Classification of sensations and receptors

Psychologist Dr. Doping talks about priority of behaviorism in the early XX century, artificial intelligence and cognitive hexagon. Why in American psychology beginning of the XX century was dominated by behaviorism? What role in the revival of interest in matters of knowledge played a study of artificial intelligence? As cognitive science has changed the psychological research?

Sensations in psychology is defined as a subjective reflection of the individual properties of objects of reality, such as color, or pitch, or taste. And express even a hypothesis that feeling as a reflection of the properties of objects that are directly not satisfy our needs, but the honking of something biologically significant, was the first form of mental. This hypothesis was put forward domestic psychologist Alexey Leontiev.

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But in fact in psychology and philosophy, the idea of that feeling comes first to our knowledge, constantly arise. In XVII-XVIII centuries dominated by a philosophical direction as sensationalism, which argued that the sensations in our knowledge based all - that John Locke with his idea of the child as pure boards, tabula rassa, where sensations are recorded, and then the mind learns direct their activity on these feelings, the French educator and Etienne Condillac, who described the thought experiment with the revival of a marble statue - he at first gave her only sense of smell and the smell of it made all the way up thinking and abstract concepts.

When psychology began to appear as a science, the feeling, in fact, became the first object of study in it, because psychologists have undertaken to study the mind and the first thing decided that they need to understand what consciousness is, that is to spread it on the cell or the smallest elements . And as such elements of the first scientific psychologist Wilhelm Wundt and were just feeling that he enriched the simplest emotional experiences or feelings.

But the disciple of Wundt, English psychologist Edward Bradford Titchener, set himself the task to describe all possible sensations using the so-called method of analytical introspection, that is scrutinizing inward and splitting of consciousness into the smallest elements, thus describing only what is in the mind, but It not what is outside, in the world. That is, seeing the mug, I had no right to say: "I see the cup" - I had the right to say: "I have a feeling blue, brilliant, and so on." When I spoke about the mug, it was called the stimulus mistake and thrown away by psychologists. Titchener described 44 thousand sensations in his laboratory which undergraduate and graduate students are doing just: hung from each other's feet, was lowered into the stomach probe, doing analytical introspection, such as kissing a lover, and so on. But of course, that this path was quite dead-end, because nothing but the addition of some new sensations.

And in order to move forward, psychologists took, of course, to build a classification, that is to make the move from phenomenology to the allocation of wealth grounds for classification. Reasons may vary. For example, the same founder of scientific psychology Wilhelm Wundt offered to share the feeling for the forms of energy that affect receptors. Energy is only light, mechanical and chemical. Accordingly, Wundt singled photoreceptor group of mechanoreceptors and chemoreceptors and the corresponding group of sensations.

But, apart from this structure (content) classification, we can also provide a functional classification, trying to answer the question, why the feeling needs and genetic classification, explores how they occur and what properties are at different stages of development. With regard to functional classifications, the most glaring example - is the classification of domestic physiologist Nikolai Alexandrovich Bernstein, who shared that feeling on the basis of what they do in the regulation of our conduct, our activity. On the one hand, a sense of the activity can start, something to signal that we felt a bitter taste - something spat; We felt the hot hand - pulled back his hand. Such sensitivity Bernstein designated as signal-launcher. But very often the feeling we do not need to run the activity, but in order to adjust it to adapt to the environment properties. For example, if we picked up a heavy object, then with sufficient force if we pull it up to lift to the desired height; If we twist a bicycle pedal, then correctly spinning our foot, so that we never have hooked and went with the required speed; if we take something from the table, or our hand goes there? And this sensitivity Bernstein designated as control-corrective or corrective. It is clear that it is primarily the feelings that occur in our muscles, they are not always understood, but contribute to the correct construction of the motion. Sometimes in this same role may be, for example, visual sensitivity, which regulates our relationship with the environment.

Finally, if we look at the development of the senses, try to build a genetic classification, the first and most brilliant attempt of this kind was done by the British physiologist Henry Head that for this purpose a specially cut on his arm nerve twig and watched as the sensitivity is reduced. At first he felt nothing after a while began to appear strange kind of sensitivity - it was very diffuse, vague, inaccurate. For example, he could not when he touched the finger tips of calipers to understand: he touched one or two needles, exactly where he touched, but he experienced vivid emotional experience, it was very emotionally colored. And gradually, the sensitivity has become more accurate, more local, and this emotional coloring has already been eliminated. That is, we could just feel that to us something touched, and we are not necessarily from this very pleasant or very unpleasant. Accordingly, Head suggested that all our sensations can be divided into ancient - it has designated as their protopathic - and the new, post-crisis or epicritic associated with greater precision and less pronounced subjective-emotional coloring. If we look at our usual modality, then, of course, vision and hearing will relate more to epicritic sensitivity and sense of smell and taste rather to ancient protopathic, because we can not always accurately locate the source of the smell, and can not always locate where we have in the mouth or that taste, but the emotional coloring - a nasty smell or taste - we are almost guaranteed. Touch here occupies an intermediate position, it is closer to a new sensitivity, but sometimes some ancient ingredients arise there.

And finally, the most famous and large classification of sensitivity, which includes all three possible bases: structural, functional, genetic - was again proposed as a physiologist (note that psychologists are actively rely precisely on the physiological classification) Charles Sherrington, who proposed to allocate sensitivity types, on the one hand, on the ground where it is localized receptors, on the other hand, on the basis of what this sensitivity need. And it turned out that these species allocated to them can actually be built and how the steps of the evolution of sensitivity. First of all Sherrington suggested to distinguish the sensitivity of so-called grave, which include receptors that are hidden in tissues such as muscle and signal us about the position in which the muscles are in what position is our body and so on, and, on the other hand , the surface sensitivity - receptors is located on the outer and inner surfaces of the body. Accordingly, if we are talking about the inner surfaces - this is mainly the gastrointestinal tract, - that the inner surface sensitivity Sherrington designates as interoception and the external surface sensitivity as a exteroception, and finally a deep sensitivity it will be called proprioception, or their own sensitivity - is the position of the body, its individual components, and so on. That is, he gets the three major species sensitivity, sensation: proprioception, and interoception exteroception. In the latter group, it will still distinguish between the so-called contact receptors, when necessary direct impact of the object on the senses, to the feeling has arisen, and the sensitivity of a distant, or remote, when the object can be located anywhere (a typical example - the vision: I see you , but you are not directly working on the retina of my eye, and an example of the opposite - the taste, which is the impact of a must).

When Sherrington puzzled by the question "whether there will be these kinds of sensitivity vary by function?", He sees that they are actually needed for the different. Proprioception is needed in order for us to understand the position in which we currently are, and could begin to move, that is, it gives us information about the structure of our body or the body schema. Interoception allows you to maintain a state of homeostasis, ie a balance with the environment, gives us a signal that we do not have enough of some nutrients that it is necessary for our body to continue to exist, so-and-so, and so on. Finally, exteroception, external sensitivity ensures our interaction with the environment, the behavior of our environment in our reaction designed and so forth. And if we look at the evolution of, first of all, of course, the body, in order to survive, you need to understand that the balance of his disorder, that is, need information about the achieved or not achieved a state of homeostasis, ie interoception. Then the body should be able to start moving in the direction of the source of sustenance - it needs proprioception and exteroception will last and will adjust its movement, its interaction with the environment.

But in fact in psychology and remained introspective, subjective sensations of research strategy. Oswald Kulpe, one of the disciples of Wundt, was trying to describe the properties of individual sensations, allocated a certain quality, a certain intensity of feeling: there are weaker, stronger, - a certain length of time: they can be long, such as toothache, or very brief as a needle prick - and a certain spatial coverage (you, of course, the difference when I put on you the whole palm or a finger). But the whole area of psychological research has grown because of the analysis of the intensity of sensations. Ever since the middle of the XIX century to the present time, psychologists are asking: "And as the intensity of the feeling of force related to the intensity of the stimulus acting" These researchers are trying to establish a quantitative relationship, derive the mathematical laws of the association between exposure and feeling, so this area has been called psychophysics. And actually psychophysics deals alignment quantitative laws depending on the intensity of the emotion of the impact force.