The Unadjusted Girl, With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior AnalysisThomas, William Isaac
Science
The Unadjusted Girl, With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior Analysis
Thomas, William Isaac
Female juvenile delinquents -- Case studies; Young women
In either case we realize that certain influences have been at work
throughout life and that these are partly inborn, representing the
original nature of man, the so-called instincts, and partly the claims,
appeals, rewards, and punishments of society,—the influences of his
social environment. But if we attempt to determine why the call of the
wild prevails in the one case and the call of home, regular work, and
“duty” in the other, we do not have different problems but aspects of
the same general problem. It is only as we understand behavior as a
whole that we can appreciate the failure of certain individuals to
conform to the usual standards. And similarly, the unrest and
maladjustment of the girl can be treated only as specifications of the
general unrest and maladjustment.
In this connection students of psychology and education have been
particularly interested in determining what the inborn tendencies really
are. There was however no scientifically controlled work on the point
until Watson undertook his experiments on newborn babies. At the time
his work was interrupted he had found only three “instincts” present in
the child at birth:
We are inclined now to believe that the fundamental emotional
reactions can be grouped under three general divisions: those
connected with fear; those connected with rage; those connected with
what, for lack of a better term, we may call joy or love.
These at least deserve the name of major emotions. Whether or not
other types of emotional reactions are present we cannot yet
determine.... The principal situations which call out fear responses
are as follows: (1) To suddenly remove from the infant all means of
support, as when one drops it from the hand to be caught by an
assistant.... (2) By loud sounds. (3) Occasionally when an infant is
just falling asleep the sudden pulling of the blanket upon which it
is lying will produce the fear response. (4) Finally, again, when
the child has just fallen asleep or is just ready to awake a sudden
push or a slight shake is an adequate stimulus. The responses are a
sudden catching of the breath, clutching randomly with the hands
(the grasping reflex invariably appearing when the child is
dropped), blinking of the eyelids, puckering of the lips, then
crying; in older children, flight and hiding.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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