Wolfgang Kohler, a psychologist trained at the University of Berlin, was working at a primate research facility maintained by the Prussian Academy of Sciences in the Canary Islands when the First World War broke out. Marooned there, he had at his disposal a large outdoor pen and nine chimpanzees of various ages. The pen, described by Kohler as a playground, was provided with a variety of objects including boxes, poles, and sticks, with which the primates could experiment.
Kohler constructed a variety of problems for the chimps, each of which involved obtaining food that was not directly accessible. In the simplest task, food was put on the other side of a barrier. Dogs and cats in previous experiments had faced the barrier in order to reach the food, rather than moving away from the goal to circumvent the barrier. The chimps, however, presented with an apparently analogous situation, set off immediately on the circuitous route to the food.
It is important to note that the dogs and cats that had apparently failed this test were not necessarily less intelligent than the chimps. The earlier experiments that psychologists had run on dogs and cats differed from Kohler's experiments on chimps in two important ways. First, the barriers were not familiar to the dogs and cats, and thus there was no opportunity for using latent learning, whereas the chimps were well acquainted with the rooms used in Kohler's tests. Second, whereas the food remained visible in the dog and cat experiments, in the chimp test the food was tossed out the window (after which the window was shut) and fell out of sight. Indeed, when Kohler tried the same test on a dog familiar with the room, the animal (after proving to itself that the window was shut), took the shortest of the possible indirect routes to the unseen food.
The ability to select an indirect (or even novel) route to a goal is not restricted to chimps, cats, and dogs. At least some insects routinely perform similar feats. The cognitive processing underlying these abilities will become clearer when we look at navigation by chimps in a later chapter. For now, the point is that the chimpanzees' abilities to plan routes are not as unique as they appeared at the time.
Some of the other tests that Kohler is known for are preserved on film. In a typical sequence, a chimp jumps fruitlessly at bananas that have been hung out of reach. Usually, after a period of unsuccessful jumping, the chimp apparently becomes angry or frustrated, walks away in seeming disgust, pauses, then looks at the food in what might be a more reflective way, then at the toys in the enclosure, then back at the food, and then at the toys again. Finally the animal begins to use the toys to get at the food.
The details of the chimps' solutions to Kohler's food-gathering puzzle varied. One chimp tried to shinny up a toppling pole it had poised under the bananas; several succeeded by stacking crates underneath, but were hampered by difficulties in getting their centers of gravity right. Another chimp had good luck moving a crate under the bananas and using a pole to knock them down. The theme common to each of these attempts is that, to all appearances, the chimps were solving the problem by a kind of cognitive trial and error, as if they were experimenting in their minds before manipulating the tools. The pattern of these behaviors--failure, pause, looking at the potential tools, and then the attempt--would seem to involve insight and planning, at least on the first occasion.The conclusions drawn from the experiments with apes were that these animals exhibit insight and that they demonstrate intelligent behaviour that is common in humans. Köhler states that these findings hold true for every member of the species. He describes that "the correlation between intelligence and the development of the brain is confirmed" Köhler (1925). Köhler points out that a downfall of educational psychology at the time of the experiments with apes was that it had yet to create a test that was capable of assessing how far mentally healthy and mentally-ill children could go in particular situations. Köhler believes that studies of this type could be performed on young children and for this reason future research should focus on these possibilities. He stated that: "where the lack of human standards makes itself so much felt, I should like to emphasize particularly the importance and- if the anthropoids do not deceive us- the fruitfulness of further work in this direction" Köhler (1925)Köhler was also vocal in his stance against behaviourism, another competing school of thought in North America. At the time, behaviourism focused solely on overt acts that were easily observable and measurable. Inner thoughts, feelings, and processes that occurred between the presentation of a stimulus and the onset of behaviour were considered part of a black box not easily understood. This black box, which could be described as cognition today, was not accessible and therefore should be discarded from psychology as being something important. The main idea of the behaviourists that Köhler stood against was the dismissal of direct experience. Direct experience was a construct that the behaviourists claimed was not measurable, and therefore didn't contribute to the furthering of human understanding. Köhler turned first to the difference between overt and covert behaviours. He argued that the behaviourists focused solely on overt behaviours in order to make inferences concerning human functioning. Using his background in physiology to address this issue, Köhler suggested that covert behaviours (such as heart rate and blood pressure) could offer additional insight into how we function and interact with the environment. In "Gestalt Psychology", Köhler describes advancements made in physiological research and the tools they had created to measure covert behaviours. Covert behaviours such as increased heart rate could provide additional insight into how people interact with particular stimuli. The behaviourists, according to Köhler, never adequately utilized these new instruments to make sound inferences on human behaviour. Köhler also provided a counter-attack to the standpoint that direct experience is not measurable and should therefore be ignored. Drawing upon his personal experience and interest in the field of physics, Köhler uses the example of two physicists observing a galvanometer (an instrument that detects and measures electrical current) and making inferences based on the information it provides. According to Köhler, behaviourists act in a much similar way when observing behaviours. One behaviourist will observe a behaviour and share results, leading to an extension of these findings by others in the field. While behaviourism denies direct experience, Köhler suggests that behaviourists are unknowingly accepting it in this regard. Just as the galvanometer is independent of the physicist, so is the subject from the behaviourist. Direct experience results in the observation of phenomena and leads to results. In this regard, the standpoint made by the behaviourists appears somewhat paradoxical
La théorie de l'isomorphisme psychophysique de Köhler part du postulat que les structures fondamentales de notre monde phénoménologique sont compatibles avec des lois purement physiques de l'organisation. Elle renouvelle radicalement la thèse classique du parallélisme psychophysique (Ernst Mach, Ewald Hering, Georg E. Müller), pensé comme un simple principe méthodologique, en posant l'unité conceptuelle de différents champs de connaissance autour de la notion d'organisation dynamique.
Pour les psychologue de la Gestalt, les formes se manifestent dans la détermination réciproque de leurs parties et de leur entour ; et ce sont aussi, en tant que telles, des configurations transposables à travers une pluralité de situations. Les formes sont transposables parce qu'elles sont faites de relations physiques dynamiques susceptibles de se réaliser en différents champs (et d'un certain point de vue, le concept d'isomorphisme est une dérivation d'un tel concept de transposabilité, radicalisé par exemple par la possibilité de conversion entre aspects spatiaux et temporels des structures). Ainsi un ordre expérimenté dans l'espace doit se retrouver, mais en un sens abstrait, fonctionnel, et nullement naïvement topographique, dans l'analyse des processus sous-jacents. Il faut souligner que l'isomorphisme köhlerien est d'abord un isomorphisme abstrait. Il faut le concevoir dans le sens mathématique du terme, à partir d'une communauté de structures entre les théories topologiques et dynamiques, orientées vers une étude qualitative des structures, qui seront investies dans la description du champ de l'expérience, et celles, plus quantitatives, qui permettront de déterminer les processus biophysiques sous-jacents.
L'isomorphisme psychophysique de Köhler est donc « fonctionnel », il porte sur des modes de fonctionnement, des processus construits et analysés mathématiquement, que l'on met en rapport avec des modalités de l'expérience. Il n'implique aucune identité morphologique simple : il ne suffit pas de faire des ronds à la surface du cerveau pour valoir comme corrélat d'un cercle perçu. Il faut le comprendre comme topologique, géométrique, dynamique, mais aux sens abstraits et multiples que les mathématiques donnent à ces termes, et non en un sens simplement topographique, directement lisible dans la structure tri-dimensionnelle du cerveau. (Cf. V. Rosenthal et Y.-M. Visetti, Köhler. Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2003.)
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