Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Who pioneered activity theory?
Activity theory (AT; ) is an umbrella term for a line of eclectic social sciences theories and research with its roots in the Soviet psychological activity theory pioneered by Lev Vygotsky , Alexei Leont'ev and Sergei Rubinstein. These scholars sought to understand human activities as systemic and socially situated phenomena and to go beyond paradigms of reflexology (the teaching of Vladimir Bekhterev and his followers) and classical conditioning (the teaching of Ivan Pavlov and his school), psychoanalysis and behaviorism. It became one of the major psychological approaches in the former USSR, being widely used in both theoretical and applied psychology, and in education, professional training, ergonomics, social psychology and work psychology.
Action regulation theory (or Activity regulation theory) was jointly developed by Winfried Hacker. in the 1980s. The Theory serves as a basis for modelling working conditions. As a process model it has its roots in the Soviet psychological activity theory on the one side and on the other side it is based on the T.O.T.E. Model (Test-Operation-Test-Exit) from Miller, Galanter and Pribram.
The pursued approach of the Action-Regulation-Theory is the integration of cognitive, behaviourism and social science orientated conceptions. This integration then is used to make explanatory and modelling statements about work conditions. Hacker talks in this context about the holistic work activity, which is an essential criteria for personality development. Through the above described should the partialization of work activity and the Taylorism be overcome. As a cybernetic approach the ground idea of an action/ activity is the regulation.
Between the visible work activity and the non visible cognitive processes is a gap, which the Action-Regulation-Theory promise to close. Through a hierarchical-sequential structured model, action steps are supposed to be accurately captured and analysed.
Attachment theory, originating in the work of John Bowlby and developed by Mary Ainsworth, is a psychological, evolutionary and ethological theory that provides a descriptive and explanatory framework for understanding interpersonal relationships between human beings. Bowlby's observations of close attachments led him to believe that close emotional bonds or “attachments” between an infant and their primary caregiver is an important requirement that is necessary to form “normal social and emotional development”.
In the mid-20th century there was a general—but not universal—trend for U.S.-American sociology to be more scientific in nature, due to the prominence at that time of action theory and other system-theoretical approaches. Robert K. Merton released his "Social Theory and Social Structure" (1949). By the turn of the 1960s, sociological research was increasingly employed as a tool by governments and businesses worldwide. Sociologists developed new types of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Paul Lazarsfeld founded Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research, where he exerted a tremendous influence over the techniques and the organization of social research. His many contributions to sociological method have earned him the title of the "founder of modern empirical sociology". Lazarsfeld made great strides in statistical survey analysis, panel methods, latent structure analysis, and contextual analysis. He is also considered a co-founder of mathematical sociology. Many of his ideas have been so influential as to now be considered self-evident.
John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth developed attachment theory in the 1960s while investigating the effects of maternal separation on infant development. The development of the Strange Situation task in 1965 by Ainsworth and Wittig allowed researchers to systematically investigate the attachment system operating between children and their parents. The Strange Situation involves separating infant-parent dyads and observing infant behaviours upon reunion. Infant behaviour tended to follow patterns, leading to the development of three attachment categories: Secure, Anxious-Avoidant, and Anxious-Resistant. In 1990, Ainsworth added a new category, championed by Mary Main, called Disorganized/Disoriented attachment, characterized by its less reliable pattern of behaviour.
Sherif was a founder of modern social psychology, who developed several unique and powerful techniques for understanding social processes, particularly social norms and social conflict. Sherif's experimental study of autokinetic movement demonstrated how mental evaluation norms were created by human beings. Sherif is equally famous for the Robbers Cave Experiments. This series of experiments, begun in Connecticut and concluded in Oklahoma, took boys from intact middle-class families, who were carefully screened to be psychologically normal, delivered them to a summer camp setting (with researchers doubling as counselors) and created social groups that came into conflict with each other.
Attachment theory, originally developed by John Bowlby, focuses on the importance of open, intimate, emotionally meaningful relationships. Attachment is described as a biological system or powerful survival impulse that evolved to ensure the survival of the infant. A child who is threatened or stressed will move toward caregivers who create a sense of physical, emotional and psychological safety for the individual. Attachment feeds on body contact and familiarity. Later Mary Ainsworth developed the Strange Situation protocol and the concept of the secure base.
However, Dollard is likely best known within the psychological community as a member of the distinguished group of young researchers (among whom was Neal E. Miller) at Yale University in the 1930s who, inspired initially by Clark L. Hull, sought to combine learning theory and psychoanalysis. The groups' first major publication was "Frustration and Aggression", and has become a classic which is still widely cited in introductory texts. It outlined a view, now referred to as the frustration-aggression hypothesis, which formed the basis for later developments such as Leonard Berkowitz's "Aggression: A Social Psychological Analysis" (1962) and the animal research on frustration and aggression in the 1960s and 1970s, which caused a controversy between the researchers and animal rights groups. Miller sums up Dollard's contributions to the group as such: "If trying to bring together contributions from sociology, anthropology, psychology, and psychotherapy no longer seems so novel, it is because Dollard and other pioneers had the courage and tenacity to break through traditional barriers".
The broad theoretical framework for current versions of RAD is attachment theory, based on work conducted from the 1940s to the 1980s by John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth and René Spitz. Attachment theory is a framework that employs psychological, ethological and evolutionary concepts to explain social behaviors typical of young children. Attachment theory focuses on the tendency of infants or children to "seek proximity" to a "particular attachment figure" (familiar caregiver), in situations of alarm or distress, behavior which appears to have survival value. This is known as a discriminatory or selective attachment. Subsequently, the child begins to use the caregiver as a base of security from which to explore the environment, returning periodically to the familiar person. Attachment is not the same as love and/or affection although they are often associated. Attachment and attachment behaviors tend to develop between the ages of six months and three years. Infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive in social interactions with the infant, and who remain as consistent caregivers for some time. Caregiver responses lead to the development of patterns of attachment, that in turn lead to internal working models which will guide the individual's feelings, thoughts, and expectations in later relationships. For a diagnosis of reactive attachment disorder, the child's history and atypical social behavior must suggest the absence of formation of a discriminatory or selective attachment.
Whilst Bowlby's early writings on maternal deprivation may be seen as part of the background to the later development of attachment theory, there are many significant differences between the two. At the time of the 1951 publication, there was little research in this area and no comprehensive theory on the development of early relationships. Aside from its central proposition of the importance of an early, continuous and sensitive relationship, the monograph concentrates mostly on social policy. For his subsequent development of attachment theory, Bowlby drew on concepts from ethology, cybernetics, information processing, developmental psychology and psychoanalysis. The first early formal statements of attachment theory were presented in three papers in 1958, 1959 and 1960. His major work "Attachment" was published in three volumes between 1969 and 1980. Attachment theory revolutionised thinking on the nature of early attachments and extensive research continues to be undertaken.
The frustration-aggression hypothesis emerged in 1939 through the form of a monograph published by the Yale University Institute of Human Relations. The Yale psychologists behind the monograph were John Dollard, Leonard Doob, Neal Miller, O. H Mowrer, and Robert Sears. The book is based on many studies conducted by the group that touched a variety of disciplines including psychology, anthropology and sociology. Marxism, psychoanalysis and behaviorism were used by the Yale group throughout their research. Their work, "Frustration and Aggression (1939)", was soon having repercussions on the explanation of aggressive behavior theories. Their theory applied to human beings, but also to animals. The book created controversy on the subject which led to more than 7 articles critiquing the new theory. The "Psychological Review" and the "Reading in Social Psychology" are two of the papers that published articles on the subject. Many social scientists disclaimed the rather strict definition of frustration reactions as well as how the frustration concept is defined in itself. By 1941, the Yale group modified their theory following the multiple critics and studies published by other psychologists. From there, many pioneers in the social science world modified and brought their knowledge to the original theory.
In the nineties of the last century he developed the "dialogical self theory", inspired by the American pragmatism of William James and the dialogical school of the Russian literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin.
Attachment is a deep emotional bond between two people, a "lasting psychological connectedness between human beings." Attachment theory, developed by John Bowlby during the 1950s, is a theory that remains influential in psychology today.
Albert Bandura, a social learning theorist suggested the forces of memory and emotions worked in conjunction with environmental influences. Bandura was known mostly for his "Bobo doll experiment". During these experiments, Bandura video taped a college student kicking and verbally abusing a bobo doll. He then showed this video to a class of kindergarten children who were getting ready to go out to play. When they entered the play room, they saw bobo dolls, and some hammers. The people observing these children at play saw a group of children beating the doll. He called this study and his findings observational learning, or modeling.
ACT began in 2003 as the STP Best Practices Conference that was an outgrowth of the deliberations of the Assessment Group at the Psychology Partnership Program (P3) that was sponsored by APA and hosted by James Madison University in 1999. The first BP Conference was in Atlanta and dealt with assessment. The conference was such a success that the Society made it an annual event. Each of the BPs were themed conferences offering best practice presentations on limited topics until 2014 when the event was renamed The Annual Conference on Teaching and the program was opened to accept posters and symposia on all areas dealing with the teaching of psychology. Since 2003, the conference has been held in or around Atlanta. With the change in focus of the conference and the decision to conduct the STP Annual Business Meeting and Awards Ceremonies at ACT, the Society decided to begin moving ACT around the country. The first such move will take the conference to San Antonio, TX, in October 2017.
Fechner, along with Wilhelm Wundt and Hermann von Helmholtz, is recognized as one of the founders of modern experimental psychology. His clearest contribution was the demonstration that because the mind was susceptible to measurement and mathematical treatment, psychology had the potential to become a quantified science. Theorists such as Immanuel Kant had long stated that this was impossible, and that therefore, a science of psychology was also impossible.
The "cultural cognition hypothesis" holds that individuals are motivated by a variety of psychological processes to form beliefs about putatively dangerous activities that match their cultural evaluations of them. Persons who subscribe to relatively individualistic values, for example, tend to value commerce and industry and are inclined to disbelieve that such activities pose serious environmental risks. Persons who subscribe to relatively egalitarian and communitarian values, in contrast, readily credit claims of environmental risks, which is consistent with their moral suspicion of commerce and industry as sources of inequality and symbols of excessive self-seeking.
Albert Bandura followed his 1961 study two years later with another that again tested differences in children's learning/behavior or actual performance after seeing a model being rewarded, punished, or experiencing no consequences for aggressive behavior towards a Bobo doll (here and following, ) .
Miller moved back to Harvard as a tenured associate professor in 1955 and became a full professor in 1958, expanding his research into how language affects human cognition. At the university he met a young Noam Chomsky, another of the founders of cognitive science. They spent a summer together at Stanford training the faculty, and their two families shared a house. In 1958–59, Miller took leave to join the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto, California, (now at Stanford University). There he collaborated with Eugene Galanter and Karl Pribram on the book "Plans and the Structure of Behavior". In 1960, along with Jerome S. Bruner, he co-founded the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard. The cognitive term was a break from the then-dominant school of behaviorism, which insisted cognition was not fit for scientific study. The center attracted such notable visitors as Jean Piaget, Alexander Luria and Chomsky. Miller then became the chair of the psychology department. Miller was instrumental at the time for recruiting Timothy Leary to teach at Harvard. Miller knew Leary from the University of Alabama, where Miller was teaching psychology and Leary graduated with an undergraduate degree from the department.
The concept of behavioral modeling was most memorably introduced by Albert Bandura in his famous 1961 Bobo Doll Experiment. In this study, 72 children from ages three to five were divided into groups to watch an adult confederate interact with an assortment of toys in the experiment room, including an inflated Bobo doll. For children assigned the non-aggressive condition, the confederate ignored the doll. For children assigned the aggressive condition, the confederate spent the majority of the time physically aggressing the doll and shouting at it.
Frustration–aggression hypothesis, otherwise known as the frustration–aggression–displacement theory, is a theory of aggression proposed by John Dollard, Neal Miller, Leonard Doob, Orval Mowrer, and Robert Sears in 1939, and further developed by Neal Miller in 1941 and Leonard Berkowitz in 1969. The theory says that aggression is the result of blocking, or frustrating, a person's efforts to attain a goal.
In a 2009 article published in "The Chronicle of Higher Education", Eric Hoover called the authors pioneers in a burgeoning industry of consultants, speakers and researchers focused on generations. Academic response to the theory has been mixed—some applauding Strauss and Howe for their "bold and imaginative thesis" and others criticizing the theory. Criticism has focused on the lack of rigorous empirical evidence for their claims, and a perception that aspects of the argument gloss over real differences within the population.
In his 1987 ""Learning by expanding"", Engeström offers a very detailed account of the diverse sources, philosophical and psychological, that inform activity theory. In subsequent years, however, a simplified picture has emerged from his and other researchers' work, namely the idea that (to date) there are three principal 'stages' or 'generations' of activity theory, or "cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). Whilst the first generation built on Vygotsky's notion of mediated action, from the individual's perspective, and the second generation built on Leont'ev's notion of activity system, with emphasis on the collective, the third generation, which appeared in the mid-nineties, builds on the idea of multiple interacting activity systems focused on a partially shared object, and boundary-crossings between them.
The activity theory, also known as the implicit theory of aging, normal theory of aging, and lay theory of aging, proposes that successful ageing occurs when older adults stay active and maintain social interactions. It takes the view that the aging process is delayed and the quality of life is enhanced when old people remain socially active. 
The activity theory rose in opposing response to the disengagement theory. The activity theory and the disengagement theory were the two major theories that outlined successful aging in the early 1960s. The theory was developed by Robert J. Havighurst in 1961. In 1964, Bernice Neugarten asserted that satisfaction in old age depended on active maintenance of personal relationships and endeavors.
The origins of activity theory can be traced to several sources, which have subsequently given rise to various complementary and intertwined strands of development. This account will focus on three of the most important of these strands. The first is associated with the Moscow Institute of Psychology and in particular the "troika" of young Russian researchers, Vygotsky, Leont'ev and Luria. Vygotsky founded cultural-historical psychology, a field that became the basis for modern AT; Leont'ev, one of the principal founders of activity theory, both developed and reacted against Vygotsky's work. Leont'ev's formulation of general activity theory is currently the most influential in post-Soviet developments in AT, which have largely been in social-scientific, organizational, and writing-studies rather than psychological research.