A quiet voice: R oland C lark D avis and the emergence of psychophysiology

Abstract

The 50th anniversary of the founding of the Society for Psychophysiological Research (SPR) provides an occasion to look back at the history of the Society and its founders. In particular, it is fitting to consider the life and work of the Chair of the Organizing Board, Roland Clark Davis, in the context of this anniversary. This examination reveals threads that connect psychophysiology to its roots in physiology and psychology and to efforts early in the last century to move psychology further into the realm of the empirical sciences. It also reveals a portrait of a quiet man who helped to weave those threads into a new discipline. With a gentle but insistent voice, Davis called upon his colleagues in the young field to eschew a rush to judgment—by retrofitting psychophysiological data to existing theories or prematurely espousing new theories—and instead apply the new tools of an emerging discipline thoughtfully and systematically toward the goal of empirical discovery. This year also marks the 50th anniversary of Davis's untimely death. He died on February 23, 1961, at the age of 59, just as an informal network of psychophysiologists was coalescing into the organization that is now SPR. By all accounts, the first gatherings of early psychophysiologists occurred in the 1950s during annual conventions of the American Psychological Association (APA). Davis's personal notes document an “informal meeting on physiological measurements” that took place during the APA convention in San Francisco in 1955, and his son Christopher Davis (now a retired member of SPR) recalls a similar meeting held in 1958 during the APA convention in Washington, D.C. This otherwise diverse group of scientists shared a set of techniques and measurement problems, as well as a belief in the importance of physiology to theories of behavior. The participants at the 1958 gathering—including Davis, Marion (“Gus”) Wenger, Don Lindsley, Dick Atkinson, Chester Darrow, and John Lacey—discussed methods of dealing with multiple dependent variables. At other meetings, the group addressed topics such as the measurement of change, lability, and variability of psychophysiological measures (Fetzner, 1996). In 1954, Al Ax began to distribute a mimeographed newsletter to facilitate communication among psychophysiologists; by 1959 he had come to the conclusion that it was time for the newsletter to evolve into a journal. He recognized that an organized society would be required to realize that goal (Fetzner, 1996). Thus, propelled by Ax, the first organizing meeting of the Society was held in 1959 at the APA convention in Cincinnati. The group turned to Davis; as one of the established figures in the field, he offered legitimacy and leadership, both of which were considered vital to the effort to establish the Society and launch a journal. Davis's enthusiasm for the proposal arose from his belief that such an organization would promote the incorporation of physiological psychology into undergraduate curricula at a time when it was not routinely offered (Engel, 1996). Davis was designated Chair of the Organizing Board of SPR. The founders elected Darrow as the first president and intended for Davis to be his successor (Engel, 1996); however, he died before serving. Indeed, Davis never attended an annual meeting of the Society, the first of which was held on September 5, 1961, 7 months after his death. Moreover, he never published a paper in Psychophysiology, as the first issue of the journal did not appear until 1964. Nonetheless, the story of R. C. Davis is entwined with those of SPR and psychophysiology, and with that of American psychology. Davis was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on December 20, 1902. His father William Chalmers Davis, a graduate of Harvard University, was a well-respected educator, and his mother Effie Estelle Clark was a school teacher. In time the family moved to Easton, Pennsylvania, where the elder Davis took a position as principal of Easton High School. Roland graduated from Easton High in 1920 and, after studying for 2 years at Lafayette College, went on to Harvard University, where he majored in English and earned his A.B. in 1924. The entry below Davis's photograph in the Easton High yearbook refers to “the lank figure of a poet and a scholar. … Although usually quiet and philosophical, he has often astonished us with bursts of friskiness and humor.” That description continued to be apt throughout his life. His proclivity for scholarship was evident from the beginning of his career in psychology—he reviewed over 400 papers on the galvanic skin reflex (GSR) for his dissertation, identifying a host of questions that guided his early work. This “thoroughness and meticulous attention to detail” became a Davis trademark (Estes, 1961) and remained evident over the years. Early in his career, tapping the scholar, the poet, and the scientist, he wrote a detailed historical review of American psychology between the years 1800 and 1885, a period during which the field emerged from the study of religion and philosophy (Davis, 1936a). Two decades later, he similarly reviewed the history of physiological psychology in the first half of the 20th century (Davis, 1958a). In both pieces, he placed developments in psychology in context of the “temper of the times,” including philosophies reigning at the time at various universities in the United States and Europe. He also remained a poet, in the broader sense of the word, throughout his life. His daughter, Susan Gabbay, recalls that he regularly tuned in to Saturday afternoon radio concerts—on a sound system he engineered—listening intently and unobtrusively conducting the music as he paced the first floor of their home. On Sunday afternoons, he often attended recitals at the Indiana University School of Music. Neither of his children recalls his reading “children's books” to them; rather, Homer's Iliad was a more likely bedtime story. Susan also recollects that “one of the kindest things he did for me was to seem to take seriously my infatuation with Robert Graves's ideas on world mythology. Dad, whose philosophy of life was miles away from Mr. Graves's fantasies, discussed them with me quite seriously. I have to this day letters he wrote me, in pencil on cheap yellow paper, in which he described his reactions to the Graves book.” There are few clues as to the reasons for Davis's decision to pursue psychology. In an autobiographical sketch he prepared for the 25th reunion of his Harvard class, he allows only that in his last undergraduate year he debated his future and, after considering “three rather new sciences,” determined that he would work in psychology (Davis, 1949). Thus, after a year spent teaching high school English in Greenville, Ohio, he enrolled in the summer of 1925 in the graduate program in psychology at Columbia University. His studies were interrupted briefly when, out of financial necessity, he took a position as a school psychologist in Petersburg, Virginia. There he met and married Frances Meacham, a young school teacher. Shortly after their marriage, they returned to New York, and Davis resumed the program at Columbia. Whereas one might have predicted he would become a literary scholar, over the course of 5 years at Columbia, Davis evolved instead into an empirical scientist. It is common practice for scientific biographers to invoke the academic pedigrees of their subjects. In the case of R. C. Davis, this exercise reveals the antecedents of psychophysiology—physiology, psychology, and the experimental method—which Davis and others of his generation would interweave over the ensuing years. His mentors at Columbia were Robert Sessions Woodworth and A. T. Poffenberger, under whom he did his dissertation. Woodworth had studied with William James at Harvard and with James McKeen Cattell at Columbia. In turn, Woodworth and Cattell were mentors to Poffenberger at Columbia. Critical to the story of psychophysiology, Woodworth also spent a summer at the University of Edinburgh working with E. G. Schäfer on a study of the motor cortex and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Liverpool with Charles Sherrington, where he published a paper on the conductivity of mammalian nerve (Poffenberger, 1962). Woodworth was not simply trained in physiology but also had an abiding interest in the relationship between the psychical and the physical, reflecting his background in philosophy (at Harvard with Josiah Royce) (Poffenberger, 1962). This would prove an essential element in the integration of physiology into mainstream psychology. Also important to our field, Woodworth introduced the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model and stressed its difference from the strictly S-R approach of the behaviorists (Ballantyne, 2009). He popularized the terms independent and dependent variables, as well as the scheme of experimentation, in which the cause of variation in a dependent variable is established by way of holding all but one independent variable constant (Winston, 1990). In short, Davis's forebears believed firmly in the susceptibility of behavior to scientific analysis and in the fundamental importance of neurophysiology for understanding behavior (Wenzel, 1979). In 1930, Davis completed his doctoral dissertation, entitled “Factors Affecting the Galvanic Reflex.” Armed with perspectives on physiology and psychology gleaned at Columbia, his proclivity for scholarship, and a penchant for engineering, he was poised to carry forward the legacy of his mentors. In the summer of 1931, after a short stint at the University of Virginia, Davis moved to Indiana University. He established a psychophysiology laboratory in Bloomington and embarked on a program of research that would continue for the next 30 years until his death. Davis would be a member of the first generation of psychologists to devote their careers to psychophysiology. Along with Chester Darrow and Gus Wenger, Davis was “a member of the triumvirate of psychologists who helped to form the scientific basis on which psychophysiology stands” (Engel, 1983). In recognition, the Society posthumously bestowed on him one of the first two awards for a distinguished contribution to the field,11 The other of the first two distinguished contribution awards was bestowed in the same year on Chester Darrow. and his contributions were honored at the ninth annual SPR meeting, held in Monterey, California, in 1969 (Bernal & Abraham, 1970). A metric of Davis's contribution to the emergence of psychophysiology is gleaned from a review of psychophysiology papers published between 1930 and 1964 (Holguín & Cadaveira, 2002). The authors of this bibliometric study defined the lower limit of the period by the discovery of the electroencephalogram (Berger, 1929), the publication of Darrow's papers on physiological responses to sensory and ideational stimuli (1929a, 1929b), and the increased use of polygraphs in laboratories. They defined the upper limit with the publication of the first issue of Psychophysiology in 1964. As in any new field of inquiry, measurement and methods were a primary focus in the early years of the field, followed by the collection of empirical data and, finally, review and theoretical integration (Ax, 1964; Holguín & Cadaveira, 2002). Davis's research career followed this arc closely, and he figured prominently in this bibliometric review: Having authored 42 of the 576 psychophysiology papers published during this period, he was the most prolific of the 66 authors represented in the study. His contributions included methodological papers, empirical papers in which he applied the methods he had developed to the study of transactions between the organism and the environment, and in the last decade of his life, a series of theoretical papers (see online Appendix). The Davises lived on a quiet corner in the heart of Bloomington, a short distance from the Indiana campus. Davis often walked the few blocks to his lab—more than once, he arrived home at the end of the day, having walked home with a colleague, only to be sent back to campus by his wife to get the car he had forgotten. In later years, visiting grandchildren would eagerly wait for his tall figure to appear over the crest of the hill as he arrived home for lunch or dinner. His laboratory was in Science Hall, a rough limestone building situated on a wooded quadrangle in the center of campus. R.M.S. recalls that the lab had a distinctive odor, which came from the multichannel recorder, an early inkless polygraph. Electrically activated metal pens—old phonograph needles through which a sizable current was passed during recording—traced the signal onto thin tar paper that was coated with gunpowder. As the paper flew through the recorder at 50 mm/s, the powder exploded off, leaving a fine black tar recording—and the room filled with smoke. Davis's son Chris recalls that for a time the acrid smell of the recording paper mixed with the stench of clucking pigeons, which were housed next door in B. F. Skinner's laboratory (in the days before experimental animals were consigned to separate quarters). During this period, human “record readers” measured, quantified, and analyzed the tracings, jobs now done by computers and sophisticated analysis software. At any given time, as many as 12 readers might be gathered around a large table in Davis's lab, armed with magnifying glasses and rulers, analyzing the traces acquired in his latest studies. Graduate students then checked the accuracy of the record readers’ work. In the absence of commercially available recording equipment, Davis designed and in some cases built the devices necessary to test his hypotheses, as did his compatriots in the early days of psychophysiology. He was an engineer of sorts, although not by formal training, and a lover of gadgets and equipment. His students were often amused by the “casual manner in which he kicked a piece of malingering equipment back into operation” (Bernal & Abraham, 1970). As Kit and I grew older, Dad saw in us willing and eager, if naive, subjects for his research. The apparatus we delighted to visit was known to us as The Blue-Dot Machine: a round tube that had in its center a trembling point of blue light. When I was wired to the machine, the blue dot would dance to the tune of my heartbeats. In one experiment, I was seated in a chamber about the size of a small closet and made of sheet metal [onto which students had tacked up chicken wire to provide the required electrical shielding]. In it there was a button, to be pushed each time I heard a beep. I did not know then that the button and the beep were diversionary and that Dad was about something else altogether. I was wired up, and in those days this was no mean task. First, electrode paste was applied to points on arms, legs, and abdomen; then electrodes stuck to that; then wires clipped on; and finally, yards of Ace bandages wrapped around me to hold everything in place. I was closed into the chamber, hand poised over the signal button. There were beeps, and I pressed on cue. Suddenly there reverberated an indescribable burst of sound. My heart nearly left my chest and my breath stopped. Dad had pounded on the sheet metal box in which I was contained. He was looking for my physical responses to being startled. He got them. Some might say it was an unkind thing to do, to scare your young daughter out of her wits; but I never questioned it or held it against him. To have been part of an “experiment” was a mark of honor. It is likely that this session was in preparation for a series of studies that addressed the classic work of Landis and Hunt (1939) on the startle response (Davis, 1948b, 1948c, 1950; Davis & Van Liere, 1949). Davis was keenly aware that, in a field that relied so heavily on technique, “there is some danger of building good roads to no destination” (Davis, 1962, p. 256). Davis was not at risk of traveling this road to nowhere, as his quest to develop equipment to measure somatic responses was guided by several fundamental principles. First, as facile as he was with technology, he did not let the methods drive the hypotheses. Rather, his scholarly reviews of the empirical evidence and thoughtful analyses led him to identify questions for which he then designed or adapted the necessary his of physiology the he applied to analysis of the somatic he as well as to the with which he studied them. This evident in his work on variables, and the that the recording did not the response he was to The of Davis's was a series of all manner of including and and designed to recording and His published papers and personal notes are with and hand of the various By the time he reviewed the on for his in the the set of studies was and the were and (Bernal & Abraham, 1970). Davis in the in experimental and a of hypotheses. He the first of by the tube as a constant current for measurement of the (Davis, this he the most of the relationship between and skin at that time and established that the of a not be in the same manner as that of a piece of To this the physical of the he empirical data on in variability (Davis, and on the between various and time, and (Davis, 1930, Davis & The of understanding Davis had of the experimental with measurement of the led to of his colleagues with is a about most of the galvanic skin reflex which to that the reflex as a which be of before (Bernal & Abraham, 1970). This and scholarly approach to the a model for the way Davis in psychophysiology throughout his there were many such the of commercially available in the He published an early paper on the of electrodes in recording (Davis, This paper was followed by a more on methods of (Davis, and that described an and apparatus for recording (Davis, In an published in and in the years, Davis and two in the Indiana University on of one to record the which upon the he had designed for his an electrical and an to record and (Davis, & In the of the paper, Davis offered a from our however, that the is a any known for in a years later, in he published a paper in which he the importance for research of a nearly record of He described the methods available at the time and that those methods the of the system they to As he had done for he designed a a adapted to would recording (Davis, In an early study published he was at the University of Virginia, Davis between and of (Davis, He included the of the that it would provide the most available of of nerve Davis's roots were evident in this The reflex arc was a focus among as well as psychologists at the of the 20th and Davis's academic Sherrington, and among the most of this way of understanding behavior. Indeed, James was among the first to that of might be more to study behavior 1979). a to the contribution of to the Davis that the would be to record the given by the just to its (Estes, a analysis of the methods Davis arrived at the of recording the by of a an that was in use in many neurophysiology (Davis, This essential in of his later and its as a to measure and other psychophysiological was a of Davis's contributions to (Bernal & Abraham, 1970). As the 20th century were to that between and and Davis's research was an essential part of this In a paper, Davis now to be an to the In a he that might also be to the between and response the he authored more than a of the papers on published between and 1964 (Holguín & Cadaveira, 2002). He took the approach of of to of the and any or response of the organism (Davis, his on empirical he often discussed his in terms of study addressed the to of (Davis, with of the response in theories of & Davis, and a the of & Davis, In a series of studies completed just before his he to the response to in and discussed the somatic response in to various theories & Davis, research has continued to that of both and between and and the study of and of the of transactions between organi

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