To understand the importance of controlled observation in
psychology, we look at a horse by the name of Hans. Hans could reason and
"talk". Hans had been trained by a math teacher, Mr. Osten, to communicate by
tapping forefoot and moving his head. A head nod meant yes, and a shake
suggested no. Mr. Osten developed a code for verbal information in which each
letter was represented by a pair of numbers. The letter A was coded as one tap,
pause, one tap, and the letter I was three taps, pause, two taps. Once Hans
learned to tap his foot or move his head. when questioned, he was given simple
problems and then fed a piece of bread or carrot for correct responses. By the
end of his training, Hans could spell words, and he excelled in math. He became
a hero in Germany — his picture was on wine bottles and toys. An
official commission examined the horse, testing him to see if he really did all
the things claimed. They came away very impressed and issued a statement that
there was no evidence of any intentional influence or aid on the part of Hans’
questioners. But there was one scientist who was not so sure
that Hans was as intelligent as he had been portrayed. Oskar Pfungst, a sharp
observer, had detected that Hans always faced his questioners. Pfungst
hypothesized that this might have something to do with his math ability. The
scientist set up a very simple experiment. He wrote numbers on a card and held
them up one at a time, asking Hans to tap out the numbers written on each card.
Half of the cards were held so that only Hans, not Pfungst himself, could see.
Hans was his usual brilliant self, getting 92% of them correct. But for the
numbers Pfungst could not see, Hans was no longer a brilliant horse, getting 8%
correct. Pfungst repeated the experiment over and over again
with nearly the same results. He observed Hans with his other questioners. As
soon as they stated the problem to Hans, most questioners would turn their head
and upper body slightly. When the correct number of foot taps had been made by
Hans, the questioner would move his head upward. Despite his years of work with
the horse, Mr. Osten had never dreamed that Hans had learnt to "read" him. He
felt angry and betrayed by the horse. Thus we can see that
experts sometimes can be wrong and that what sometimes seems to be the troth may
be a false impression. Even experts can be fooled if they don’t make appropriate
use of research procedures to check their observations.
(447 words) Oskar Pfungst discovered that Hans performed badly in the math work when ______ .
【参考答案】
his questioner could not see the numbers on the cards