Organization of Behavior

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The Organization of Behavior
The Organization of Behavior.jpg
Cover of the first edition
Author Donald O. Hebb
LanguageEnglish
Subject Learning
Published1949
Media typePrint (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages378 (2002 Psychology Press edition)
ISBN 978-0805843002

Organization of Behavior is a 1949 book by the psychologist Donald O. Hebb. One of the main takeaways was that it proposed a theory about learning based on conjunctures on neural networks and synapses being able to strengthen or weaken over time. [1]

Contents

Reception

The author Richard Webster identifies Organization of Behavior as the most influential outline of Hebb's postulate. According to Webster, the hypothesis has classic status within science and is supported by recent research. [2]

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Donald Olding Hebb was a Canadian psychologist who was influential in the area of neuropsychology, where he sought to understand how the function of neurons contributed to psychological processes such as learning. He is best known for his theory of Hebbian learning, which he introduced in his classic 1949 work The Organization of Behavior. He has been described as the father of neuropsychology and neural networks. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Hebb as the 19th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. His views on learning described behavior and thought in terms of brain function, explaining cognitive processes in terms of connections between neuron assemblies.

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Let us assume that the persistence or repetition of a reverberatory activity tends to induce lasting cellular changes that add to its stability. ... When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A’s efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.

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The Hebb–Williams maze is a maze used in comparative psychology to assess the cognitive ability of small animals such as mice and rats. It was developed by Donald O. Hebb and his student Kenneth Williams in 1946, when both men were working at Queen's University at Kingston. A modified version, intended specifically to measure the intelligence of rats, was described in a 1951 paper by Hebb's students Rabinovitch and Rosvold. This modified version is the most commonly used in research where the aim is to measure animals' problem-solving abilities. In general, animals are tested in the Hebb–Williams maze's twelve separate mazes after acclimating to six practice mazes, though some studies have not used all twelve testing mazes. The two main procedures for the maze are the reward conditioning task and the water escape task. The maze has been used to investigate strain and sex differences in mice. A 2018 study argued that the maze is potentially useful for translational research in fragile X syndrome in humans.

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References

  1. Press, Gil (30 December 2016). "A Very Short History Of Artificial Intelligence (AI)". Forbes. Retrieved 11 August 2024.
  2. Webster 2005, p. 487.

Bibliography

Books
  • Webster, Richard (2005). Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis. Oxford: The Orwell Press. ISBN   0-9515922-5-4.