One of the most eminent of psychologists, Clark
Hull, claimed that the essence of reasoning lies in the putting together of two
’behavior segments’ in some novel way, never actually performed before, so as to
reach a goal. Two followers of Clark Hull, Howard and Tracey Kendler,
1 a test for children that was explicitly based
on Clark Hull’s principles. The children were given the
2 of learning to operate a machine so as to get a toy. In
order to succeed they had to go through a two-stage 3
. The children were trained on each stage
4 . The stages consisted merely of pressing the correct one
of two buttons to get a marble; and of 5
the marble into a small hole to release the toy.
The
Kendlers found that the children could learn the separate bits readily enough.
6 the task of getting a marble by
pressing the button they could get the marble; given the task of getting a toy
when a marble was handed to them, they could use the marble. (All they had to do
was put it in a hole.) 7 they did not
for the most part ’integrate’, to use the Kendlers’ terminology. They did not
press the button to get the marble and then 8
without further help to use the marble to get the toy. So the
Kendlers concluded that they were incapable of deductive
9 .
The mystery at first appears to deepen
when we learn, from 10 psychologist,
Michael Cole, and his colleagues, that adults in an African culture apparently
cannot do the Kendlers’ task either. But it lessens,
11 when we learn that a task was devised which was
12 to the Kendlers’ one but much easier
for the African males to handle.
13
the button-pressing machine, Cole used a locked box and two
14 colored match-boxes, one of
which contained a key that would open the box. Notice that there are still two
15 segments--"open the right matchbox
to get the key" and "use the key to open the box"--so the task seems formally to
be 16 But psychologically it is
quite different. Now the subject is dealing not with a strange machine but with
familiar meaningful objects; and it is clear to him what he is meant to do. It
then 17 that the difficulty of
integration is greatly reduced.
Recent work by Simon Hewson is
of great interest here for it shows that, for young children,
18 , the difficulty lies not in the
19 processes which the task demands, but in
certain perplexing features of the apparatus and the procedure. When these are
changed in ways which do not at all affect the inferential nature of the
problem, then five-year-old children solve the problem
20 college students did in the Kendlers’ own
experiments.
A. either
B. also
C. likewise
D. too
