WATSON'S "BEHAVIOR" 



465 



as great a probability of occurrence as any other one. Watson, 

 like Smith, neglects the common case of learning of the type: — 



Here response 1 starts out with a frequency of 8 to 1 and 

 yet loses in the end. Such cases are very common in learning. 



I have registered these objections to Watson's views largely 

 because it seems desirable to keep the general aims and methods 

 of objective psychology distinct from the particular explanatory 

 hypotheses of any one of us who are studying it. 



In his emphasis on the prevalence of actual speech move- 

 ments as the body, and perhaps even the soul, of thought, Wat- 

 son seems to be following a much more hopeful hypothesis. 

 Thought does seem to be in the beginning, as Cooley has said, 

 "a species of conversation" and throughout life what many 

 introspectionists call images of words are almost certainly often 

 actual partial enunciations. The time-honored 'think bubble' 

 experiment, for example, is not a test of the presence of kines- 

 thetic images, but of actual movements — evidence of a kines- 

 thetic image would be found rather if one could think of saying 

 the word without moving the mouth-parts. Human behavior 

 in thinking does consist of muscular responses, the sensations 

 thereof, further responses excited thereby, and so on, to a much 

 greater extent than the older "train of thought" metaphors 

 suggested. A large residuum of thought that involves only 

 intracerebral neurones does, in my opinion, exist, as witnessed 

 in the mental manipulation of space relations in geometry, 

 engineering, and the like, or sound relations in musical compo- 

 sition; but Watson has exposed a weak spot in psychology's 

 neglect of the actual muscular action that goes on in thought 

 and confusion of it and sensations due to it with kinesthetic 

 images. 



A reviewer of this book is presumably expected to make 

 some estimate of Watson's contrast of the general merits of the 



