Difference Between Introspection And Behaviorism

Introspection and behaviorism used to be two very popular styles of research. Introspection is the process of observing one's own mental, or emotional processes. Whereas behaviorism is the theory that both human and animal behavior can be changed by conditioning. These styles created a new way for researchers to expand their theories. While this style of research was prominent for several years, the psychology community soon began to realize that they both had certain limitations.

One limitation from introspection involved a theory that thoughts came from your unconscious. Researchers were trying to record every single thought process that they had. Yet, they began to stumble upon thoughts that seemed to ‘pop’ into their mind. These thoughts

A philosopher named Immanuel Kant created the transcendental method. This new method is periodically called “the inference to best explanation”(Cognition, p. 14), due to how this theory works. It essentially works by thinking backwards to find the correct path or answer. Much like how a crime scene investigator works from evidence left at a crime scene to find the suspect. Rather than having the suspect and then finding the evidence afterwards. From what was learned from introspection, behaviorism, and observing the mental processes brought forth the cognitive revolution. A new, but most importantly a testable theory, from then to learn more about human’s mental processes.

Another mental process that is constantly working in your brain is called the working memory system. This system is responsible for holding information temporarily or holding onto information that you are currently working with. The working memory system helps your brain piece sentences together. As well as recalling any phone numbers that you have memorized, so that that information is available to you right when you need it to

They first proposed this model in 1947 after they had studied the Atkinson-Shiffrin model (McLeod, S. A. 2012). One piece of evidence found for this model's existence is the span-test. The span-test is a test where individuals are to repeat a set of letters. After every representation back to the presenter, another letter is added making the sting of letters longer. Typically once people reach 7 or 8 letters in length they begin to mix up letters and make mistakes (Cognition, p. 16). Sometimes people will replace letters with other letters that sound similar, such as the letters “e” and “b”. When people first take this test they subconsciously store the letters in the articulatory rehearsal loop and in the central executive. If the participant were to repeat this span test but this time maintaining a hum noise or repeating one word over and over again. They would have a more difficult time remembering and restating the group of letters back. When your brain is multitasking in this way the articulatory rehearsal loop is not available to store information, since it’s internal path is broken up by the word being spoken or noise being made from the