INTERPRETING COGNITIVE PHENOMENA: REVIEW OF DONAHOE AND PALMER'S LEARNING AND COMPLEX BEHAVIOR 1

Abstract

The thing that was exciting about Keller and Schoenfeld's Principles of Psychology (1950) and Skinner's Science and Human Behavior (1953) as textbooks was their systematic treatment. A few general, basic principles were introduced at the beginning, explained, and given empirical justification. Then those basic principles were used to interpret a wide range of interesting, significant, and complex behavioral phenomena such as conceptualizing , solving problems, remembering, talking, self-regulating, knowing oneself, and functioning as a member of a social group. Psychological phenomena that had seemed disconnected from each other could now be discussed in common terms. A student who studied one of these textbooks could come away with a broad but integrated view of psychology as a coherent science. The approach, now known as behavior analysis, continues to be well integrated and broad in scope. But for some reason, this breadth is not always well represented in textbooks. 2 Understandably and appropriately, basic textbooks focus on fundamental principles and on the research designed to clarify those principles. That body of research has grown enormously over the years, and the issues have become more intricate and subtle. It is hard to cover the basic principles adequately in a course and still find time to show the wide-ranging applicability of those principles to the interpretation of complex human behavior. It may also be the case, as Dins-moor (1989) has suggested, that textbook authors have become more conservative in their willingness to extrapolate. Whatever the 1 Donahoe, J. W., & Palmer, D. C. (1994). Learning and complex behavior.