Book dossier

Learning theory and the symbolic processes

by Orval Hobart Mowrer

"Within the whole range of the behavioral sciences, few developments have been so striking and significant during the past decade as those pertaining to the symbolic processes. Many collateral influences, extending from technical philosophy to the new branch of engineering known as cybernetics, have importantly stimulated and shaped contemporary thought concerning the symbolic, or representational, processes. But we shall here be particularly concerned with the unfolding of potentialities which lay within Behaviorism itself. While originally repudiating all that was subjective and cognitive, this scientific movement has recently shown itself unexpectedly competent to deal therewith, in a framework which is at once more systematic and seminal than any approach previously available. /// Because the widespread interest in symbolic operations and communication is of relatively recent origin and still growing, the question of scope and organization of this book has been a difficult one.^ The reader will find that some much-publicized developments, e.g., those pertaining to so-called "information theory" and "general semantics," receive scant attention, whereas certain unconventional topics, e.g., statistics and probability theory, have been accentuated. The final chapter of the book considers the field of psychopathology. /// Because of the exploratory nature of this book and the general fomentation of the field which it represents, its "audience" cannot be precisely forecase. However, its possible uses as a supplement to the earlier book, Learning Theory and Behavior, and as a basic text in more advanced work in the psychology of learning are obvious.^ Moreover, special courses in communication and the symbolic processes ("Psycholinguistics") are beginning to appear in both the collegiate and graduate curricula, for which this book can also appropriately serve as a text; and specialists (and students) in such cognate areas as education, speech, logic, human engineering, psychiatry, and the social sciences generally should find relevant "collateral" reading here."--Preface.