Karl Spencer Lashley’s works in psychology led to a better understanding of memory and learning. Karl started as a supporter of behaviorism but broke away from behaviorism just as Watson began asserting total shaping power of the environment. He came up with indigenous methods of testing rats’ abilities in various tasks such as threading a maze before and after destroying rats’ cerebral cortexes. Karl came up with the principle of equipotential and mass action from his experimental work with rats which emphasized the cortex’s dynamic functioning. Also, Karl was opposed to the theory of memories and thoughts being localized in discrete cells. Karl Spencer Lashley’s psychology work was captured in his only book which focused on psychology localization being wrong.

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KARL SPENCER LASHLEY AND ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECT ON BEHAVIOR

Karl denied that environmental factors influenced behavior disapproving the reflex theory as well as behaviorism. Additionally, Karl was a determined hereditarian and was committed, both intellectually and institutionally, to the integration of biology and psychology. Clark Hull disagreed with Lashley on the structure and function of the brain as well as the use of machine metaphors to explain intelligence as done by Lashley. Environment and heredity had relative importance in determining behavior but Lashley’s principle of equipotential led to the dismissal of the environment influencing behavior. Psychology became a basic social science due to the works of Karl Spencer Lashley’s experiments conducted on rats. Lashley used a more holistic approach in the study of behavior bringing wide attention to the study of psychology and proving that psychology localization existed.

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ENGRAM LOCALIZATION

Lashley carried out an experiment based on reductionism where he would attempt to localize the engram. The experiment would seek to further strengthen the principle of equipotentiality. The engram was to be searched empirically somewhere within the association cortex, thought to be the repository of long-term memory. He concluded that it was not possible to localize an engram within the association cortex as the memory was widely distributed throughout a network of neurons. This emphasized his view that psychology localization was impossible as the network of neurons all have an equal potential to contribute to the memory trace. Lashley and his view on behavior psychology made him a holistic researcher who was viewed as a negative scientist by other researchers. His denial of behaviorism and study of the engram allowed for others such as Robert Thompson whose works became greater than those of Lashley.

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