior which are merely indicative of superabundant energy.

And here an important suggestion surges in upon our exposition. In the form of a question it is this: what can we say of implicit language behavior, since by becoming implicit such behavior loses its function of indirect overt adjustment? To this query we can only answer that we trust accept the dictates of hard facts and agree that implicit language is not language, precisely as we say that spending money implicitly or partaking of a meal implicitly is not spending or eating. In our opinion we cannot avoid this conclusion much as we may consent to the proposition that implicit language reactions are morphologically just like definitely overt language responses.

To balance, as it were, this exclusion from the domain of language of a whole class of psychological reactions we must propose the unqualified inclusion of interjectional reactions in the realm of language. Especially is this inclusion to be urged in view of the fact that philologists either exclude or attempt to exclude interjections from language phenomena or else they tend to minimize the importance of such behavior. Why they do this is plain, since interjections are not conventionalized as are other forms of language. From the standpoint of reactions, however, such behavior answers as definitely and as effectively to the criteria of language behavior as any other sort of language reactions. To be more succinct, interjectional language reactions function as means or instruments to express the conditions of the person induced in him by various surrounding persons and events.

2. Expressive and Communicative Language.—Within the field of functional language, that is to say, definite language reactions, we may introduce a distinction of great importance; we may divide language into two large divisions, to each of which we may apply a distinctive term or name, to wit, expressive and communicative language.

(a) Expressive.—In general, we might characterize expressive language behavior by indicating that it comprises the individual's adjustment to stimuli which do not necessarily involve any relationship to another person. Expressive language reactions we may look upon, therefore, as in a sense the most illustrative of our indirect responses, since the exclusion of persons removes the possibility of a connection between language and any direct adjustment. But observe that when the reaction results in leaving a record, such a record may become a stimulus for some direct action on the part of the person and in consequence the original action may be considered as connected with a direct action. To illustrate, as I react favorably to a painting in an exhibition I express my admiration by writing 'wonderful' opposite the catalogue number of the painting. This expression may become a stimulus for my friend to purchase the picture.

Is it not easy to see that expressive language better illustrates indirectness of response because of the passivity of the reacting individual? Expressive language activity is more of the nature of self-recording behavior, the registration of how some object, event or person has affected us or how we should like or hope to have an event turn out, etc. Contrariwise, the communicative language reaction may take place through any number of intermediate persons as is illustrated by the passage of an order down through an ecclesiastical or military hierarchy. Certainly we can no better put the matter in hand than to say that expressive language actions stand as responses only; they do not serve as stimuli for other persons as is the case with at least some of the communicative language reactions.

Indirect, expressive language certainly is, but still it may involve the elaborate employment of tools or instruments (pen, picture) for its production, but here the instruments would be employed entirely to further the process of expression and not to effect some change in the adjustment stimulus object or to communicate in others the desire for such a change.

In all of this discussion let the reader beware, we are not using the term expression in the sense of a verbal or gestural manifestation of a mental state. Such a warning is doubtless superfluous from the standpoint of our exposition but the mentalistic way of looking at the matter is so prevalent that we cannot too frequently assert our departure from that tradition.

In quite another sense must we guard against a misconstruction concerning expressive language, namely, the idea that it expresses or is especially connected with emotions. In some sense this view is intimately associated with the general idea that language is the expression of mental states, for here it is assumed that an emotion is the mental state expressed. Now the patent reply to such a view is to assert that by means of expressive language the person performs actions involving what we may call ideas, desires, hopes as well as performing reactions that adjust him indirectly to events past, present or future. From the standpoint of the actual adjustmental situation expressive language is in no sense different from communicative language and in this statement we disagree with those who would make expressive language emotional as compared with communicative language which is assumed to be mainly or exclusively the expression of ideas.

Turning to the morphological feature of expressive language reactions we might expect, because of the commonness of verbal behavior, that expressive language will consist to a great extent of verbal reactions. But as a matter of fact, in comparison with communicative language, typical expressive reactions consist to a considerable degree of gestures of various sorts, facial expressions, smirking, sneering, crying, smiling, laughing, etc.

(b) Communicative.—In contrast to expressive reactions communicative language involves adjustment to some other person or persons and consists to a considerable degree of intentional and substitutive responses designed to bring about some change of an informational or overtly active sort in that other person with respect to the adjustment stimulus object or condition. We might indicate at this point that the criterion of communication depends upon the behavior of the second person rather than any result achieved by the first or stimulating person. In plainer words, we have communicative language when the transmissive or the first person's language reaction actually serves as a stimulus to arouse a response language reaction in the recipient. It follows, then at this particular point that the different phases of communicative language must be determined exclusively with reference to directly observable activities actually accomplished; that is to say, we need not consult the intentions or refer to the purposes of either person in the communicative situation. It is not a question whether they intended their language response to be heard or otherwise responded to. But we do not mean to exclude from our observations the distinction in communicative reactions between language spontaneously addressed to another person and language induced in the addressing person by a question or command of another individual. In the former case we consider the indirect reaction to be initiated by the adjustment stimulus (the thing spoken of) which reaction is then also conditioned by the auxiliary stimulus, namely the addressed person. The latter case, on the contrary, exhibits a reaction started off by the auxiliary stimulus (the person giving the command) which later, comparatively speaking, connects up with the adjustment stimulus (the object reacted to in the carrying out of the command). It must be observed, however, that the purpose of the first person is not essential as a characterizing feature of instrumental communicative language, for it may well be that my conversational reactions in which I relate to my friend the incidents of my trip abroad will serve as an instrumental stimulus for him to take the trip.

Purposes and intentions of individuals with respect to the adjustment stimulus do however make possible within the domain of communicative language the distinction between conversation and instrumental speech. Conversational language is communicative speech in which the transmissive individual is not planning any definite direct action with respect to the adjustment stimulus, while in instrumental communicative speech such a purpose and intention is manifest. That the purpose or intention refers to the changes with respect to the adjustment stimulus and not to the actions of the speaker is hardly necessary to make a point of.

In suggesting examples of communicative language we might mention verbal speech, and possibly song and music, as well as gestures (pointing), printing, writing, telegraphy, signaling, of various sorts, etc.

Poetry and other forms of literary production when considered as language reactions partake of both the expressive and communicative forms of language. As references to the esthetic adaptations of persons they are of course expressive reactions, but on the other hand they do serve to arouse reactions in other people in the sense that the language responses (poems, for instance) of the first person are at the same time communicative as well as expressive. These reactions as reactions may intentionally or unintentionally, but not accidentally, on the part of the reacting person inform the stimulated person of some fact or condition by means of some symbolic or instrumental, or at any rate, some indirect action.

Receptive and Transmissive Communicative Reactions.—Very essential it is to distinguish within the field of communicative language behavior between the receptive and transmissive sorts of reactions, a distinction made imperative by the fact that communicative language is interactional, that is, it involves two persons. It may well be in many cases that we are speaking of exactly the same act or the same sort of action, but in the one case the actor communicates with some one, whereas in the other, someone is being communicated with. Or we might say that in transmissive action the person's acts serve as stimuli to induce meaning reactions in a second person whose receptive action is at the same time a stimulus to the first person to perform a meaning action which again serves as a stimulus for the second, etc. In general, communicative language typifies the closest and most intensive interstimulation and interresponse activity:

Among the (1) transmissive responses we may name for illustrative purposes, speaking, writing, making signs, gestures, etc., while among the (z) receptive language reactions we may include hearing and seeing responses of all sorts.

As a final remark here it may be well to suggest that communicative language behavior is neither necessarily always more complex nor higher in the scale of human performances than the expressive language reactions. Quite the opposite, in fact, since some expressive language reactions such as poetry are by far as important as any kind of communicative behavior and certainly much more complex than most speech reactions. That this point is almost obvious is seen from the fact that much of the expressive action may be communicative as well as expressive.

In summing up the psychological facts which fall definitely under the heading of language behavior we find a large series of reaction types beginning with shoulder shrugging and other forms of gesturing which grow by combination and integration out of non-language expressive and manipulative actions and run up to the most complex and elaborate forms of verbal speech behavior.

VI. Types of Language Reaction Systems.—Not only can we differentiate between the various stimulus-response language situations as we did under the heading of modes, but we may also provide some arrangement of the vast amount of linguistic materials by classifying them according to the specific reaction systems involved. Naturally enough because of the similarities and overlappings in these reaction systems no hard and fast lines can be drawn between the different forms of language responses, still some order is possible. Accordingly, we plan to arrange a series of classes of language-reaction systems, a series founded on the differences between communicative language and which cuts across the boundaries between communicative and expressive speech. We base our classification on the communicative type of speech on the ground that not only will a greater simplicity and definiteness be achieved, but also, because no form of language activity need be neglected since under communicative language is represented every form of language act. Our greatest line of differentiation then will be that between the transmissive and receptive modes of action.

I. Primarily Transmissive Modes of Language. (a) Vocal Speech.[14] Very prominent in the list of all language reactions we find of course vocal speech. Not only has this type of language been developed as the most prominent form of expressive and communicative adaptation, but such language reactions have become connected with and instrumental to some of the most complex behavior of which the human being is capable. Vocal speech is an integral factor in all of our voluntary and thinking action, as well as our general social conduct. Under this heading we may place all the behavior phenomena which can be subsumed under the rubric of speech or talking.

In considering the graphic forms of sign and symbol making, that is to say writing and printing, we observe that a special virtue attaches to the fact that these reactions require an extension of the person's organic equipment for their performance. Not only can we thereby extend the scope of our immediate behavior as illustrated by the difference in transmitting information and other materials by word of mouth or gestures, but we also obtain thereby a more permanent record. It is not without the range of possibility that as Professor Warren [15] suggests, "the chief role of graphic language is to extend the range of communication in space and time." Think only of the information concerning ancient civilizations which the people of those times have supplied for us through the instrumentality of signs on bricks, clay tablets, monuments, etc.

(b) Vocal Gesture.—The vocal apparatus of the human individual not only is the instrument for our fully developed speech reactions but also for the simpler vocal gesturing, such as calling, crying, whistling, sighing, grunting in infants, singing and other forms. Vocal gesturing, while ordinarily expressive language behavior, can also function as definitely communicative expressive language reactions.

(c) Sub-vocal Speech.—Besides the overt and complete language behavior we have many kinds which are not audibly performed. Among such reactions are the silent speech and silent reading responses and more typically perhaps those language activities serving as phases of what are known as "mental" arithmetic, etc. By far the most of our complex behavior such as planning, brooding and various forms of thinking include many various forms of sub-vocal language. The student of language may well question whether these reactions may be considered as primarily transmissive, since we can very readily think of numerous instances in which they serve receptive functions, but in view of the fact that self-communication, in which they are transmissively employed, is so common, we include them here.

(d) Non-Vocal Gesturing.—Much of our language behavior goes on in the form of gestures; in fact since under this rubric we include most ofthe language reactions not involving vocal or verbal behavior the field of gestures is very large. Such behavior comprises a great variety of forms; here we have deaf and dumb language, the shoulder shrugging, facial gesturing and the movements of various parts of the body, eyes, arms, hands, head, etc.

Gestures are not only primary and exclusive language adaptations to various stimuli but they also function as adjunct responses along with other language reactions. Thus the motions of fingers, hands and arms, the shrugging of the shoulders and numerous sorts of facial expression may constitute the more or less essential accompaniments of vocal speech. So important are such accompanying reactions in many cases that without them the vocal reactions carry little or no significance. A field experiment in this connection involves the observation of the degree of understanding which we derive from listening to conversation both when it is and when it is not accompanied by gestural responses.

Possibly it is not beside the point to assert that gestural language represents almost every phase of human adjustment to stimuli. It may express and communicate thought, feeling, desire, the state of health, kind of disease, activity, and other forms of adjustment. By language gestures we perform almost every sort of adaptation that we can otherwise execute.

(e) Making Signs and Symbols.—Very numerous are those language reactions requiring some extension of the organism's natural equipment for their execution. While vocal and bodily gesturing involve merely our own elaborate organismic equipment other forms of language behavior involve the use of instruments such as a pencil, pen, graver, pennants, type and paper, skins, stones, and other impressible materials as well as sound-making (telegraph) and other types of mediating tools. Such instruments are employed not only for our own personal activities but also for our complex social responses since the most important technical and scientific information can be intentionally conveyed by the use of such instrumental reactions. Most interesting is it to observe that the language reactions in which we employ tools for sign-making are not in principle different from our complex verbal reactions. The latter also involve definite autonomous tools or instruments, that is to say, sound combinations or symbols. Are not the entire set of materials with which the philologist deals formal symbolic tools employed by specific groups of individuals as media of intercourse, tools which are modified and developed to suit their own specific needs? In comparing sign and symbol language with verbal responses we find the greatest difference to lie merely in the fact that the latter are performed exclusively with our own organismic equipment. Examples of this sign-symbol class of language responses are writing, printing, picture drawing as in the case of the cave dweller, using codes of all varieties, stamps and flowers, also wigwagging and signaling of all sorts.

While expressive language is not excluded from this type as witness the inclusion of picture and other forms of writing, these reactions on the whole serve to convey in a more formal manner than expressive behavior our ideas, wants, desires, etc.

II. Primarily Receptive Reactions.—While as a matter of fact the receptive language reactions consist mainly of definite seeing and hearing responses we might generalize all of the characteristically receptive reactions and group them under the heading of understanding. In so doing we not only generalize all the specific reactions but we separate off the understanding reactions which are precurrent to or anticipatory of final language reactions from the latter. This separation is made possible primarily by the fact that in the majority of cases the seeing or hearing acts are precurrent understanding reactions which may accompany other precurrent acts of an implicit or partially implicit nature, while the end reactions in a language behavior segment are overt reactions. We might point out also that the justification for separating the understanding reactions from the rest of the behavior segment lies in the possibility it affords us of a better comprehension of the whole series of factors.

Understanding responses are meaning reactions. That is to say, they function as means to the performance of some other act, and may be roughly said to consist of a realization or discrimination of the stimulus object or condition. This realization makes for an appropriate final response. The degree of realization ascribable to the meaning response depends upon whether the precurrent reactions in a behavior segment are or are not exclusively overt. As a matter of fact, the simplest sort of understanding reaction is one of which there is no discernible precurrent reaction at all but only the one overt reaction system. Such a case is illustrated by the incident in which pulling the hand away is practically a part of the hearing of the admonition to "look out for the saw." Or we might say that a simple reaction system includes the linguistic hearing act plus the reply, with whatever language that contains. If the stimulus calls out definite precurrent acts, but only overt ones, as is the case when we first exclaim, "Oh, a saw," and then pull our hand away, we must assume that there is a greater degree of understanding or comprehension of the situation involved. Even more understanding or comprehension of the stimulating situation must be ascribed to the precurrent receptive language reactions when they accompany or precede thinking actions. In these cases we have very complex behavior segments or behavior patterns which are combination thinking and language reactions. We wonder whether it is not owing to the strikingness of these complex combination responses that the mistake can be made of identifying language and thought. The reader must observe that in all of our illustrations we have assumed that the language reactions are indirectly adapting responses connected with direct overt and implicit responses. Such are the typical ways in which our language reactions operate, for they are in the final analysis always definite adaptational reactions and are thus conditioned by the stimulating auspices. Further, it must be observed that although in our illustrations we dealt with language understanding responses serving as precurrent functions such reactions may themselves be final responses.

(a) Reading and Comprehension [16] , Reactions.—To turn now to the more specific receptive language reactions we find here a series of specific types of understanding responses to a variety of different stimulating situations requiring different modes of contact such as visual, auditory or other sort. Reading, for example, covers a series of responses to language stimuli seen, while comprehension composes a number of responses to sounds heard, as in listening to verbal speech or other sound stimuli. The reaction systems operating here involve especially the visual and auditory receptor mechanisms, the optic and auditory neural pathways, localizable cortical mechanisms, all sorts of muscular mechanisms (eye, head, chest, laryngeal) and various speech processes. These different specific comprehension and seeing responses, it is well to observe, may involve different orders of action on the part of the responding individual. The stimuli of the comprehension and language reactions may be (1) intimate internal mechanisms in the sense of actual speech, or (2) partially external mechanisms as in the employment of signs or (3) mainly non-organismic mechanisms as in writing to a person or printing material for him.

The term reading, let us note, covers not only the ordinary acts of perusing print but all forms of visual reactions to linguistic stimuli. Thus, we may speak of reading facial expressions and gestures of all sorts besides lip reading in its various forms. In all these cases reading constitutes adjustment responses, while in other situations as in vocal speech conversation the reading of expression and gestures constitutes auxiliary reactions either as (1) additional responses to the speech stimuli or (2) as direct reactions to gestural expressions serving as the setting factors of the vocal speech stimuli.

What is meant by hearing is more definite and familiar and requires no further comment with the exception that we might suggest that just as in auditory reactions we find auxiliary visual components so in visual language reactions we may find auditory components, for example, implicit reactions to sound stimuli. As our last sentence indicates, we may think of reading as a general name for visual receptive language reactions, while the term comprehension serves in a similar capacity for all receptive auditory responses.

(b) Tactual Receptive Language Reactions.—Reading and writing constitute what we may well call the normal and usual forms of receptive language reactions. Besides these types we find also, though in unusual cases only, that tactual reactions are also made to the transmissive reactions or language stimuli. Examples are the reactions of the deaf and blind to the lip movements of other persons and to the raised types of blind printing.

VII. The Varied Character of Language Phenomena.—From our study of language phenomena we may readily derive the notion concerning the multiple character of such facts. Not only is a language response a definite adaptation to stimuli but it may at the same time itself be a stimulus for another response. Moreover, as we have already intimated, it is necessary to separate the psychological facts of language from the physical, social and other phases of language and incidentally bring into sharper relief the functional and dynamic character of language. Probably we can best accomplish this our present purpose by analyzing a word.

1. Non-Psychological Language Words. — (a) In the first place, a word may be considered merely as a purely physical or natural object which exists in nature exactly like any other physical thing and with the same characteristics. Here we mean to refer to a printed word (as it stands unread in a book) for example, or to a sound. Now of course in contrast with a physical object such as a stone we might say that the word as a physical object was invented or developed through some human agency, but this difference between a stone and a word is only relative, for surely all of the stones in our urban environment, at least, have been somehow transformed or modified through human agency, but this in no degree minimizes their physical or objective character.

(b) A word may be considered also as a human institution and now we refer to the word as a member of a specific series of language customs. Here the word has a very different potential function but still it may exist totally unused and little known. Such instances are all of the words in the Moeso-Gothic language which exists only in the Bible version made by Bishop Ulfilas.

(c) Another type of word which belongs to the class of the two previous words, namely non-psychological data, is the uttered word under certain circumstances. Now we are thinking of the word act, the act of speaking a word, which is merely morphologically language but not functionally so. Here we have random vocal actions which do not function either as an expressive or communicative adaptation. For instance, such a word as that uttered by a person when under the effect of ether. While these are undoubtedly psychological acts instead of natural or physical objects they are not data for the psychologist of language nor do they belong to the domain of psychological language behavior.

2. Words as Definite Psychological Data.—All three of the words we have just discussed may be considered as things and acts, but not as serving any specific language function; they are independent of any immediate language use. We will next consider the words serving in some sort of language adjustment. Now let it be understood that in this case we may still be referring to these other words but now they are, psychologically speaking, in some functional relationship. From a psychological standpoint it is only in case words are in a stimulus-response relationship that we think of them as definite psychological data. We may differentiate then between the following forms of stimuli and response words as psychological language data.

(a) Words as Stimuli.—Here we may speak of a printed word which serves as a definite stimulus to arouse a language response in some person, any kind of physical word which calls out an indirect reaction. This word we may look upon as a symbol, which presumably with or without the intention of anyone at this moment calls out a meaning or language response in some person.

Also under this division we have word acts serving as stimuli language functions. Here we include definite verbal utterances which bring about responses on the part of some person whether the individual himself or some other person. We may consider these word-acts as stimuli, irrespective of whether the person intends them to be such, and so we might indicate here that we have two classes of definite language function, named, respectively, expressive and transmissive stimulus word-acts. We may also observe that these words may operate as definite symbols in the same sense as the printed word. Probably in most cases in which the non-transmissive stimulus word-act operates, the total segment of behavior will not be language. That is to say, the word voluntarily performed by the person may still not serve to elicit a definite language response on the part of some other individual.

(b) Words as Responses.—Here we think of the phases of the word in its functional operation as a response to some sort of stimulus, whether language or not. Now these words may be definite overt responses as in the case of answering questions, or they may be sub-vocal or other forms of verbal meaning and understanding responses. They may operate as final acts or as precurrent responses to some other final response.

In summarizing this analysis of words as language data and the differentiation of them from various kinds of nonpsychological data, notice that we may speak of what from the every-day standpoint is considered the same word, but this same word is both physical and psychological, and may be at the same time both a stimulus and a response.

VIII. Summary.—(1) For objective psychology the problem of language is to place the prominent and pervasive linguistic reactions in their proper perspective with relation to the other coordinating functioning responses to stimuli and to avoid looking upon language as outer manifestations of mental states or the mere mechanics of speech.

(2) As a preliminary approach to the analysis of language we have distinguished between anthropological data (language as cultural products or entities; the philological data (language as fixed conventional modes of phonetic systems and their symbolic representation) and the psychological data (language as adjustmental behavior, that is, definite responses to stimuli). To a considerable extent the materials of the anthropologist and the philologist may be looked upon purely as stimuli when they are phases of psychological situations.

(3) A language act, being as definite a response as any other psychological act, must be somehow differentiated from other kinds of action. Our criterion is that language responses are inherently indirect or referential adaptations to stimuli, that is, they involve two stimuli, one the adjustment stimulus, or the thing, person or situation acted upon or reacted to (for example a book to be picked up), the other an auxiliary stimulus or the person using language (giving a command, for example, for the book to be picked up). Two kinds of indirect action we may find, which we named respectively (1) mediative (language reactions connected with a direct reaction), and (2) referential (language reactions not connected with a direct response), the mediative type being related to direct action in three ways, namely, preceding, accompanying, or following, and the referential type either substituting for direct action or being purely conversational.

(4) Because of the close relationship and apparent similarity between thought and language (a similarity which leads psychologists to identify the two), we compared these two types of behavior, pointing out that they constitute (a) different types of adaptive responses on the part of the person and (b) that the two operate very differently.

(a) Thinking acts are either (1) planning, problem-solving, etc., definite adaptations to problematic or difficult situations or (2) simple implicit responses, that is to say, responses to absent adjustment stimuli aroused by a substitute stimulus. When thinking acts fall under (1) they are clearly different from conversation or language communication. So far as (2) is concerned, all types and modes of behavior may be implicitly performed including thinking (problem-solving), and consequently thought is no more identical with speech than with drinking or smoking.

With respect to (b), whereas language is always indirect adaptation, thinking is always direct.
Other facts militating against the identification of language and thought are (a) we can think and speak, or otherwise linguistically react, simultaneously to the same stimuli without any interference whatever. Also we can react to two entirely different stimuli at the same time when frequently it is possible to assume that either would require the use of the whole set of the same response factors that would have to be used in the other action, and (b) language responses are different from thinking reactions (as implicit action at least) because they are more conventional.

To all of this discussion it should be added that from a morphological standpoint at different times thought and language may involve of course the same structural elements.

(5) Language reactions maybe divided into various modes, (1) morphological (not serving true language function) and (2) functional (acting as a definite language response); the latter divided into (a) expressive (not involving any adjustive relationship to another person), and (b) communicative (involving adjustment to some other person). Communicative reactions are divided into (1) transmissive (language reactions serving as language stimuli) and (2) receptive (language reactions serving as responses only). Much of the expressive action may be communicative also, provided it serves as a language stimulus for some other person.

(6) Language reaction systems can be classified on the basis of a communicative form of language into the following types: I. Primarily transmissive, (a) vocal speech, (b) vocal gesture, (c) sub-vocal speech, (d) non-vocal gesture, (e) making signs and symbols; II. primarily receptive language reactions or understanding responses, (a) reading and comprehension, and (b) tactual receptive language reactions.

(7) Finally to differentiate between the various characters of language phenomena we analyzed words as follows: I. non-psychological words—(a) as purely physical or natural objects, (b) as morphologically language but not functionally so, (c) as human institutions (language custom); II. psychological data-words, (a) words as stimuli, and (b) words as responses.
Notes
1.    As exemplified by such laws as Grimm's, Grassmann's, Verner's, etc.
2.    And so it is entirely incorrect from a psychological standpoint to define language as "a system of signs, different from the things signified, but able to suggest them" (James), for while this definition does touch some psychological language facts namely, signs, it excludes the essential features of language and replaces them with the data of philology,
3.    See Watson's excellent description, 'Behavior,' 1914, p. 329 ff.
4.    It is for this reason no doubt that Watson calls language reactions substitute responses, cf. ' Behavior,' 1914, p. 329 ff; ' Psychology,' 1919, p. 319 ff. We do not believe that substitution is a general characteristic of language reactions although such a description fits some language types.
5.    For example, naming an object may no more be a language reaction than looking at it for all the laryngeal processes involved.
6.    Such a problem is raised by Warren, 'Human Psychology,' 1919, p. 321.
7.    Is it not this shifting from thinking as problem-solving, to thinking as implicit action which lies at the basis of Watson's identification of thought and language? Cf. Brit. J. of Psychol., 1920, 2, 89, et passim.when so operating, then it is almost obvious that we cannot identify the two.
8.    Here we must distinguish between implicit action of any sort considered as thought, and implicit thinking. The latter, of course, because of the absence of any adequate stimuli, is about as ineffective a form of action as we can well imagine. Brooding and dreaming are examples in point. No one of course will confuse such implicit thinking with thought that goes on in terms of implicit action, say implicit military operation, even though the latter can be contrasted with thinking in overt terms, as in the setting up of a complex original scientific apparatus.
9.    Otis, Arthur S., 'Do We Think in Words,' PSYCHOL. REV., 1920, 27, 339-449, has excellently described a number of situations in which thinking is doubtless a distinct process from verbal language. While this author may not have successfully combated Watson's view which he attacks, because the latter does not limit his linguistic thought actions to verbal responses, we still believe that thinking, whether problem-solving or merely implicit action is not the same kind of psychological phenomenon as language. Perhaps it will not be considered too presumptuous of us to believe that, in view of our total rejection of any but an organismic hypothesis of thinking activity, Watson may not disagree with our practical functional distinction between thinking and language.
10.    See below the distinction between expressive and communicative language.
11.    Different, we should perhaps say here, instead of whole, because every unit of reaction is a reaction system.
12.    �Expression of thought' is a faulty term, implying as it does the embodiment of a psychic stuff or process. When properly used it refers to the employment of language or other action during the act of thinking or informing someone of what thinking action we have been engaged in.
13.    Cf. Kantor, 'A Naturalistic Description of Emotions,' Psychol. REV., 1921, 28,19-42,120-140.
14.    It is not intended that this list should be arranged in the order of the importance of the reactions involved, since even in the absence of an objective standard it must be conceded that written language in cultured groups hardly stands second in functional value to vocal speech.
15.    'Human Psychology,' p. 319.
16.    In the absence of a word to represent understanding responses for auditory stimuli corresponding to reading for visual stimuli the writer follows Professor Warren in using the term comprehension in a slightly technical sense. Cf. Warren, 'Human Psychology,' p. 320.

A Tentative Analysis of the Primary Data of Psychology

2011-09-09T22:18:00.000-07:00

Jacob Robert Kantor

INDIANA UNIVERSITY.

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In the attempt to understand the conditions of psychological reactions students of behavior and especially human behavior are experiencing a need to analyze more thoroughly and to describe more exactly the fundamental data with which they are working. And what are these fundamental data? Obviously, responses to stimuli. At once we are plunged into an investigation of the essential principles of human adjustment because our first acquaintance with behavior indicates conclusively that stimuli and responses are polar phases of a single occurrence. We can not understand the response without an examination of the stimulus, nor can we isolate or handle adequately the stimulus without an investigation of the complete segment of behavior in which both play or have played a part. We may, then, state our present problem as an attempt to clarify the natures of (1) a stimulus, (2) a response, and (3) a segment of behavior.

I

Let us begin our study by a consideration of the segment of behavior, which from the standpoint of scientific psychology we look upon as an arbitrarily selected portion of the activities of a person or animal. The point is that whenever the psychologist undertakes to describe a reaction of an organism he must, in order to have any description at all, divide off, as a definite portion of behavior, the adjustment in which he is interested from its predecessors and successors in the chain or stream of actions. In this manner the psychologist obtains, in spite of the difficulties of the material, a workable descriptive unit. Now when we consider the extreme complexity and manifoldness of human action we must agree that unless we include in our unit as many factors as possible we stultify our descriptions and make them too abstract for any use. Consequently, we shall find that the psychological unit is always the most conveniently isolated series of responses to stimuli which can be said to represent a definite specific adaptation. Such an adaption is exemplified by jumping out of the path of a flying missile, or picking up a book. To this unit of adjustment we apply the term "pattern of response. "

A pattern of response is, therefore, in every instance an extremely variable and unique sequence of processes, although in similar stimulating circumstances a describable uniformity may be observed. Such uniformity as we can observe in the organism's adjustments constitutes the basis for the predictability of psychological behavior, and we may trace this uniformity in the pattern of response to the presence in it of one or more definite response systems. Consider the responses of a person. in a tennis game in which certain stimuli in the form of 'a special play are offered him. Knowing something of the person and the conditions of his acquiring and retaining certain reaction systems, one may expect a particular kind of response play from him, and although we may know nothing of the responses accompanying the tennis adjustments proper, such as the player's thoughts, whether related or unrelated to the game, his subvocal utterances and other byplay responses which always form part of such a segment of behavior, still the central phase of the adjustment mentioned, or the tennis playing as a series of definite reaction systems, will characterize for us the total segment of behavior. In this particular case the segment of behavior will coincide pretty well with what we ordinarily call the "form" of play, and the predictability phase of the person's playing will appear in the observation whether the player is or is not true to form.

Although the uniformity of a segment of behavior is ascribable primarily to the presence in it of one or more definite response systems, still we must not overlook other factors responsible for the similarity of behavior. And first we must mention the similarity of the stimuli and of their settings, for it is obvious that the same objects appearing under the same auspices will call out the same responses. Moreover, we must not fail to consider another prominent factor in the similarity of the responses, namely, the precise conditions of the individual at the times when the actions are performed.

How important the pattern of response really is as a unit of description may be seen from the consideration that only by studying the conditions of operation of a reaction system, besides the processes coordinate with it, can we thoroughly understand it. The problems of inhibition and delay of responses can only be solved by reference to the interplay of various stimulating objects in the segment of behavior. Again, the affective coloring and the temporal duration of an adjustment can not be understood without an examination of many of the conditioning events which accompany the operation of the given reaction systems within the compass of the psychological act under investigation.. The same proposition may be asserted concerning the rapidity and accuracy of any act. Briefly, we may repeat that to learn anything more than that a given reaction system has functioned we must study the behavior setting of any given reaction system; we must study the pattern of response. Possibly the point we are attempting to make would be most emphasized by observing that what the psychologist calls illusions are merely situations in which certain reaction systems are being called out not by the appropriate stimuli, but by some other stimuli within the confines of the segment of behavior studied. Of course, when we attend to the stimulus, we might say rather that the particular stimulus has called out an inappropriate response, but the mechanism is the same whichever way we look at the matter.

Two types of reaction sequences can be isolated in any given segment of behavior. These are (1) the highly variable series of reactions we have already referred to, namely, the central reaction system or systems, with the byplay responses, and (2) the orderly and logically temporal series of reactions which may be analyzed as follows: (a) the preparatory attention response, (b) the anticipatory or precurrent reaction, which may be a perceptual or partially incipient act, an ideational or completely incipient response, or some other fully overt act, and (c) a final overt or consummatory act which we may name an emotional, volitional, thought or habit response. Any reaction under (c) may of course be a member of a chain of precurrent reactions which precedes some final adjustment, which final adjustment may likewise be an ideational or incipient reaction. Thus we may find that an emotional reaction, for example, may be a response anticipatory to a final adjustment, which may be either a definite overt act or a thought reaction.

Further, we must note that any member-reaction of a segment series may be an integration of simpler reactions. If, for example, a precurrent reaction to placing a book on the table is taking it out of a group of books, we can readily see that this latter act may comprise a series of coordinate eye-hand acts. As a matter of fact no limit can be prescribed to the development of the integrations in human behavior, especially when we consider the enormous possibilities for the combination of implicit and overt behavior of various sorts.

Such an analysis as we have made of the pattern of response affords us some slight insight into the varieties of acts which comprise actual adaptations to our everyday surroundings. In the first place, we can see what the basis is for the simplicity or complexity of our adjustments. A psychological act is simple when it contains few precurrent response systems, and the limit to such simplicity would be the case in which the distinction between the precurrent and consummatory reaction systems disappears entirely, as the reflex segment of behavior illustrates. In the most complex behavior segments we find large series of precurrent responses anticipating the final adjustment to some stimulating object.

Further information gained from a study of segments of behavior concerns the qualitative differences in adjustments. Thus an act which consists primarily of overt reaction systems will turn out to be what is ordinarily known as a motor response, while segments of behavior in which implicit reactions predominate will be described by the conventional psychological term of reasoning. Of course, in these complex segments there never is an exclusive series of one type, but the predominant type colors the total act. Although it is not always true, yet for the most part whenever we have a large series of precurrent responses there are many discriminative phases and the total act takes on the characteristics of intelligent behavior. Again, we may observe that great variety is introduced in complex behavior by the presence in it of language reactions. Language reactions constitute the most subtle and at the same time the most efficient sort of precurrent responses; they make it possible for the person to preface his final acts by many incipient responses, for language reactions enable us to perform actions in prospect and to determine the results of such actions before actually accomplishing them. Obviously the rational segments of behavior and those constituting voluntary action will include many language reaction systems.

What is ordinarily called subconscious activity we may determine upon analysis to be complex segments of behavior from which communicative language responses are absent. It must be understood that only communicative language responses are absent, for subconscious acts may be replete with automatized language reactions, which are quite different things.

II

A stimulus is any object or thing which can call out a response in the organism. By object or thing we designate any actual element in the surroundings of an individual, thus using the terms in an absolutely common-sense manner. We must include among those elements trees, stones, wind, air, temperature, laws, customs, morals, ideals, etc., in short, everything which influences our actions. Nor are stimuli confined exclusively to objects, for in a genuine sense we also respond specifically to the colors, tastes, odors, shapes, sizes, and other qualities of objects. Furthermore, we must add to our list of stimuli, besides objects and their qualities, all sorts of events and conditions. When we interest ourselves in the precise conditions of psychological behavior we find that the human organism reacts to various sorts of circumstances as well as to objects. To a certain extent we may see in this fact of the extensive range of adaptational situations an important psychological difference between man and the other animals. Exceedingly significant among stimuli are the actions of the organism itself. No inconsiderable proportion of an organism's activities can. be directly traced to its own immediately antecedent reactions. This fact has been most exploited by psychologists with reference to the series of reactions involved in a train of thought. Indefinitely more striking than thoughts as stimuli, however, are the various reflex actions, especially of the secretory sort. How replete the literature of psychology is with discussions concerning mysterious forces or drives controlling the actions of organisms, and simply because in many instances the writers mistake the ordinary biological-function factors of reflexes, such as the secretions of the reproductive organs, for manifestations of superbehavioristic forces.

Now crudely we may classify all the stimuli into three kinds, namely, natural, social and cultural. The first type includes all of the objects which can stimulate the lower strata of psychological organisms in common with the human species. Under the rubric of social stimuli we may consider all the objects which surround us by virtue of our living in human groups. Here we may mention such things as laws, customs, opinions, etc. Also this class includes all of the natural objects which have undergone modification because of the human group needs. Salient among the objects of the third class are the personal ideals of individuals which in a genuine sense are developed in the person's own experience.

Especially important is it to distinguish between the stimulus proper and the medium of contact (light rays, air waves) operating between the stimulating object and the stimulated person. This distinction is all the more important because much confusion inimical to the understanding of psychological behavior can be thereby avoided. Usually these media of contact are thought to be the stimuli and in consequence the reactions are presumed to be types of knowledge functions consisting of the presence in' the knowing mind of states induced by the media of stimulation. In detail, the existence is supposed of a one-to-one correspondence between types of light rays or sound waves and specialized qualities in the mind. A serious error arises from such a view which is no less than the implication that the objects to which we adapt ourselves do not exist until after the light rays, etc., "arouse the consciousness of their qualities." From the view that the sound waves, etc., are the inseparable correlates of the qualities of objects, it follows that looking upon the media as the stimuli commits one to a psychological parallelism, or to express it otherwise, a subjectivism.

To all of this we counterpropose the hypothesis that the light rays, heat rays, etc., are simply the means whereby the organism gets into contact with the stimulating objects. A little reflection will convince us of the merit of this view, for can we not and do we not adapt ourselves to objects in the absence of any one or all but one of the large variety of media of perceptual stimulation? And of course in all ideational behavior they are entirely absent.

But let us not be at all understood as minimizing in any sense the necessity for and importance of some medium of response, since certainly, when we are merely in distance contact with an object and the light rays are removed, we can not make any immediate and overt response to that object. Moreover, we find that changes in the media introduce all sorts of possible complexities in the reaction situation, such as the distortion effects which are especially well exemplified by the stick bent in water. On the other hand, however, no quality of the response can be attributed to the mere presence of the medium of contact.

How important it is to distinguish between stimulating objects and media of stimulation. may be judged from the fact that the presence or absence of such media marks the difference between psychological reactions on the one hand and biological and physical activity, on the other. In the physical domain we find no action induced in an object by some other object which is not measurable as an absolute equivalent of the energy expended by the other. In other words, physical objects can only operate directly and immediately upon one another. Hence physical actions are evaluated in terms and propositions of inertia. In general, physical objects are not possessed of action systems which can be put into operation by some surrogate of the original stimulus object.

Less immediate is the operation of one thing upon another in the ease of purely biological organisms, for here we have a type of organization in which it is not improper to say actions can be stored up, later to be put into operation. Consequently, the biological organism can be periodically stimulated to action which is entirely out of proportion to the force exerted upon it by the stimulating object. In tropismic action, while the range of movement is limited and the type of action is constant, the organism may still be said to be spontaneous. In other words, the biological organism has developed the beginnings of sensitivity to media of contact, although such. media are identical or very intimately related with the stimulating object. This type of sensitivity in biological literature is given the name irritability. From a scientific standpoint it is clear, of course, that these differences are all variations in the workings of different types of objects.

Consider now how differently the psychological organism is related to the objects which provide it the occasions for adjustment. Here the organism is so spontaneous and independent of the stimulating object that the former can he influenced to act by a variety of phases of the stimulating object. This condition is brought about by the objects building up, in the reactional equipment of the individual, response systems which are put into operation through the instrumentality o a variety of contact media. The psychological organism may be equipped with reaction systems so that it can be aroused to action by either the sight, sound, taste, touch, or other contact with an object. Through the use of contact media, the psychological organism can not only adapt itself to objects distantly placed, but it has been able to evolve an infinite variety of response forms and integrations to the end of acquiring delayed and inhibitory responses of all sorts, besides differential or cognitive behavior.

To psychologists' traditional neglect of the distinction between a stimulus and its medium of contact we might ascribe the responsibility for much futile discussion concerning reactions to pain. The phenomena of pain have always seemed to stand in the way of a naturalistic psychology, such phenomena being the stronghold of subjectivism, because it appeared impossible to think of pain as a quality of an object in precisely the same sense as is red or sour.

Whoever takes cognizance of this problem may see that the difficulty in interpreting pain phenomena has been due to the failure of psychologists to consider the various peculiarities in such phenomena with respect to the media of stimulation. For one thing, since pain reactions involve such destructive media of stimulation as pricking, cutting, or otherwise lacerating tissue, it is easy for us to confuse such reactions with the stimulating condition In consequence, it truly appears that pain is more intimately connected with the person than is true even in the case of 'pressure responses. From this fact as a starting point, and from the observation that pain-inflicting objects do not themselves perform the pain reactions, it was a simple step to the curious but no less common argument that pain must be in the mind since it can not be in the knife.

Furthermore, it is safe to say that when objectively we study stimulating objects, the media of stimulation, and the reactions to things as isolated phases of psychological phenomena, we will learn more concerning human behavior than is now the case. For example, much have we yet to learn concerning the qualities of electrical phenomena and their effects upon us, could we but keep distinct our reactions from the media of stimulation, and thereby study the means of our reception of the stimulating media.

The Stimulus and its Setting. An objective study of human reactions must include in its programme of investigation, besides the media of stimulating objects, also the settings of the stimuli to which adjustments are made. For it is an indubitable fact that the person is stimulated not only by things but also by the setting or background of the objects. From a behavior standpoint the setting of the stimulus object is of extreme importance in influencing the behavior of the individual in conditioning in a large way what the person will do. A striking illustration of this fact is found in the activities of an individual reaction to a social outrage, both when the stimulus is in and out of a mob setting. Plainly we can determine that whatever differences there are in a person's behavior to the same stimulus, as in our example, they are ^all to be accounted for on the basis of varying conditions of the stimulating situation.

Illusions, when they occur, are to a considerable extent unexpected forms of response accountable upon the basis of the modification in the setting. Thus we may account for errors in reading by observing that the reaction which occurs is due to the failure of the stimulus to be coupled with its customary associates. The phenomena of contrast to a very considerable extent can also be described in terms of changes brought about in stimulating objects by the proximity of various kinds of surrounding things.

To conceive of stimuli as contained in a general setting conduces to an understanding of a further absolutely essential characteristic of stimuli, namely, their interrelatedness or chainlike connection. The study of complex behavior becomes futile when we presume that stimuli are each and severally unique and independent arousers of activity. Such a circumstance does not exist at all, as we indeed infer from our study of the pattern of response. Almost every situation in which we act involves a definite series of stimulations which may be intricately related one with another. The appreciation of the serial form of stimuli provides us with some insight into those complex serial responses which are generally purported to be the working out of instincts. Instead of believing in the existence of mental states manifesting themselves in a variety of connected actions, we can account for such groups of activities as direct responses to chains of interconnected stimuli. For instance, the specific acts which the individual performs in a protracted physical contest depend each upon the continuity of the series of stimulations offered by the rival contestant.

The Classification of Stimuli. Stimuli may be distinguished from each other upon a functional basis. In the first place, we may differentiate between stimuli which call out overt responses directed toward an object present, and ordinarily called perceptual acts, and those stimuli which bring to action implicit (ideational) activities. Under the overt class we distinguish primary and accessory arousers to action, while under the implicit division we may place direct and substitution stimuli as per the following table:

For overt responses:	(1) Primary stimuli.
	(2) Accessory stimuli.
For implicit responses:	(3) Direct stimuli.
	(4) Substitution stimuli.

1. Overt or perceptual responses are aroused to action by the original object or situation which excited them to action from the beginning. A primary stimulus may be thought of as the object which is naturally associated with a given response, or we might say that a primary stimulus is the object which calls out a congenital response, or which is responsible for the building up of a particular response in the organism. The primary stimuli are objects in the surroundings which bring into operation original differential responses. The clearest examples in nature of such stimuli are the objects and conditions which arouse reflexes and instincts, in short, any type of congenital response system.

2. Whatever happens to be the adequate stimulus for a given response system, it is still possible to evoke that response system by stimulating with an adjunct or an accessory stimulus object. The experimental demonstration of this phenomenon is found in the now universally familiar conditioned reflex. The probabilities are that there may be several accessory stimuli attaching to a given reaction system, although this has not yet been experimentally verified.

3. Both the primary and accessory stimulation objects are directly in contact with the reacting organism, and the acts in_-, which they function may be considered as directly observable bet behavior. In the domain. of human psychology at least, there occur many acts which are not always observed by other than the acting individual if they are observed at all. For practical purposes we may call these types of responses thought actions. Now such implicit reactions may be called out (1) either by the object itself which is reacted to, or (2) by some other object or situation which may then be said to substitute for the original object to which the adjustment is made. A direct stimulus to an implicit act would therefore be the person of whom one is thinking, or the event in which one is planning to participate. Clearly then the person must be in immediate contact with the original object or event in order to be directly stimulated thereby.

4. In contrast to the direct stimulus, the substitution stimulus is the excitant of a response originally acquired by contact with some other object. One goes to visit some particular friend because of being reminded of him by meeting a very close friend of the former. In such a case the response is evoked by an object serving as a substitution for the object actually reacted to. Naturally enough we can trace out various conditioning factors which make possible the substitution of stimulating objects, among which are the resemblance, the common or similar use of objects, and the contextual relation of things. Apparent it is, then, that the substitution stimulus is an essential factor in all memorial and thought behavior.

It may be justifiably urged that our description of the substitution stimulus merely depicts the circumstances of any stimulus correlated with a recognition response, since every recognition reaction is indirectly aroused. Also, it might be said that every overt response involves a substitution of stimuli even though the stimulating object be the same, since every response succeeding the original adjustment must perforce be stimulated by a representative of the original object associated with the original response. In seeking for a trustworthy guide to distinguish between a substitution and a direct stimulus, we observe the following fact, namely, that whereas in the non-substitution situation the acting stimulus is one that would ordinarily call out the response in question because of an original coordination between the two, in the case of the genuine substitution, on the contrary, no such connection exists.

The operation of the substitution stimulus is clear-cut when we consider the delayed reaction in which there are several intermediary responses preceding the final actual adjustment. In such a delayed reaction some object evokes an implicit or incipient response, which in turn serves as a stimulus to some other incipient response, until finally the consummatory adjustment is made. We look upon the final adjustment as the adequate reaction to some object or situation, and as we see, it is in the end made to operate by some object or situation other than the one finally adjusted to.

III

The adjustment unit of a behavior segment is the operation of a reaction system. This system by virtue of the fact that it is an act of an organism or a person can be analyzed into a series of component functions. These components represent (1) simple acts which unite to form a larger whole such as the integration of letter strokes into word wholes in typewriting, (2) the integration of definite anticipatory and consummatory phases of an act to become a part of a larger act, and (3) logically derived elements of a single reaction of an organism to a stimulating object. The fact is that the integrative character of psychological reactions makes it possible for all of the phases of a simple adjustment to become a single phase of a more complex reaction. The response system is, then, a unitary organismal adjustment to a stimulus and is abstracted from a pattern of response in a segment of behavior. In the following table are summarized all of the salient features of the response system

1. Discriminative phase.
2. Conative phase, the preparatory attitude of the organism brought about through the media of stimulation, air waves, for example.
3. Affective factor, tension, strain, relief, pleasantness, etc.
4. Action of receptor mechanism.
5. Action of afferent transmission system (nervous conduction).
6. Action of central adjustor (synaptic coordination).
7. Action of efferent transmission system (nervous conduction).
8. Action of effector mechanism.
9. Muscular and (or) glandular phase.

Probably none of the components require any particular explanation, but in order to obviate any parallelistic interpretation of any phase of the response system we might elucidate briefly the first three members in the table.

1. The discriminative function refers to that characteristic of a psychological reaction which we might designate as the differential response. A fact of nature it is that the psychological organism acts in a distinct and specific way in the presence of different objects, or when the same objects are in different settings. This capacity of making differential responses is based upon the differential sensitivity of an organism to different qualities of things, such as colors and tastes and their respective media of stimulation, and is an elementary fact precisely as is the fact of electrostatic induction. By constant contact with numerous objects the responses become so specialized and unique ^,as to merit the name of knowledge and when the responses are not only discriminative but anticipatory also, the reactions can be called intelligent and reflective. With the increase of the contacts of the organism with the surrounding objects the responses become, of course, more and more complexly integrated and the organism's adaptations to particular classes of things may become highly intelligent and capable.

2. By the conative component of a reaction system is meant the susceptibility of an organism to vary its position and attitude toward a stimulus because of being attracted to it through a medium of contact. When light, air, or heat radiations come into contact with the organism they put it into a state of preparation for action upon some new stimulating object. In a genuine sense we might think of the conative characteristics of a reaction system as the factor which influences the person, or organism to react to any given stimulus, since the conative factor refers to the sot of the organism and the precise means in which this set is brought about. In many cases it is precisely the ease with which an organism can be set for a response to some stimulus which may condition the occurrence of the adjustment at all. Moreover, any reaction maybe decidedly modified by the mode of getting set. Thus the jerkiness of a pain reflex may be ascribed to the way in which the medium of stimulation influences the organism to prepare for an adjustment. In general, the direct contact media of stimulation bring about more active and prompt preparation for responses. Very important in influencing the form of the conative factor in reactions is the number of receptors which are in contact with media of stimulation at the same time.

3. The affective factor or feeling phase of a reaction system refers to the general condition of the organism before the present stimulation, which condition greatly modifies the present reaction. Also the organism is conditioned by the present response and carries over the feeling to future conduct. The feeling factor may be described as calmness, relief, strain, tension, pleasantness, excitement, satisfaction, etc., and depends to a considerable extent upon the physiological condition of the person.

In general, it must be observed that the three components of the response system which we have been describing refer much more to the functioning of the complete organism than is true of the other components. Strictly speaking, of course, none of the components can be considered as anything but an abstraction from a total unitary activity. It is possible, however, in all but the three cases specified, to correlate the components with the activity of a part of the organism in the form of specific anatomical structures (glands, muscles, end organs, nervous structures). The fact that these three former components of the reaction system can not be correlated with anything but the total activity of the organism is doubtless in large part responsible for parallelistic hypotheses. Moreover, the fact that these three components .may constitute predominant phases of anticipatory reactions antedating a final adjustment, which may seem to be predominately muscular and glandular, gives rise to the notion of the uniqueness of these components.

The Classification of Reactions. Such complex phenomena as response systems naturally can not be simply classified or described from a single standpoint. We propose, therefore, to enumerate the outstanding characteristics from several logically uncoordinated angles.

1. Connate and Acquired Responses. Since the psychological organism is likewise a biological organism its development parallels the unfolding of the animal form. Each starts with a complement of functions which develop to greater and greater complexity in accordance with the needs of the individual. Thus the psychological organism comes into the world equipped with definite response systems, which may be considered as the genetic prototypes of all the future response patterns of the particular individual. In other words, the complex reactions of the mature individual are developed by a process of interaction of the organism with surrounding objects on the basis of the connate action systems.

Although there seems to be no logical objection to the proposition that all responses are developed from these crude connate beginnings, yet the reactions of a mature person are so absolutely unlike the connate systems that they must be looked upon as qualitatively different. That is to say, the description of them should be in no wise compromised by the fact of their humble origin. For after all the facts of psychological phenomena are best described by considering reactions as directly deservable responses to definite stimuli. In other words, the acquired reactions which operate in our highly integrated and controlled adjustments such as thought and memory adaptations should be described as they arise to meet the needs of the organism, and as they operate and are controlled by the stimulating circumstances in which they function: Probably the best attitude toward the problem under discussion is the careful observance of both the continuity of the individual's behavior development, and the full factual description of any present reaction.

As samples of connate response systems we may cite the actions usually described as reflexes, instincts as found in the animal and infant, and random movements as found in infants. Among the acquired response systems we will naturally find the most complex integrations of behavior factors and as a typical example of them we may mention the communicative language responses, as well as all the behavior units which function in our multivaried acts of skill.

2. Actual and Potential Reaction Systems. Another mode of classifying reaction systems is the consideration of them as actually occurring responses in the presence of their adequate stimuli, or as latent forms of adaptation to surrounding objects when the stimuli are not operating. Under the former heading we may place all the actually functioning responses of the organism at the moment, while under the latter class we place all those responses which the individual will perform when surrounded by different objects and persons. Obviously, we can not at any instant acquaint ourselves with the complete adaptational equipment of any individual, and thus arises the necessity for performance or efficiency tests. Apparently the difference between the two types of responses reduces itself to a degree of connection with a stimulus, but the classification points to the unmistakable presence of response systems in the individual prior to their excitation by stimuli. In other words, by the term latent response we mean only to point out that the person as a psychological machine may be expected to respond in a certain way, whenever he is offered a particular stimulus, provided he has acquired the necessary response system and it is not for any reason prevented from operating. And all this in precisely the same sense in which the automobile salesman informs us that his machine will operate under definite stated conditions, although the automobile may not at that moment be actually running.

Naturally the range of potential responses includes all of the various action systems, which, when they occur, exhibit to us the precise nature or character of the person. That is to say, it will include not only the reflexes and simple habit responses but also the most complex social and intellectual activities. Let us observe at this point that whenever the terms tendency or disposition are properly used in psychology they must refer to just such particular latent reaction systems which constitute the capacities of the person when those systems are not acting, and which are the performances of the individual when they do function. Immediately upon the presentation of their stimuli these latent response systems are aroused to activity and become actual responses.

3. Delayed and Immediate Responses. Students of behavior in their first contacts with psychological phenomena observe the immediacy of certain responses and their more or less protracted delay, in the individual's final adjustment in other cases. Now this difference in reaction is not merely a matter of an interpolated time interval between the appearance of the stimulus and the occurrence of the response, but rather an interpolation of precurrent responses between the final response (considered the response in question) and the appearance of the stimulating object or situation.

The immediate responses can be best understood by observing that the segment of behavior in which they occur is limited to a single . or a very few responses. It is for this reason that there is a close correlation between immediate responses and the simple reflex type of action. Here the first action called out by the given stimulus is at the same time the final adjustment.

In contrast to the immediate responses we find that in some segments of behavior there are series of responses resulting in a final adjustment. In these delayed responses a definite attention adjustment may be followed by a definite perceptual or ideational reaction or a series of such reactions; then finally a consummatory response will follow. Also in complex voluntary reactions we may find numerous language responses interpolated between the stimulus and the consummatory response.

Different varieties of delayed responses are found in organisms, but we can distinguish between at least two fairly clear-cut types. In the first of these types all the interpolated responses are overt reactions,[1] while in the second type the precurrent acts are language reactions or ideational processes. Naturally, the ideational or language precurrent responses are more efficient and allow for a longer time interval between stimuli and responses, and, what is more important, pave the way for the development of extremely complex behavior.

4. Temporary and Permanent Reactions. One of the most obvious facts about reactions is their constant waxing and waning. The former phenomenon finds its best known expression in the perseverant activity while the waning character of reactions is found in the process of forgetting. Many responses there are which remain permanently with the individual and operate in the presence of their adequate stimuli. These responses we call permanent and they are illustrated by the informational and skill reactions which give character to the individual.

Among the temporary responses are the memorial actions, which are pressed into service for a given limited period. These temporary responses do not disappear completely from the reactional equipment of the person, but they are merely disengaged from the stimulating situations to which they once were attached. Familiar psychological phenomena which throw light upon the nature of permanent and temporary responses are the amnesias and aphasias which illustrate conditions in which parts of the permanent reactional equipment of the person are temporarily lost, or we might say operate as though they were really temporary response systems.

5. Explicit and Implicit Reactions. Among the most important of distinctions between responses is that of the explicit and implicit response systems. Briefly, we might differentiate between these two types of responses by pointing out that in the former case some actual operation is performed upon the stimulating object while the implicit act cam never be anything but a precurrent response to some final adjustment which produces some effect upon an object.

In every case an implicit response is a vestigial remnant of some original overt act or an incipient functioning of the whole. Because the implicit action is subtly and rapidly performed it constitutes the basis for all sorts of thinking operations. Probably the best examples of implicit responses to objects and situations are thinking and dream activities. Thoughts or ideational activities are nothing more than a subtle and symbolic repeating of responses previously performed upon some object or situation. Being vestigial, responses, implicit acts may take on a large variety of symbolic forms, so that an ideational activity may be in the widest sense representative of any given act. In some cases the representing act may function more like an overt than an incipient response showing the possibility of substituting reactions, one for another. This substitution of responses is of primary importance for the integration of complex response systems.

6. General and Specific Reaction Systems. Although reaction systems must be considered as definite responses to specific stimuli, still we can differentiate between those systems which are aroused to action by classes of things rather than by individual objects. As we consider the order of complexity in our reactions we find that the simpler adjustments to natural surroundings are excited to action by purely individual and specific stimuli, while in the more complex social responses the stimuli may be indifferent individuals of a type of thing or event. In the complex behavior equipment of the person we find, for example, that any elderly person may stimulate us to offer him our seat. Similarly, the acts of any person may arouse our proffer of thanks. Precisely the same reactions will serve as generalized adjustments to any individual stimulus of a given class. Again, we acquire responses not to tamper with anything but that which is definitely our own property. Especially noticeable in our equipment of generalized reaction systems are negative or inhibiting responses.

IV

Fragmentary and schematic as the above analysis of psychological phenomena is, it does, we still believe, suggest some of the salient characteristics of the elementary processes involved in psychological activity. Not the least valuable aspect of such an analysis is the essential implication that psychological phenomena are the actions of a complex and highly organized individual. In effect, this means that psychology must always employ itself with data that are dynamic in character, in the sense that they are reactions to surrounding objects or things and not manifestations of complex cellular organization and functions, or of some hidden mind or soul. Considered as the operation of a psychological machine, the data of psychology are,theoretically at least, subject to precise natural description and formulation into laws. To be sure, psychologists can not, because of the nature of the facts with which they deal, hope to duplicate in their domain the exactness and simplicity of physical formulations, but they can exclude from psychology all animistic prepossession and unscientific description.

Notes

Such as bodily orientations; cf. Watson, Behavior, p. 227.

An Attempt Toward A Naturalistic Description of Emotions II

2011-09-09T21:49:00.000-07:00

Jacob Robert Kantor
Indiana University

Descargar archivo en version pdf.

VI

The Utility of Emotional Behavior. One of the effects resulting from the growing influence which biological theories' began to exert upon psychology in the middle of the past century, was the conception that emotions are definite adaptational reactions which promote the conservation of the individual. More than closely linked is this assumption of the self-preservative character of emotional conduct with the idea that emotions are inherited forms of response. Not the least surprising, then, is the fact that the utilitarian doctrine of emotional behavior is more prescriptive than descriptive, and brings in its train results that are most remarkable.

It is entirely possible that even the most careful observer of emotional behavior may needs come to the conclusion that much of such action must be interpreted as adaptational and useful. In particular, this might be the case with the glandular secretions which are so prominent in emotional behavior. But what right have we to base our conclusions upon a limited number of features? What of the looseness of the bowels, the retching and vomiting, the violent heartbeat and the innumerable other symptoms of emotional shock? Are these too of use in the organism's adaptations? And is there anything in the nature of a psychological act which prohibits us from considering the glandular reflexes as entirely fortuitous occurrences in the total complex pattern of response?

Further indications of the invalidity of the utilitarian theory come to the surface when we consider that in the cultural emotions organic functions are not nearly so prominent, and apparently do not produce energy-giving secretions. And it is hardly convincing to say that in these secondary emotions the organic reflexes are not present because they are not needed, for by so doing one clearly makes utility synonymous with presence, and in consequence assumes what is to be established, since as a matter of fact even when the organic activities are present their utility is questioned.

Unfortunately the apparent serviceability of various strongly excited organic activities under certain circumstances has induced several writers to indulge in much indifferent speculation concerning the utility or general adaptive character of emotions.[1] Aside from the question whether these writers are observing emotions at all,[2] the objectionable feature of such speculation is the implication that organisms possess general mechanisms with definite purposive functions to meet unfavorable specific circumstances. The consequence of holding such a view is that it inevitably results in overlooking facts, such as the substituted character of the organic processes, which are not compatible with such a preconception.

The writer submits that, on the whole, observational evidence does not support the view that emotional disruptive shock is always or even in most cases beneficial to the organism, either at the moment or in the long run. As a record of fact, all that the study of emotions enables us to say is that under certain circumstances the emotional behavior is apparently a useful reaction in the sense that a very rapid and immediate response seems necessary, and it occurs. But, in just as many cases the dissociating and disruptive character of the emotional act may be the occasion for a very harmful result to the organism, and not infrequently the cause of its death. What chance would a person have in a difficult situation if he should be deprived even for a moment of the opportunity to offer a definitely centered and directed response to a pressing stimulus? It is evident, then, that emotional behavior is not always adaptable activity and consequently we must reject summarily any utility interpretation, especially since such an interpretation appears not to be based upon actual observation but upon the belief in a mental force or entelechy manifesting itself by physiological conduct.

VII

The Relation of Emotions to Instincts. Current psychological opinion appears unanimously agreed that there is a very close connection between emotional and instinctive behavior. And the basis for the belief in such a connection lies in the observation that emotions are very direct and even elementary forms of behavior. It is only the fact of connection, however, that is concurred in, otherwise there is wide divergence of opinion concerning the precise relation between instincts and emotions. Thus, McDougall conceives of an instinct as a fundamental system of action including an emotion, whereas Shand thinks of instincts as being parts of the fundamental emotion.[3] In passing, we might suggest that the disagreement between McDougall and Shand is made possible by the fact that the distinctive feature of emotional behavior is a form of dissociation, a fact which makes possible differing views as to the specificity or generality of such psychological acts.

Still another disagreement between those who believe in the close relation between instincts and emotions concerns the exact stimulation of them to action. On the one hand, it is held that emotions are the affective accompaniments of instincts in some form (McDougall), while on the other, emotions are presumed to arise when there is delay or obstruction in the way of instincts toward carrying on their predetermined goal (Shand). Let it be noted, however, that in all cases the implication is forced upon us that our action is predetermined by some innate power. Now such a view of human activity is entirely incompatible with any observation of behavior and leaves no place for the development of action and the conditioning of it by specific surrounding objects and persons. Our activities are not as a matter of fact the unfolding of purposes and ends but the responses to stimuli and their settings as they actually are found in our surroundings. Because we have no instincts in the sense of biological ends there can be no connection between instincts and emotions; this connection is impossible also, because actual instincts as found in animals and infants are definite response-patterns called out by specific stimulating objects; they are not in any sense tendencies which can conflict with each other.

No less significant than brilliant was the formulation which Dewey[4] made of the relation of emotions and instincts. Let us recall that Dewey was interested in the problem of substantiating James's doctrine of the priority of the organic changes (expressions) to the emotion proper by a reformulation of Darwin's statement of emotions and their expression. The reader will recall that Dewey interprets Darwin's expressions as "the reduction of movements and stimulations originally useful into attitudes," attitudes which apparently are conditioned by instincts. For Dewey the specific seizure or affect in an emotional situation is a conflict and tension of instincts or tendencies to action. "The emotion is psychologically the adjustment or tension o{ habit and ideal,[5] and the organic changes in the body are the literal working out in concrete terms of the struggle of adjustment." [6]

For us the significance of Dewey's doctrine lies precisely in the fact that it glaringly reveals the inevitable consequence of injecting into psychology such metapsychological entities as instincts. For mark you, Dewey cannot allow that the person is stimulated by a concrete object, for without the inhibiting tension an organism would not be making a response 'at' or towards an 'object,' [7] and so the conflict of instincts takes place as a mysterious ebullition in 'consciousness' out of which are differentiated both the stimulus and the response.[8]

Obviously the theory we have been summarizing cannot be employed to interpret the concrete disruptive behavior of actual human organisms, but we are interested to point out that possibly this is true of all instinct doctrines. The idea that emotions are conflicts of instincts or result from the conflict seems to us purely fanciful; and being based on so-called inner states it is in consequence entirely out of touch with concrete reaction conditions. Such a doctrine makes of emotions in some sense the inner side of instincts, while the latter are presumed to be the external phases of certain acts. In all theories of the close or inseparable relation between emotions and instincts, the former are presumed to be 'mental,' while the latter sometimes are and sometimes are not.

But after all such a widespread conception as that of the relation of emotions and instincts must have some factual basis, and truly enough a diligent search is rewarded by the means to account both for the asserted relation, and the belief in a conflict of tendencies.

And first as to the relation between emotions and instincts, the writer submits that the mentalists arrive at their interpretation by miscalling the substituted reflexes, in the emotional pattern of response, instincts. The motive for such a misinterpretation may be sought in the utilitarian conception of emotions, according to which all that occurs to the person must be looked upon as necessary happenings and never as fortuitous processes.

The conflict theory of emotions no doubt is based upon the observation that in some emotional situations a seizure occurs in the presence of a multiplicity of confusing objects; so that a simple response pattern cannot function without interference. Now the crude fact here is a conflict between stimulus objects and the concrete responses of the individual in contact with them, such stimuli and such responses being natural objects and events. From an objective standpoint it seems a far cry from this crude fact to a conflict of mentalistic states. An interpretation of concrete movements of an organism can never be made out to be a conflict of permanent mental tendencies.

VIII

The Classification of Emotions. If we agree to reject the belief in the relation of emotions and instincts, we at the same time renounce the latest of the perennial attempts to classify emotions.[9] And perhaps here we find a clue to the failure of all those attempts to segregate emotions under convenient rubrics. The clue is this, that psychologists could not find any common factor between the complex behavior of an organism and a presumed mental state, a fact which is otherwise expressed in the statement that there is no definite subjectivistic criterion for the classification of emotions.

From an organismic behavior standpoint, there is strictly speaking, of course, but one kind of emotion; that is to say, emotions constitute a class or type of action. The most obvious means, therefore, of classifying the various emotional activities is to correlate them with the exact circumstances under which they occur, and while the extreme complexity of these stimulating circumstances militates against our attaining at present any well rounded and compact classification, such a correlation will serve to give some behavior-content and meaning to the various divisions. Moreover, to describe an emotional act under the circumstances in which it occurs is to give it its stimulus-response setting and to keep our classification from resembling an enumeration of specific faculties.

The problem of ordering and arranging emotional acts involves us in precisely the same difficulties as the classification of thinking acts. In each case, however, the specification of the exact circumstances under which the person is responding will give us an insight into the operation of human reactions, besides helping us to understand the precise details involved in building up reaction systems. For instance, a comprehensive behavioristic study of the more subtle or refined emotions will afford us some insight into the intricate details of social behavior and the social modification of human action. Further, unless we plan to make such a comprehensive study of emotional activity we can find little promise of obtaining additional information about such behavior by the mere analysis of the secretory functions which play a prominent part in emotional acts as well as in other types of behavior. More value there would be in such an analysis if we considered the glandular secretions as integral parts of a large general response system in correlation with definite stimulating circumstances. It is something other than scientific wisdom to place one's hope for the classification of emotional conduct entirely in the physiological factors of behavior, as some writers do, to the neglect of the other components, and the stimulating conditions of the whole response.

Of cardinal importance it is for the classification of emotional conduct to be fully cognizant of the fact that whenever we persistently cling to a name as though it were something more significant than a name, we will inevitably falsify essential facts. Perhaps in no other domain of psychological science does a name mean quite so little or do so much harm as in the study of emotions. It is not surprising, then, that the literature on the subject amply reveals many difficulties of description and interpretation because such terms as fear, anger, joy, and sorrow are presumed to represent unique sorts of psychological facts. The truth of the matter is, that these names as commonly used stand not only for genuine emotional reactions but also for various other acquired human responses, such as feelings, besides the connate organized responses of animals and infants. Furthermore, let us not forget that besides standing for widely different forms of actual behavior, the names found in the writings on emotions represent mental states, each of which has a variety of expressions. Because names are so treacherous in the psychology of emotions, the needs of the science dictate that a closer examination be made of the behavior which is to be classified, and that slighter attention be given to conventional names.

IX

Determining Conditions of Emotions.—Incomplete must always be the description of psychological phenomena unless we add to our report of the facts of stimulus and response also the conditions under which the latter interact. The necessity to investigate the precise conditions influencing responses appears from the fact that any reaction depends as much upon the constitution of the individual and the character of the surroundings as upon the bare presence or absence of reaction systems and stimuli. In the case of the emotional situation the disruptive chaos can obviously be avoided by the substitution of an overt response for one that is lacking, provided that the surroundings are propitious, and the person is in a prepared condition for such an emergency.

Although there is great difficulty in specifying the exact determining conditions of emotional conduct we can, however, isolate a few factors which have a contributory effect in bringing about or preventing an emotional reaction. We may call these constitutional and stimulating conditions, respectively, inasmuch as they refer primarily to the condition of the person or the surroundings.

1. Among the constitutional conditions we might enumerate the following. (a) The primary constitutional condition of emotional behavior involves the fact of psychological equipment. A person who is thoroughly equipped with response patterns for the various situations in which he finds himself will be decidedly less liable to be thrown into a situation of no-response. Further, the student who had previously prepared himself in his learning task would be much less liable to suffer a surprise emotion when confronted with a difficult examination. (b) Closely related to the previous condition is the speed of reaction of the person. Ordinarily an individual who is not quick to improve upon a situation confronting him will be liable to be caught in a dangerous or undesirable position. The person who would begin to act rapidly in the presence of a dangerous object, possibly to inhibit movement, or to substitute another overt adjustment, would be much less apt to suffer disruption of his actions. The person who is clever at repartee will seldom if ever suffer an embarrassing moment. In this type of situation as in some of the elemental situations the self-confidence of the person is an extremely potent factor in the prevention of emotional disturbance. (c) The ability to avoid an emotional shock depends upon the general physiological condition of the person, since the capacity of the person to handle his reactional equipment varies with his physiological states. A person who is just recovering from an illness may be for the time being inadequately equipped to grapple with a dangerous natural situation. Similarly, to be overworked, nervous, or discouraged, means a special liability to undergo emotional shock. In these cases as in all others we must observe that the constitutional condition only has direct reference to the stimulations at hand. (d) Another influence of emotional conduct is the present condition of an individual which is due to the circumstances of an immediately preceding emotional situation. Thus the same or a similar stimulus may now influence the person not to suffer an emotional disturbance at all, or to experience a mild rather than a violent seizure.

2. The stimulation conditions of emotional behavior are very numerous as we might expect. (a) One of the outstanding conditions would be the familiarity of the person with the stimulating objects and their settings. When stimuli are known and not strange they are less liable to bring about a dissociation or disturbance in the person. One is seldom overawed or overwhelmed by familiar surroundings, and in a sense this is obvious when we consider that familiar surroundings mean that we have developed definite integrations of stimuli and responses. (b) Prominent as a contributory factor to social emotions is the presence of certain 'persons; a reproof or a faux pas in the presence of some relation, loved, or admired or feared individual will often result in an emotional behavior, whereas the absence of such persons may mean the avoidance of such a result. In general, the emotional disturbance is conditioned by the setting of the stimulus object, so that while the person may know what reaction to make to an object alone or under certain circumstances he may have no response for the object in its present setting. (c) It follows then from the character of the conditions of emotional behavior that a potent preventive of emotional seizure is a frequent contact with any given situation and especially a situation which, through recent experience, has shown itself capable of inducing an emotional disturbance.

X

Emotions in Animals and Infants. Throughout the entire modern subjectivistic tradition psychologists have always assumed that animals have emotions as well as other states of consciousness. Especially since Darwin's time, in which the continuity of species became the dominant motive in the biological domain, the view has prevailed that human emotions are really vestigial remnants of the emotions which the animal ancestors had acquired. Naturally enough such a mental states doctrine conduces to obliterate the distinction between emotional actions proper, and other types of feeling behavior, and as a consequence animals are endowed with reactions which, because of their organization and development, they, in common with infants, obviously cannot have. How anyone can ascribe to animals and infants such complex reactions as can only be acquired in a long social experience, is suggested to us in the thought that probably psychologists are reading back into the actions of children and animals motives and conditions of behavior which they find in themselves. How illegitimate such a proceeding is may be judged from the fact that a critical observation of the actual responses to stimulating circumstances convinces us not only that animals never have any social emotions, but also that they seldom if ever develop to the stage of performing even elemental emotional behavior.

Since the present status of psychological opinion concerning emotions in animals has its roots in the Darwinian influence upon psychology, it would not be amiss to digress at this point in order to trace out the growth of the conception that man and animals have the same types of mental states. And first let us observe that Darwin accepted the biological similarity between the human and animal organism as the basis for a correlation between the expressions of emotions in the two cases. What seemed to be similar 'expressions' were then taken to refer to similar mental states. What Darwin and the other writers overlooked in their thinking was that they were not observing expressions of any mental state but rather direct animal responses of an instinct sort to specific stimuli. They, however, named these responses by applying conventional terms,[10] and in this way animals began to be endowed with all types of emotions and other sorts of feelings. Finally, this mode of thinking developed to the extent that Darwin [11] could write that 'man himself cannot express love and humility by its external signs, so plainly as does a dog.' Clearly we have here as flagrant a piece of anthropomorphism as one would care to find, even in such a culpable writer as Darwin is in this direction .[12] An excellent example of Darwin's uncritical views concerning the psychology of animals is found in his acceptance of Mr. Bartlett's statement concerning the knowledge and cautiousness of hyenas. "They well know that if one of their legs were seized, the bone would instantly be crushed to atoms." What one gathers from such a statement as was just quoted, and Darwin's remark about the value of observing infants in order to ascertain how far particular movements and gestures are really expressions of certain states of mind,[13] is that he was probably dealing with two different sorts of phenomena. He was considering human feeling behavior on the one hand and animal instincts on the other, but Darwin is misled by his conception of emotions and expressions to make the two identical.[14]

Among the many evidences which we might quote from the 'Expressions' to indicate this identification is Darwin's statement, that because the tender feelings are compound states and not simple feelings he could mention only weeping as their expression.[15] Also to the point here is the statement that blushing is the expression of many 'emotions' (shyness, shame, modesty) which are grouped under a single heading, namely, self-attention, no doubt, mainly as a heroic effort at correlation.[16] Do not these facts typify Darwin's inappreciation of the incongruity between critical observation of behavior and of forced injection of the continuity doctrine into the conventional and anecdotal tradition concerning emotions and their expressions?

If such be the case, is it not strange that current psychologists so readily accept the mentalistic continuity doctrine with its implication that emotions are persisting potencies which operate as properties of men and animals.[17] Here is evidence that about as much violence can be done to scientific facts by the uncritical acceptance of a continuity as of a discontinuity doctrine. A careful study of actual behavior discloses definite continuities in the activities of man and animals occasioned by similar organization and common external surroundings, but there are none the less just as definite discontinuities between the two types of organisms due to disparities of biological and psychological development and differences in surroundings. At the point of emotional behavior it is safe to say that observation discloses indefinitely more discontinuity than continuity.

In fairness we must add that Darwin did not entirely miss the difficulty of his views, for he says that love (maternal)[18] and practically all the complex feeling acts[19] have no characteristic expressions. But although this admission on Darwin's part implied a doubt as to whether the crude activities of animals and the refined behavior of human individuals are similar, his authority seems to be so incontestable as not to arouse comment when he implies that abstraction, denial, affirmation, and meditation are emotions, the expressions of which can be analyzed.[20] A slighter indication that Darwin suspected that all was not well with his formulation, to the effect that characteristic expressions exist for the emotions, is found in his report that when persons are confronted with photographs of expressions, they are not always able to attach the expressions to the emotions which they are supposed to express. For fear, however, that this would be too great a disturbing factor in his work, Darwin ascribed this inconstancy of the relation between the emotions and its expression to the misguidance of the imagination.[21]

Most incomprehensible it is that psychologists are not more sceptical of the doctrine that animals have emotions, if it is true that such a doctrine is based upon the sort of thinking we have been indicating. Surely there can be no question as to the vulnerability of Darwin's psychology. To indicate but a few weak spots we might ask how plausible it is that animals should voluntarily acquire emotional expressions. Further, what value can a theory have that fails to distinguish between thinking, and emotions and other types of feeling behavior. Again, we might ask whether such crude transmission of acquired behavior as Darwin supposes is consonant with observable facts. Hence, we might conclude that if the belief that animals have emotions is based upon the Darwinian foundation, it lacks much in scientific validity.

But let us turn to the actual observations themselves, for we must not dismiss the problem without an attempt to examine some types of animal behavior which appear to have some resemblance to the emotional activity in human beings. Consider the action of the chipmunk stimulated by footsteps approaching from the rear, while he is calmly nibbling at some garden green. Immediately there is a start and shift of position while the animal turns to face squarely the approaching object; then scampers towards his hole or other place of safety. Now much as the activity just described may resemble an emotional situation, a careful examination of the details indicates no breakdown of stimulus-response coordination. The start observed is nothing but the ordinary change of attitude which we find in all attention responses. In fact this attention start, which superficially appears like an emotional phase of behavior, is always found present and in addition to the emotional phase in all actual emotional conduct; in sequence it precedes the emotion-initiating perceptual or ideational process. Far from proving the presence of emotional behavior in animals, the attention-start points to the possibility of describing whatever activity we find in animals in their ordinary surroundings by referring to the practically full complement of congenital response systems with which they adapt themselves. Such acts as the attention-start the animal is uninterruptedly performing during each hour of its active life, and this fact would seem to indicate that these responses are due to a definite form of response system.

And now we may inquire into the findings of physiological research for light upon the problems of emotions. In particular, we might expect to gain some information from such experiments as are designed to test the Jamesian theory of emotions.

Unfortunately physiologists are parallelists and their work is seriously compromised by the assumption that in an emotional activity the organic changes are either the cause or the outcome of a psychic state called the emotion. Cannon [22] proposes to discover by the study of animals what bodily results follow the functioning of the fundamental 'agencies which determine the actions of organisms.' And Sherrington [23] aimed to test the view 'that the psychical process of the emotion is secondary to a discharge of nervous impulses into the vascular and visceral organs of the body.' The unhappy feature of such work done on the parallelistic basis is the immediate setting aside of the so-called psychic factor and the confining of one's efforts to the exclusive investigation of the organic phases of behavior. In consequence, the essential differences in behavior are entirely overlooked and the assumption of a continuity in the behavior of man and animals results in endowing the latter with activities that are really found only in the former. In general, we might say that the physiologists have really been studying (i) visceral reflexes in pain, hunger, and fear-rage instinct behavior,[24] and (2) the relative functioning of the cephalic and more posterior portions of the organism in instinct action,[25] but not emotions.

Sherrington's conclusion from his experiments not only does not militate against the James-Lange-Sergi theory of the emotions, but on the contrary offers some evidence that he is not occupied with emotions at all. His discussion reads much like a tremendous overemphasis of psychocephalic parallelism and nothing more. The transaction of cord and vagus cannot prove that emotions are cerebral processes, since the supposition that there exists an emotion in the form of a psychical adjunct has absolutely no basis in any observable fact. On the contrary, physiological experiments do appear to confirm the view that psychological behavior is the activity of the whole complex organism. Now the experiments seem to indicate that depending upon the intricacy of the behavior, the reaction systems may function when the organism is only partially coordinated. This fact is substantiated by Goltz's [26] decerebrate dog which 'showed' anger, but not fear, joy, and affection. May we not then assume that the animal behavior studied by Sherrington was really a series of instinct responses and not at all emotions similar to those found in the human species? The writer hastens to add that he accepts in its entirety the description of the behavior of the dogs which Sherrington has published, but reserves the right to reinterpret the terms joy, disgust, friendliness, so as to exclude completely the objectionable anthropomorphic implications. This reservation is necessary in view of the unfortunately extreme poverty of psychological language with which to describe animal reactions. Indeed, could Sherrington set aside his psychocephalic parallelism, he would be very sympathetic with our view concerning the absence of emotions in animals, since he writes that 'there is no wide interval between the reflex movement of the spinal dog whose foot attempts to scratch away an irritant applied to its back, and the reaction of the decerebrate dog that turns and growls and bites at the fingers holding his hind foot too roughly.[27] Is it not true that in both cases we have the operation of truncated response mechanisms of precisely the same sort which Sherrington himself describes as pseudo-affective reflexes? [28]

When we turn to the problem of emotions in infants we find a similar dearth of conditions capable of giving rise to emotional disturbances. Watson's studies of infants demonstrate the absence in the conduct histories of young children of the characteristic chaotic or no-response conditions, with the replacement of visceral and other reflexes. Watson does not agree with this view, however, and indeed believes he has found in infants three types of emotions, but our reading of his material convinces us that he has looked for and found only some specific instinct responses. The names he gives to these instinct responses, 'fear,' 'rage,' 'love,' seem to us to be arbitrarily applied and interchangeable.[29] In fact, when Watson's descriptions of the infant's responses are read to various persons, there is no general agreement as to the appropriateness of the names he applies.[30] Although Watson [31] definitely asserts that an emotional act differs from an instinct by the occurrence of a momentary shock, his disregard of the differences between emotions and other feeling acts, not involving disruptive shocks, betrays him into making emotions into hereditary patterns of response. In this manner he obliterates the boundary between emotions and instincts, and moreover by invoking the criterion of non-training for hereditary acts he achieves the result that we have already described, namely, a discovery in infants of three kinds of emotions. The upshot of this procedure is that Watson veers considerably from the objective position and tends to interpret infant behavior, not from the standpoint of actually occurring responses to specific stimulating conditions, but as the manifestations of hereditary tendencies. What observer can overlook the differences between actual emotional behavior and comparatively simple positive responses which are offered to such stimuli as restraining, pulling a blanket away, striking, etc., responses which may just as well be called habits as emotions. We insist that while the failure of a stimulus-response coordination among older infants begins to be possible, because they have been acquiring responses to stimuli, yet it is true that as a matter of fact genuine emotional conduct will be an extremely rare occurrence.

XI

Emotions and Expressions. As we have previously intimated some of the difficulties we encountered in the study of emotions in animals and infants are due to the still prevalent implication that in emotional reactions what we observe is an outward expression of a mental state called an emotion. Singularly enough, although Dewey [32] had long ago pointed out that expressions could have no meaning so far as the acting individual was concerned, the parallelistic conception of psychological behavior has to this day kept alive the inner-outer conception of emotions.

Illustrative of the influence which subjectivism exerts upon our minds is the fact that in the same papers [33] in which Dewey abjures emotional expressions, he employs himself in the defense of James' 'paradox' concerning the order of apparition of the invisible emotion and its visible physiological colligate. No doubt the reader recalls that the motive for this defense was Dewey's attempt to translate a philosophical conception into the biological terms which James's theory supplied. Dewey really meant to demonstrate that feelings are the internalizing of activity or will in the sense that an emotion is a report (feeling) in consciousness of an act previously performed.

But our purpose is not to revisit the scene of former battles; rather we wish to point out that when we stray from a description of actual behavior, the 'expressions' remain in our thinking, much disguise them as we may. Has Dewey avoided an unpsychological dualism by calling an emotion not an expressed entity, but a repercussion in consciousness of an organic happening? It is our opinion that Dewey has merely placed in relief a psychophysiological parallelism which at the point of emotions inspired James very little. For this reason Dewey could write [34] that "Prof. James himself does not seem to me to have adequately realized the inconsistency of Darwin's principles, as the latter states them, with his own theory." From that day to this the dualism has persisted through a multivaried modification of the expressions of the emotions to a serious neglect of the actual behavior of the person under the various conditions of emotional stimulation.

When emotions are studied as concrete behavior, we find absolutely no warrant for including in our description of them any dichotomy between the emotional acts and their expression. Moreover, there is no meaning in the question whether emotions precede or follow the expression. We might just as well ask whether the perceptual action of another person precedes or follows our observation of it. It is obvious, therefore, that the emotion-expression dichotomy may be entirely rejected irrespective of the specific interpretation one makes of emotional behavior. We are inclined to believe that this dichotomy goes back in the final analysis to a nonnaturalistic psychological hypothesis.

XII

Summary. Unlike any other type of behavior the emotional reaction is not a positive response to a stimulus, but rather a failure of a stimulus-response coordination to operate. What happens is that the organism is left in a crucial situation (in the most striking cases) without certain expected or desirable means of adaptation, either because of not having a response system for the particular stimulating circumstances or because of some failure of such an acquired response system to operate. Emotions are therefore essentially 'no response' activities. The individual thus left without a directed mode of adjustment is thrown back upon primary responses, namely, organic reflexes. It is these replacement reflexes which give emotional conduct the appearance of positive adjustments. From this it follows that emotional conduct must not be interpreted as hereditary forms of adaptational activity, since emotions are either due to the break-down of an acquired stimulus-response situation or the absence of such a coordination which should have been developed to meet the needs of the present situation. The criterion for what reaction systems should have been developed depends upon the observation of those definite reactions the individual has actually acquired, namely, the precurrent perceptual responses. The latter, however, are not complete for the present situation without the consummatory reaction systems that are not operating at the time, but which apparently should have been acquired contemporaneously with the precurrent responses. Our criterion is of course based upon the apparent concrete needs of the individual at the moment, and is therefore frankly ephemeral, since the needs of the individual can only be determined by a field observation of the emotional reaction.

One of the significant results of the reactional interpretation of emotional conduct is that it forces to the front the distinction between emotions and feeling behavior. Fundamental in such a distinction is the fact that, unlike emotional conduct, feeling behavior of every type always involves the operation of definite response systems. A fact it is that almost every segment of behavior in which is found an emotional phase, will also include one or more feeling reactions, but in every instance the observer can adequately discriminate between the two types of conduct.

A natural consequence of the negative character of emotional behavior is that such action cannot be of general and necessary utility to the organism. In no sense can emotions be considered as determining adjustments of any kind whatsoever. Although it may sometimes occur that the disruptive dissociation of the emotional reaction may turn out to be a benefit to the person, yet such a consequence must be considered as a wholly fortuitous circumstance, and in general emotions must never be thought of as permanent directive agents which serve to carry the person through the intricate maze of daily events. On the contrary, emotional conduct is always truncated and ineffectual action, and can be useful only in elementary situations where the replacement reflexes can be of service.

Because emotions are negative or 'no response' actions, they cannot very readily be classified. Although the psychologist has trouble in grouping and correlating such behavior, this very fact is of extreme importance to the student of psychological phenomena, in that he is necessarily forced to study the emotional situation precisely as it occurs; and so the classification of emotional conduct must be based upon definite stimulus-response conditions, a fact making for exact and accurate, though extremely difficult, classification. Probably the most valuable result to be derived from such a work is the freeing of emotional conduct from their presumed dependence upon those teleological entities called instincts.

It follows from the dissociative and disruptive character of emotional behavior that emotions are seldom if ever found in animals and young children, since such organisms have not reached the stage of acquiring sufficient response systems to become disrupted. In animals and in infants the organic reflexes and other factors common to emotional reactions are parts of behavior segments which are positive responses to stimuli and are not replacement acts at all. An analysis of the behavior of animals and infants does not reveal conditions of a precurrent response failing to elicit its appropriate consummatory reaction, with the consequent replacement of this final act by organic reflexes as the only available mode of adjustment.

On the whole, it is hoped that such an organismic hypothesis as we have proposed will throw into clearer relief what has always appeared as an extremely baffling psychological phenomenon. Upon the basis of such a naturalistic standpoint emotions become familiar to us not as products of theory, but as vital modes of an organism's responses to disrupting conditions of its environment.

Notes

Cf. Cannon, 'Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage,' 1915.
Note Cannon's hortatory defense of the martial virtues.
Note the grouping of phenomena—pain, hunger, fear, rage.
All this for both in terms of mental structures. Cf. Shand, Proc. of Arist. Soc., 1915, 15, 74. "Primary emotion is at first a biological force pursuing its innately determined end by means of instincts and other dispositions organized with it." Ibid., p. 75.
PSYCHOL. REV., 1894, 1, 553; 2, 13.
Apparently the conflict of two or more instincts brings about the emotion.
PSYCHOL. REV., 1895, 2, 30
Ibid., 2, 28.
"The frightful object and the emotion of fear are two names for the same experience." Ibid., p. 20.
Cf. McDougall, 'Social Psychology.'
What can be meant by 'insulting' a monkey? Darwin, 'Expressions of the Emotions,' p. 137.
Loc. cit., p. 10.
One is strongly reminded here of Darwin's violent assumptions concerning the exalted aesthetic development in animals as described in connection with his theory of sexual selection.
Loc. cit., pp. 13, 122.
As Dewey (PSYCHOL. REV., 1894, 1, 555) so well expresses it, "In the discussion of movements in animals (PP. 42-48), the reference to emotions is not even nominal. It is a matter of 'satisfaction of desire' and 'relieving disagreeable sensations'—practical ends."
Loc. cit., p. 214.
At the basis of the difficulties here is an implied acceptance of a structuralistic psychology.
When not based upon observed facts such a doctrine would of course be a metaphysical proposition.
Loc. cit., p. 213.
Called by him states of mind, loc. cit., p. 26r.
From a subjectivistic standpoint, Darwin's performance is much mitigated, since after all what he is attempting to do in this book is to correlate the 'mental' and the 'physical.'
Ibid., p. 14.
'Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage,' 1915.
Proc. of the Royal Society, London, 1900, p. 390.
Cannon.
Sherrington.
Quoted by Sherrington.
'Integrative Action of the Nervous System,' p. 266.
Ibid., p. 251 ff.
We are here reminded of Sir Charles Bell's assertion that animals 'seem chiefly capable of expressing rage and fear' (quoted by Darwin, op. cit., p. 10).
That is to say, when the persons who hear the description take the names to refer to emotional reactions. It is true, of course, that the names may be entirely appropriate for the reactions studied, but in that case we assume that the names symbolize a variety of behavior.
'Psychology,' p. 196.
PSYCHOL. REV., 1894, 1, 555.
PSYCHOL. REV., 1894, 1; 1895, 2.
PSYCHOL. REV., 1894, I, 554.

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Notes

An Attempt Toward A Naturalistic Description of Emotions II

Jacob Robert Kantor Indiana University

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Jacob Robert Kantor
Indiana University