What is transposition? Summarize the Gestalt and the behavioristic explanations of this phenomenon.
Gestaltists believed that an organism understands relationships or principles and when they acquire and understand these principles then they applied it to different but analogous circumstances. They do not have specific reactions to specific circumstances. This is known as transposition.
Transposition was challenged by the behaviorists. These behaviorists had their own theory of transposition. One of these behaviorists was Kenneth Spence who in 1937 gave his own inventive different explanation about this. Spence explained this by an example which is described below:
An animal learns to approach a box which has a lid of 160 sq. cm. In first trial of two boxes, which have 160 sq. cm and 100 sq. cm lids, the animal approaches to box which have a lid of 160 sq. cm. In second trial between 160 sq. cm and 256 sq.cm lid boxes, the animal approach to the larger box which has lid of 256 sq. cm. This shows that the tendency of approaching positive stimulus is always more than the negative stimulus.
This explanation by Spence has the benefit in the situations when transposition is not happened.