Talk:Donald O. Hebb

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This article was the subject of an educational assignment in Spring 2015. Further details were available on the "Education Program:Louisiana State University Shreveport/Principles and Theories of Learning (PSYC 706) (Summer 2015)" page, which is now unavailable on the wiki.

The article states that "James Watson" was one of the people who motivated Hebb to pursue psychology. The disambiguation page for [James Watson] only refers to the co-discoverer of DNA as having anything to do with biology. Isn't it more likely that John B. Watson was the person of influence? --Jbergquist 09:56, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, obviously it was John B. Maybe the adjacent mention of William James influenced the editor. ;-) I've made the correction.4granite 05:02, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed a section that erroneously connected Hebb's sensory deprivation work with the CIA. This is a frequent mistake, and one that has recently been increased by misreadings and/or ambiguous wording during interviews with Alfred McCoy, author of a recent book on torture.

There is no evidence suggesting that Hebb was funded by the CIA, though the CIA most certainly became interested in the sensory deprivation experiments after the fact. There is often frequent confusion between Hebb's experiments (conducted in the 50's with undergraduate volunteers and funded by the Defense Research Board of Canada) and the later, independent, work of Ewen Cameron at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal. Cameron's work was funded by the CIA and included "psychic driving" (see Dr. D. Ewen Cameron and Psychic driving) experiments with LSD and shock therapy.

I am currently gathering sources and think that it would be a useful addition to the page to include a separate section on Hebb's sensory deprivation experiments, including clarifications on what sensory deprivation experiments Hebb did conduct or supervise, and later work based on his original experiments. --ElizabethFoley 22:00, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I added a brief reference to this topic of sensory deprivation and interrogation, which cannot be simply missing from the entry (or it looks like what it is: someone removed a section that was there!). Actio (talk)

I am supposing that this article was originally submitted by a Canadian, or at least edited by one, which might account for why it seems a bit deaf to the debates roiling the APA in relation to psychologists' assisting in harsh interrogation in Guantánamo and CIA "black sites," debates that tend to invoke Hebb as the association's past president, who acknowledged being involved in research that may or may not have directly assisted in currently used, though possibly illegal, interrogation methods.Actio (talk)

Can one of you (Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, ElizabethFoley, Actio) recheck (as you have already worked on the topic before) the current version of how Hebb was supposed to be connected with CIA? Tkivisik (talk) 17:36, 24 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This previously read: "Although his rebellious attitude and disrespect for authority eventually resulted in his failing the 11th grade, he still managed to graduate." It hardly seems plausible that "his rebellious attitude and disrespect for authority" was the only or even the prime cause for his failure to pass Grade 11 when most of the students in the combined Grades 9, 10 and 11 failed. The quality of the teaching seems a more likely cause. Few passed. His younger and less rebellious brother failed Grade 9 the same year. (As a result of the lack of Grade 12 in Chester, Donald repeated Grade 11 while his brother moved to the Grade 10. The following year, then living in Dartmouth, Donald was in Grade 12 and his brother in Grade 11. The next year the two brothers started at Dalhousie University together because their father liked the idea of them starting together. Donald's brother thought it somewhat unfair that he was attending Dalhousie after only Grade 11 while his brother Donald had two years in Grade 11 plus Grade 12.) Hebbgd (talk) 18:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• This is some extremely specific information. I have no way to verify whether you're correct or not and have not seen this kind of information recorded anywhere else. How did you come by this knowledge? Are you related to Dr. Hebb? Are there other good resources for information on him? --flyhighplato (talk) 16:05, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Intelligence Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human intelligence to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:53, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've read that Hebb compared the Nature versus nurture controversy to arguing about whether the width of a rectangle contributes more to its area than its length, and I'll be looking for more sources on Hebb's views on that and other issues. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 03:32, 17 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I tagged a paragraph as dubious because it seems it wasn't written by someone knowledgeable in neurobiology. The fact that a stimulus is processed by the brain and leads to a motor command has nothing to do with antidromic activation of neurons. Sensory neurons project their axons "upward" to the encephalon, but motor neurons have their own fibers and project them to muscles without reusing sensory neurons axons! There is some "backpropagation", for example dendritic backpropagation which is linked to long term plasticity and other stuff, but I doubt this is what the author of this paragraph thought of when he/she wrote about bidirectionality. So I think one should delete these speculations about why Hebb would have supersede Pavlov theories and the like. 84.97.92.14 (talk) Mickael —Preceding undated comment added 23:09, 25 July 2011 (UTC).[reply]

Added a description of the Hebb award with reference. May want to create a link to the McGill Picture Anomaly Test within the text under the Career subheading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGill_Picture_Anomaly_Test Sev0500 (talk) 17:18, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'll keep an eye out for sources to back up this helpful suggestion, and look at the article you linked. Thanks. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 18:06, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I plan to add a section on Hebb's views on education. The following are some of the references I will be using for my research.

Brown, R.E. (2006). "The Life and Work of Doanld Olding Hebb". Acta Neuroligica Taiwanica 15 (2): 127–139.
Brown, R.M.; Milner, P.M. (2003). "The Legacy of Donald O. Hebb: More than the Hebb Synapse". Nature Reviews Neuroscience 4 (12): 1013–1019.
Fentress, J.C. (1999). "The Organization of Behaviour Revisited". Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 53 (1): 8–19.
Hebb, D.O. (1949). The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
Stadler, M.A. (1993). "Implicit Serial Learning: Questions Inspired by Hebb (1961)". Memory & Cognition 21 (6): 819.

Sev0500 (talk) 16:25, 2 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I added a new section - Donald O. Hebb on Education and added a sentence to the lead section. The link to my sandbox where I worked on this is https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Sev0500/sandbox&action=edit. Sev0500 (talk) 13:48, 23 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Although Hebb took an active interest in the work of all the graduate students in the McGill Psychology department during his tenure, Lynn Nadel was actually the graduate student of Dalbir Bindra, as confirmed by the Wikipedia entry on D.B. as well as my first hand knowledge. Therefore, for the sake of accuracy, Lynn Nadel's name should be deleted from this list.

Verdun Kid (talk) 19:22, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]