THINKING -Macmillan
Sondra Leftoff, Ph.D.
and
Aharon Fried, Ph.D.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice The City University of New York
and
Aharon Fried, Ph.D.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice The City University of New York
The characteristics and qualities of thinking, or of higher cognitive processes, have been discussed as philosophical and as psychological questions. The questions first arose pertaining to man as reflecting on his own experience, but have since been extended to intelligent behavior of higher mammals as well. At the outset, one is faced with the problem of reasonably limiting the notion to a relevant class of behaviors and organisms. This is not often attempted and a variety of questionable behaviors have been called thoughtful at one time or another.
According to Hebb (1958), an initial indication of thoughtful behavior is a temporal delay between stimulus and response, indicating an interposed mediational process (as opposed to the immediacy or response characteristic of reflexive behavior). Further, internal mediating processes are indicated by flexibility and variety of response in the presence of the same stimulus (the absence of the stimulus-bound quality of reflexive behavior). Finally, thoughtful behavior is characterized by temporal sequencing and integration of future events which occur through internal mediational factors only and do not depend on continuous sensory input for organization.
According to Hebb (1958), an initial indication of thoughtful behavior is a temporal delay between stimulus and response, indicating an interposed mediational process (as opposed to the immediacy or response characteristic of reflexive behavior). Further, internal mediating processes are indicated by flexibility and variety of response in the presence of the same stimulus (the absence of the stimulus-bound quality of reflexive behavior). Finally, thoughtful behavior is characterized by temporal sequencing and integration of future events which occur through internal mediational factors only and do not depend on continuous sensory input for organization.
