Plans and the Structure of Behavior [Hardcover]

George Armitage Miller (Author), Eugene Galanter (Author), Karl H. Pribram (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 226 pages
• Publisher: Adams Bannister Cox Pubs (September 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0937431001
• ISBN-13: 978-0937431009
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,853,704 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A building stone for Cognitive Science and for NLP, July 1, 2001

By 

Patrick Merlevede (Eeklo, Vlaanderen (Belgium, Europe)) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Plans and the Structure of Behavior (Hardcover)

As you will be able to read in the new Foreword by Donald Broadbent of the University of Oxford, this book has had a major impact on psychology and helped achieve the switch to cognitive psychology. This book triggered much of the research that lead to Ulric Neisser's book "Cognitive Psychology". The five stars I gave are related to the importance of this book - when reading this book in 2001, without taking this background into account, I would still rate it 4 stars.

This book argues that our behavior is guided by our plans. People move from sub-goal to sub-goal until their purposes are achieved. A basic concept to explain that is the feedback loop which comes from engineering and is know as the TOTE model inside the NLP community. When NLPers try to model a person's strategy (e.g. for taking a decision), they are in fact looking for the basic building blocks of the TOTE. This books contains a chapter on "Plans for Speaking", showing the link between Miller and Chomsky, another father of modern cogintive science (and NLP).

Of course, if you just want to grasp the basic concept, there is no need to read this book given that many books that are linked to practical applications of cogitive science (such as NLP) will include the model. For instance, the first part of the third chapter of my book "7 Steps on Emotional Intelligence" is built around on the TOTE model.

I consider this book a "must" for any scolar of cognitive science in general and of NLP in particular that wants some background on their domain.

Patrick E.C. Merlevede, MSc -- co-author of "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence"

5.0 out of 5 stars Book helped focus my life, August 3, 2011

By 

John E. Hunt (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Plans and the Structure of Behavior (Hardcover)

I read this book in college - think I found it in the Whole Earth Catalog, which is going back a long way. It really helped focusing down into detailed actions and results - which wasn't as popular a topic then as it is now. Now, for example, the Getting Things Done methodology, from David Allen, for example, keys on actions and results.