Describe Lashley’s law of mass action and principle of equipotentiality.
Lashley was Watson’s student. Career or being a psychologist of physiology led him to the universities of Chicago, Harvard, Minnesota and ultimately to Yerkes lab of Biology of Primates. He sustained the mechanistic legacy which defined psychology since its authorization.
Lashley advocated behaviorism of Watson, though his work on mechanisms of brain in rats questioned one of the primary points of Watson. He compiled his research and observation in “Brain Mechanisms and Intelligence”.
He gave two popular principles: the mass action law which asserts that the competence of learning is dependent on entire cortex mass and the equipotentiality principle, which asserts that one component of cortex, is significantly equal to other in terms of its additions of learning.
Lashley wanted his work to take him to particular motor and sensory centers in the cortex of cerebrum as well as analogous connections among motor and sensory apparatus. Findings like these could have backed the simplicity and primacy of the arc of reflex as primary behavioral unit.