Theories of Learning

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Theories of Learning Psychologist: Ivan Petrovich Pavlov Short bio: Pavlov was born on September 14, 1849, at Ryazan,

Russia. Because he was born into a large family, poverty was always an issue. His father, Peter Dmitrievich Pavlov, was the village priest and young Ivan tended to the church property. Pavlov inherited many of his father's characteristics including a strong will to succeed. The oldest sibling, Ivan Pavlov was also among the healthiest. He began school at the Ryazan Ecclesiastical High School. Pavlov and his brothers eventually entered the Ryazan Ecclesiastical Seminary. At the Seminary, he planned to pursue a career in theology. However, after being introduced to the works of Charles Darwin and Ivan Sechenov, Pavlov decided to transfer to the University of St. Petersburg to gain knowledge about natural science. There, Pavlov gained great respect for a professor of physiology, Cyon. Due to Cyon's enthusiasm for physiology, he decided to become a physiologist during his third year. At that point, Pavlov started work as an assistant in a laboratory in which he earned 50 rubles a month. Eventually, Pavlov's research on the physiology of digestion would earn him the Nobel Prize. As a skilled surgeon, he was able to implant small stomach pouches in dogs to measure the secretion of gastric juices produced when the dogs began to eat. With the help of his assistants, he was able to condition the dogs to salivate at the click of a metronome. As his work progressed, Pavlov established the basis for conditioned reflexes and the field of classical conditioning. Theory: Pavlov concluded that he was able to pair a neutral stimulus with an excitatory one and have the neutral stimulus eventually elicit the response the was associated with the original, unlearned reflex. In Classical Conditioning terminology, an unconditioned stimulus (US) is an event that causes a response to occur, which is referred to as the unconditioned response (UR). And, in Pavlov's study with dogs, the food within the dog's mouth is the US, and the salivation that results is the UR. Pavlov took a step further and added an element known as the nonexcitatory, conditioned stimulus (CS), which is paired with the US. Pavlov used a metronome as the CS which he rang first, then fed the dogs. This pairing would eventually establish the dog's conditioned response of salivating to the sound of the metronome. After repeating this procedure several times, Pavlov was able to remove the US (food) and by only ringing the bell the dogs would salivate (CR). Since the bell alone now produced the unconditioned response (salivation), the association had been established (Conditioned). Pavlov continued to present the CS with any pairing with the US until the CR no longer occurred. This elimination of the CR is known as extinction. However,

waiting a few days and then reintroducing ticking metronome resulted in the dogs once again salivating to the CS. Pavlov termed this, spontaneous recovery. Pavlov continued of the conditioned response. He replaced the metronome with other stimuli for use as the CS. He conditioned the dogs using a buzzer, the flash of a light, a touch on the dog's harness, and the use of different pitches of a whistle in which the dogs had to differentiate between to determine which pitch resulted in access to food. Pavlov's experimental research gained much respect throughout Russia as well as America and the rest of the nations. Although he began his investigations late in life he managed to develop the major constructs of a fully realized field of learning. He summarized his discoveries in his remarkable book, Conditioned Reflexes.

Experiment: In scientific terms, the procedure for this is as follows. 1 Food is the unconditioned stimulus or UCS. By this, Pavlov meant that the stimulus that elicited the response occurred naturally. 2 The salivation to the food is an unconditioned response (UCR), that is a response which occurs naturally. 3 The bell is the conditioned stimulus (CS) because it will only produce salivation on condition that it is presented with the food. 4 Salivation to the bell alone is the conditioned response (CR), a response to the conditioned stimulus.

Classical conditioning involves learning by association, that is associating two events which happen at the same time.

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Psychologist: Hermann Ebbinghaus Short bio: Ebbinghaus was born on January 24, 1858. He received his education at the universities of Bonn, Berlin and Halle and received his doctorate in 1873. He initially studied higher cognitive functions using a scientific process, rather than basing it on philosophy as was common at the time. Following in that vein, Ebbinghaus focused his studies on memory and forgetting. He wanted to develop a means of visualizing learning, which involves memorizing and forgetting, and discover how it works within the human mind. Theory: His first hurdle was to find a means to study pure learning. In his experiments, he decided to use himself as the test subject. His next problem was to find material to learn that had absolutely no meaning or relationship to anything he already knew. Ebbinghaus finally decided to use three-letter nonsense words which consisted of a consonant-vowel-consonant formation. For his study, he created 2,300 of these nonsense words. Experiment: His study began with him learning multiple lists of the created nonsense words. His preestablished standard was to be able to have perfect recall of the words, and he studied each list until he had them memorized. He then recorded his recall of these words at different time intervals ranging from 20 minutes to 31 days, all in the time span of one year. Applications/Findings/Conclusion: The results of Ebbinghauss experiments revealed a relationship between the forgetting of learned information over time. He found that a good part of what a person forgets takes place within 20 minutes of the initial learning. Within one hour, a person forgets nearly half of what was originally learned. After 24 hours, almost 2/3 of the previously learned material is forgotten. These results are known as the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. Three years later, Ebbinghaus repeated his experiment with similar results. Although the Ebbinghaus curve is applicable to most learning situations, it must be noted that the results he obtained were much more dramatic, in part because of the use of the meaningless material (nonsense words), than one might find when using more meaningful material. But even with the use of new material, which can be connected to older information, the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve is still applicable, although the speed and amount of material forgotten will be less than Ebbinghaus found with his nonsense words.

Psychologist: Edward Thorndike Short bio: Edward Lee Thorndike was a son of a Methodist minister in Lowell, Massachusetts. He became an American pioneer in comparative psychology and was a typical late 19th century American scientist. He grew up in an age when scientific psychology was establishing its place in academic institutions and attracting college graduates, Thorndike being one of them. He became interested in the field of psychology after reading William Jame's "Principles of Psychology" and after graduating from Weslyan University enrolled at Harvard in order to study under James. His research interest was with children, but his initial study of "mind reading" led to their unavailability for future study. So, he developed projects that examined learning in animals to satisfy requirements for his courses and degree. He completed a study of maze learning in chicks, but for personal reasons, Thorndike did not complete his education at Harvard. Cattell invited him to go to Columbia University where he continued his animal research. He switched from chicks to cats and dogs, and made good use out of his own designed "puzzled boxes." In 1898, he was awarded the doctorate for his thesis, "Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of the Associative Processes in Animals", in which he concluded that an experimental approach is the only way to understand learning and established his famous "Law of Effect". Upon graduation, Thorndike returned to his initial interest, Educational Psychology. In 1899, after a year of unhappy, initial employment at the College for Women of Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, he became an instructor in psychology at Teachers College at Columbia University, where he remained for the rest of his career, studying human learning, education, and mental testing. Edward L. Throndike's pioneer investigations in the fields of human and animal learning are among the most influential in the history of Psychology. In 1912, he was recognized for his accomplishments and elected president of the American Psychological Association. In 1934, the American Association for the Advancement of Science elected Thorndike as the only social scientist to head this professional organization. Thorndike retired in 1939, but worked actively until his death ten years later.

Theory: One of Thorndike's major contributions to the study of Psychology was his work with animals. Through long, extensive research with these animals, he constructed devices called "puzzle boxes." This devise is shown in figure 1. This work on animal intelligence used equipment that became both famous and controversial. Thorndike's setup of the puzzle boxes is an example of instrumental conditioning: An animal makes some response, and if it is rewarded, the response is learned. If the response is not rewarded, it gradually disappears. The entire experiment was based on animals being placed into these contraptions, and could only escape from it by making some specific response. Such escape procedures would be pulling a sting or pushing a button.

The way his experiment worked was by placing a hungry cat into the box, then observing its behavior as it tried to escape and obtain some food. For the most part, he noticed that the cats obtained the food only by "trial-and-error." On a successive attempt, the mere trial-and-error behavior decreased and the cat would escape quickly. Thorndike studied several cats, and plotted the time it took for them to escape from the puzzle box on successive trials. These learning curves did not suddenly improve, but rather the amount of time the animal spent in the box gradually got to be shortened. From this, the animal did not merely realize what it had to do to escape, but the connection between the animal's situation and the response that gradually freed him was stamped in. With these observations, Thorndike suggested that certain stimuli and responses become connected or dissociated from each other according to his law of effect. He stated, "When particular stimulus-response sequences are followed by pleasure, those responses tend to be stamped in'; responses followed by pain tend to be stamped out'." The final interpretation of the law of effect was the immediate consequence of a mental connection can work back upon it to strengthen it. This evaluation led Thorndike to conclude that animals learn, solely, by trial and error, or reward and punishment. Thorndike used the cat's behavior in a puzzle box to describe what happens when all beings learn anything. All learning involves the formation of connections, and connections were strengthened according to the law of effect. Intelligence is the ability to form connections and humans are the most evolved animal because they form more connections then any other being. He continued his study with learning by writing his famous Animal Intelligence. In this he argued that we study animal behavior, not animal consciousness, for the ultimate purpose of controlling behavior. Today, he is known for his early animal studies and the founding principle of Instrumental Learning, "The Law of Effect".

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Psychologist: Burrhus Frederic Skinner Short bio: One of the most influential psychologist ever is B. F. Skinner. Skinner was born and raised in the small rural town of Susquehanna, Pa. He graduated high school in the very same house that he was born in. He had one brother who was 2 years younger than he, who died at the age of 16 from a cerebral aneurism. Skinner enjoyed working with his hands, many of his childhood days were spent building things such as rollerscooters, steerable wagons and sleds. And, he invented things. For example, he and a friend gathered elderberries to sell them door to door. He constructed a flotation system which separated ripe from green berries. And, he even worked on the idea of a perpetual motion machine. Skinner went through all twelve grades in one school building, graduating with only eight other students. He developed an interest art and literature through drawing in the younger grades and later reading Shakespeare. (Dews, 1970). Skinner attended Hamilton College, a small liberal arts institution, on the recommendation of a friend. He majored in English Literature and minored in Romance Languages. Here, his rebellious nature emerged when he openly revolted against the Student Life department. He refused to go to the daily mandatory chapel services, and physical education classes and made a mockery of the institution during the graduation ceremonies. Following graduation, he attempted a career in writing. He attended the Middlebury School of English in Vermont, where he met Robert Frost and wrote his first book, Digest of Decisions of the Anthracite Board of Conciliation, about a 1904 coal strike (Dews, 1970). However, Skinner felt that he little to offer as a writer so he moved on to psychology. His early interest in Psychology were mostly geared toward Philosophy, as evident in his first writing of Treatise Nova Principia Orbis Terrarum. He had a minimal college psychology background in the discipline and much of his early work was on self observation of memory and perception. He learned about Pavlov through Conditioned Reflexes, and about Loeb through Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology. These were assigned readings in Bugsy' Morrell's biology class. Nothing quite reached Skinner until he met Fred S. Keller, a behaviorist graduate student at Harvard at the time. While in high school and college he did the bare minimum of what was required of him, he now learned to be a hard worker (Dews, 1970). In 1930 Skinner wrote a paper on the concept of a reflex, similar to Mach's Science of Mechanics. Curious about changes of eating rates and drive and reflex strength, he formed his thesis proposal. Initially it was rejected but after a second attempt it was accepted. For the remainder of the year (193031) Skinner worked in a laboratory supported by the balance of a Harvard Fellowship. After getting his degree Crozier put Skinner up for National Research Council Fellowships for two years, but he was never under any pressure to adopt his principles or move into his field ( Dews, 1970). Skinner saw the utility of the experimental method: control the environment and you will see order in behavior. In 1938, he wrote The Behavior of Organisms in which the characteristics of operant behavior

were becoming defined. In his retort to Konorski and Miller's challenge of his paper the word operant was formally used. Its function, then as now was to identify behavior traceable to reinforcing contingencies rather than to elicit stimuli (Dews, 1970). "In the spring of 1936, the low point of the depression, the end of his Junior Fellowship was approaching and he had no job. Through his relationships with Walter Hunter he took a position at The University of Minnesota teaching small sections of an introductory class. Two of his students were Norman Guttman and W.K. Estes, both of which he had stolen from other majors. ...Skinner had still not given up literature. He met with I.A. Richards who managed to blend Psychology and literary criticism" (Dews, 1970, p11). Looking not at literature as a medium for portraying human behavior but rather a way in which to analyze it, he developed this concept in Verbal Behavior. Skinner's interest in literature was facilitated by his marriage to Yvonne Blue in 1936, who was an English major. He taught a psychology of literature course and did a statistical analysis of a hundred of Shakespeare's sonnets kin which he found that although an occasional line might have as many as four stressed initial s's such lines occured almost exactly as often as one would predict from chance. From 1941-1945, the final draft of Verbal Behavior was written. Then in 1953 he wrote Science and Human Behavior, and in 1957 Schedules of Reinforcement(Dews, 1970). "The "baby box" was Skinners attempt at mechanizing the care of a child, prompted by the birth of his second child. This box would maintain temperature of the baby allowing them to only wear a diaper. Through a linen-like surface through which warm air rises, moved by convection or a fan, depending on the outside temperature. Their second daughter, Deborah, used the baby box for 2.5 years. Skinner's satisfaction with the box was published in an article he had written in the Ladies Home Journal, now many babies have been raised in what is called an Aircrib" (Dews, 1970, p12). "The article entitled The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms (1945), was a result of a dinner party conversation Skinner had with some friends in Minneapolis. Following the paper, to his surprise he began to writeWalden Two in 1948. It began as a design for community living. It was based on the unoriginal utopian strategy of having a few people visit a community. This being the quickest work Skinner ever wrote, only taking seven weeks"(Dews, 1970, p13). Essentially this work was an avenue for self-therapy. In 1945, Skinner headed the Psychology department at the University of Indiana. Here, he experimented with Pigeons reaction times, differential reinforcement of slow responding, two operanda, and matching-to-sample. Which are mostly reported his 1950 paper, "Are Theories of Learning Necessary?" (Dews, 1970). It is often said that behaviorists do not view themselves as they view their subjects. Contrary to this, Skinner believes that his behavior in writing Verbal Behavior was exactly what the book discusses. He is as much interested in himself as he is rats and pigeons. Skinner's struggled to not deceive himself, to avoid using rhetorical devices and metaphors. Unlike most psychologists of this time, he avoided

constructing an impressive psychological theory from his research or imposing a hypothesis after a study was completed.

Theory: Skinner was never highly influenced by critical reactions, he is not interested in the right or wrong because they are either effective or ineffective, and arguments of no avail. For that reason he is not interested in psychological theories, rational equations, or other verbal systems that are required to be proven right. Following the principles of Bacon, Skinner rejects verbal authority, stating, "I have studied nature not books asking questions of the organism rather than those who have studied the organism."... "Observation overemphasizes stimuli; emperimentation includes the rest of the contingencies which generate repertoires" (Dews, 1970, p18).

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Psychologist: John Watson Short bio: In 1878 John Broadus Watson was born to Emma and Pickens Watson. A poor family in Greenville, South Carolina, his mother was very religious. John's father, with whom he was closer, did not follow the same rules of living as his mother. He drank, had extra-marital affairs, and left in 1891. Eventually John married Mary Ikes whom he met at the University of Chicago. Together they had two children, Mary and John. And, like his father, had affairs with a number of women. John and Mary finally divorced and he married one of his graduate students, Rosalie Rayner (see photo). They had two more children, James and William. John focused much of his study of behaviorism on his children. After Rosalie's death, his already poor relationships with his children grew worse and he became a recluse. He lived on a farm in Connecticut until his death in 1958. The absence of his father took it's toll on John. He rebelled against his mother and teachers and turned to violence. John was able to turn his life back around with the help of his teacher, Gordon Moore, at Furman University. With Moore's help, John was able to succeed and moved on to the University of Chicago. It was there that he became interest in the field of comparative psychology and studying animals. He wrote his dissertation about the relation between behavior in the white rat and the growth

of the nervous system. In 1903 he received his doctorate and later became an associate professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University. In 1913 at Columbia University, Watson delivered a lecture entitled "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It." Before this speech the field of psychology was in disagreement over the ideas of the nature of consciousness and the methods of studying it. Many questions were raised and few answers had been given until Watson spoke. He claimed that the problem was the use of archaic methods and inappropriate subject matter. He cut consciousness and introspection out of the picture. Instead, he proposed the idea of an objective psychology of behavior called "behaviorism." He saw psychology as the study of people's actions with the ability to predict and control those actions. This new idea became known as the behaviorists theory. During the next few years, different ideas about behaviorism studied, one of which was Watson's. His view of behaviorism was considered radical and was known for its extreme anti-mentalism, it s radical reduction of thinking to implicit response, and its heavy and somewhat simplistic reliance on conditioned reactions. Even with all the different variations, they all had one common idea- that psychology was defined as the natural science of behavior, objective in its study, and was a pattern of adjustment functionally dependent upon stimulus conditions in the environment, and was emphasized in theory and research (Wozniak). In his earlier years Watson used animal subjects to study behavior. Later he turned to the study of human behaviors and emotions. Until World War I he collaborated his studies with Adolph Meyer. After the war he resumed his work at Johns Hopkins University. He wanted to develop techniques to allow him to " condition and control them emotions of human subjects.' " His famous study for this was called the Little Albert Experiment in which he theorized that children have three basic emotional reactions: fear, rage, and love. He wanted to prove that these three reactions could be artificially conditioned in children. Watson used a little boy named Albert to test his theory. He repeatedly presented Albert a rat in conjunction with a sudden, loud noise to classically condition fear of the rat. After leaving Johns Hopkins University, Watson went into the advertising business. He wanted to use his scientific theories of behaviorism and the emotions of fear, rage, and love to improve the effects of advertising on the "animal" or what we know as consumers. Watson began his training at J Walter Thompson Agency with Stanley B. Resor. He became an ambassador and in 1924 he stepped up to become vice president of the company. While he was there he also wrote and sold books about the control over human emotions. Later he moved onto work for William Esty Agency until he retired in 1945. In 1920 he published his most famous conditioning experiment; the "Little Albert" study in which he produced, in a small child, conditioned fear of a white rat by repeatedly presenting it paired with the loud "clanging" of a metal bar. This conditioned fear was then shown to generalize to other white furry objects, including a Santa mask and Watson's own white hair (Watson & Rayner, 1920). In another well-known article (Watson, 1920), he argued that thinking -- a mental activity that seems to involve no overt behavior -- is nothing more than subvocal speaking. He later retracted this extreme view, however (Watson & McDougall, 1929).

Although Watson's academic star burned brightly, it was destined to be short-lived. Like his predecessor, Baldwin, he was forced to resign his chair at Hopkins because of a sex scandal involving his assistant, Rayner. He continued to publish books on psychology--Behaviorism (1924) and The Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928)--but by the 1930s his main career interest had shifted to the advertising business, and he ended his scholarly pursuits.

Theory: In The Ways of Behaviorism, Watson states that behaviorism is the scientific study of human behavior. It is simply the study of what people do. Behaviorism is intended to take psychology up to the same level as other sciences. The first task is to observe behavior and make predictions, then to take determine causal relationships. Behavior can be reduced to relationships between stimuli and responses, the S --- R Model. A stimulus can be shown to cause a response or a response can be traced back to a stimulus. All behavior can be reduced to this basic component. According to Watson, "life's most complicated acts are but combinations of these simple stimulus- response patterns of behavior." Conditioning is the process of learning to react to the environment. Many behaviors have been previously conditioned in the human species by the environment. To gain control of a subject of study the behaviorist must know difference between what behaviors have been preconditioned and what was inherited from past generations. Gardner Murphy wrote in his book, An Historical Introduction to Modern Psychology, that some "believe that all learning is simply conditioning, and that the conditioned response is the true unit of learned behavior." Conclusion: 1. Human psychology has failed to make good its claim as a natural science. Due to a mistaken notion that its fields of facts are conscious phenomena and that introspection is the only direct method of ascertaining these facts, it has enmeshed itself in a series of speculative questions which, while fundamental to its present tenets, are not open to experimental treatment. In the pursuit of answers to these questions, it has become further and further divorced from contact with problems which vitally concern human interest. 2. Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science which needs introspection as little as do the sciences of chemistry and physics. It is granted that the behavior of animals can be investigated without appeal to consciousness. Heretofore the viewpoint has been that such data have value only in so far as they can be interpreted by analogy in terms of consciousness. The position is taken here that the behavior of man and the behavior of animals must be considered on the same plane; as being equally essential to a general understanding of behavior. It can dispense with consciousness in a psychological sense. The separate observation of 'states of consciousness', is, on this assumption, no more a part of the task of the psychologist than of the physicist. We might call this the return to a non-reflective and have use of consciousness. In this sense consciousness may be said to be the instrument or tool with which all scientists work. Whether or not the tool is properly used at present by scientists is a concern for philosophy and not for psychology.

3. The study of the behavior of amoebae have value in and for themselves without reference to the behavior of man. Biological studies of race differentiation and inheritance form a separate division of study which must be evaluated in terms of the laws found there. The conclusions so reached may not hold in any other form. Regardless of the possible lack of generality, such studies must be made if evolution as a whole is ever to be understood. Similarly the laws of behavior of a particluar species, the range of responses, and the determination of effective stimuli, of habit formation, persistency of habits, interference and reinforcement of habits, must be determined and evaluated in and of themselves, regardless of their generality, or of their bearing upon such laws in other forms, if the phenomena of behavior are ever to be brought within the sphere of scientific control. 4. By eliminating states of consciousness as proper objects of investigation, Watson sought to remove the barrier of subjectivity from psychology which exists between it and the other sciences. The findings of psychology become the functional correlates of structure and lend themselves to explanations in physico-chemical terms. 5. Psychology will have to neglect but few of the really essential problems with which psychology as an introspective science now concerns itself. In all probability even this residue of problems may be phrased in such a way that refined methods in behavior eventually will lead to their solution.

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Psychologist: Edward Chance Tolman Short bio: Edward Chance Tolman was an American psychologist who made significant contributions to the studies of learning and motivation. Considered a cognitive behaviorist today, he developed his own behaviorism when the likes of Watson were dominating the field (Kimble et al, 1991). Tolman was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1886. He remained there as he grew up and was educated in the Newton Public Schools. He lived in a family of "upper middle" socioeconomic status and had a father who was the president of a manufacturing company. His brother, Richard, was five years older than he was and both he and Richard were expected to go into the family business. He and his brother decided to seek academic careers, against their family's wishes. Both went on to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Richard pursued a career in academics, ultimately becoming a world-renowned theoretical chemist and physicist, and Edward initially sought a bachelor's degree in electrochemistry. Tolman changed the course of his career during his senior year after reading the works of William James. He decided to become a philosopher. After graduation in 1911, he attended summer school and took a course in philosophy and psychology. He concluded that he wasn't quite smart enough for philosophy and that psychology was more to his liking. That coming fall, Tolman enrolled at the Harvard Graduate School as a philosophy and psychology graduate student. At that time, the disciplines were a combined department. A course in ethics, taught by Ralph Barton Perry, as well as readings of McDougall, eventually led to his interest in motivation. After his first year as a graduate student, he went to Giessen in Germany to study for his PhD examination in German (at that time all PhD examinations were conducted in French, German, or Russian). It was in Germany where he was introduced to Gestalt psychology through the teachings and readings of Koffka (Kimble et al, 1991). Upon returning to Harvard from his summer in Germany, Tolman studied in the laboratory under Hugo Munsterberg and Langfeld researching nonsense syllable learning. His PhD dissertation was a study of retroactive inhibition (Hilgard, 1987). He received his doctorate in 1915. He later returned to Giessen to learn more about Gestalt psychology during the fall of 1923. Tolman became an instructor at Northwestern University and taught for three years after receiving his doctoral degree. He described himself as being self-conscious, inarticulate, and fearful of his classes. His pacifist views led him to lose his job when, during World War I, he was called to the Dean for anti-war statements reported in a pacifist student publication (Kimble et al, 1991). Tolman went on to become an instructor at the University of California in Berkeley in the fall of 1918 where he remained for the rest of his life. Similar to his stand for academic freedom shown at Northwestern University, his passion for the pursuit of truth led to his refusal to sign the California

loyalty oath. During the "Year of the Oath" (1949-50), the university attempted to impose loyalty oaths on their faculty, in compliance with state law. He advised his peers to sign and to leave the contest up to those like him, who were able to afford it. This act of courage gave him tremendous recognition. He credited his wisdom in psychology to his years at Berkeley and his happy marriage (Kimble et al, 1991) Theory: Edward Tolman made several significant contributions to the field of psychology. It was at Berkeley where he created a cognitive theory of learning, which became his trademark to the field. He thought of learning as developing from bits of knowledge and cognitions about the environment and how the organism relates to it. This was in contrast to the theories of Thorndike and Hull who thought of learning as a strict stimulus-response connection. (Kimble et al, 1991). To study learning, Tolman conducted several classical rat experiments. One of his most well known studies involved maze running. He examined the role that reinforcement plays in the way that rats learn their way through complex mazes. These experiments eventually led to the theory of latent learning which describes learning that occurs in the absence of an obvious reward (Barker, 1997). Hugh Blodgett conducted the first experiment using the paradigm of learning without reward in 1929. Three groups of rats were trained to run a maze. The control group, Group 1, was fed upon reaching the goal. The first experimental group, Group 2, was not rewarded for the first six days of training, but found food in the goal on day seven and everyday thereafter. The second experimental group, Group 3, was not rewarded for the first two days, but found food in the goal on day three and everyday thereafter. Both of the experimental groups demonstrated fewer errors when running the maze the day after the transition from no reward to reward conditions. The marked performance continued throughout the rest of the experiment. This suggested that the rats had learned during the initial trials of no reward and were able to use a "cognitive map" of the maze when the rewards were introduced. The initial learning that occurred during the no reward trials was what Tolman referred to as latent learning. He argued that humans engage in this type of learning everyday as we drive or walk the same route daily and learn the locations of various buildings and objects. Only when we need to find a building or object does learning become obvious. Controversy developed from Tolman's theory of latent learning, but several investigators demonstrated that rats do learn in the absence of rewards (Hothersall, 1995). Tolman identified himself as a behaviorist and eschewed the type of introspection that was practiced by Wundt and Titchener. However, he was also opposed to the behaviorism of Watson. He was known for initiating his own kind of behaviorism which he referred to as "purposive behaviorism (Kimble et al, 1991)." His idea of purposive, or molar, behaviorism, as illustrated in his book Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men (1932), sought to demonstrate that insight (the cognitive control of learning) was not restricted to the evolutionary capabilities of the apes (Hilgard, 1987). He strongly advocated to theorizing at the molar level, which was demonstrated by several studies showing that rats learn the place where they have been rewarded rather than the particular movements required to get there (a demonstration of place learning). These studies also supported Tolman's stance that learning did not

involve the strengthening of connections between stimulus and response, or conditioned learning (Kimble et al, 1991). In one of Tolman's experiments used to illustrate purposive behavior in rats, Tolman used the apparatus shown in Figure 1.

A was the starting box and B was the goal. A hungry rat learned to run to B very quickly and without hesitation. Tolman wondered what was learned when this occurred. One explanation was that the rat had learned the response "turning right" which led to food. However, Tolman preferred the explanation that the rat had developed a cognitive map of the maze and where the place of the reward was located. Those who followed Tolman, known as "Tolmaniacs", developed a test to determine the right answer. Once a rat had learned how to run from A to B, it was started at C. The stimulus-response explanation predicted that the rat would turn right and reach D. The cognitive map explanation predicted that the rat would reach the reward in B. The test demonstrated that most of the rats reached B, thereby leading Tolman to conclude that a cognitive map was most likely developed by rats in maze running (Hothersall, 1995). Tolman is best remembered for being a pioneer in cognitive psychology during a time when behaviorists dominated the field. He is classified as a cognitive behaviorist today and the originator of the cognitive theory. His idea of cognitive maps is one of his theories that is still used today. Cognitive maps were the precursor to concepts of spatial memory and spatial thinking. He extended most of his contributions to the credit of others including his students, his teachers at Harvard, and Kurt Lewin. Kimble et al (1991) states that Tolman also conjured up theories of behavior and motivation. He felt that a motive drives an organism's behavior until some internal state is rectified and until that happens, the organism continues to behave. He also believed, like most psychologists at that time, that behavior could be generalized across species and explained by the behavior of the rat. Those who admired Edward Tolman most considered him a sane and sensible man. He was not an imperialist and never believed that one view was all encompassing. He was broad-minded and was always willing to change his views and revise his ideas should new evidence arise. He never believed that psychology should be set in its ways and theories; it is ever-changing and should always remain that way. Experiment:

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Psychologist: Wolfgang Khler Short bio: Wolfgang Kohler was one of the founders of Gestalt psychology along with Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka. He is also famous for his description of insight learning which he tested on animals, particularly chimpanzees. Kohler was born on January 21, 1887 in Revel, Estonia. His family moved to Germany and settled in Wolfenbuttell when he was six years old (URL 1). Between 1905 and 1907, he attended the universities of Tubingen, Bonn, and Berlin. In 1909, Kohler received his Ph.D. under Carl Stumpf (Hothersall, 1995). During the same year, he began to work at the Psychological Institute in Frankfort-am-Main where he met Wertheimer and Koffka (URL 1). Kohler was a subject in Wertheimer's experiment along with Koffka. He was appointed director of the Anthropoid Research Station on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Remaining on the island during W.W.I, Kohler began to study problem solving and general intelligence of a group of African chimpanzees (Hothersall, 1995). In 1917, he published The Mentality of Apes which summarized the results of his insight studies (URL 4). Upon his return to Germany, Kohler took the position as director of the Psychological Institute at the University of Berlin (URl 1). During 1925-1926, he served as a visiting professor at Clark University in the United States. In 1934-1935, Kohler was invited to give the William James Memorial lecture at Harvard (URL 1). He immigrated to the United States in 1935 because of Nazi interference with his work. From 1935 to 1955, he was a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College (URL 4). Kohler was appointed president of the American Psychological Association in 1959 (URL 4). In 1958, he became a research professor at Dartmouth University until his death on June 11, 1967, in Enfield, NH (URL 1). Theory: During the time period, Edward Thorndike had the prevailing view of animal learning. He concluded through his studies of monkeys, dogs, and especially cats that learning is a trial-and-error process which is dependent on rewards and punishments. Kohler questioned Thorndike's conclusion that his animals learned mechanically through the selection of action of rewards and punishments (Hothersall , 1995). Kohler attempted to prove that animals arrive at a solution through insight rather than trial and error. His first experiments with dogs and cats involved food being placed on the other side of a barrier. The dogs and cats went right towards the food instead of moving away from the goal to circumvent the barrier like chimps who were presented with this situation (URL 2). Kohler's experiments consisted of placing chimps in an enclosed area and presenting them with a reward that was out of reach, such as bananas. Kohler used four chimps in his experiments, Chica, Grande, Konsul, and Sultan. In one experiment, Kohler placed bananas outside

Sultan's cage and two bamboo sticks inside his cage. Neither stick was long enough to reach the bananas so the only way to reach the bananas was to put the sticks together. Kohler demonstrated to Sultan the solution by putting his fingers into the end of one of the sticks (Hothersall, 1995). However, this did not help Sultan solve the problem. After some contemplation, Sultan put the two sticks together and created a stick long enough to reach the bananas outside his cage (URL 3).

Another study involved bananas suspended from the roof. The chimps first tried to knock them down by using a stick. Then, the chimps learned to stack boxes on top of one another to climb up to the bananas (URL 3). Kohler described three properties of insight learning. First, insight-learning is based on the animal perceiving the solution to the problem. Second, insight-leaning is not dependent on rewards. Third, once a problem has been solved, it is easier to solve a similar problem (Hothersall, 1995).

Kohler tested Gestalt theory in regards to the transposition of stimuli by training a chicken to distinguish between two shades of gray. The chicken was then rewarded for pecking at the darker gray card but was not rewarded for pecking at a lighter gray card. After numerous trials, the chicken only pecked at the darker gray card. When the chicken was exposed to a dark gray and a black card, the chicken pecked at the black card. This experiment disproves Throndike's theory that animals learn to respond to a particular stimulus with a specific response (Hothersall, 1995). Experiment: Applications/Findings/Conclusion:

Psychologist: Albert Bandura Short bio: Albert Bandura was born on December 4, 1925 in the province of Alberta, Canada. His parents were Polish wheat farmers. He went to a small high school with only 20 students and 2 teachers. In 1949 Bandura received his B.A. from the University of British Columbia. Bandura then went on to the University of Iowa where he obtained his doctorate in 1952. Upon graduation Bandura did a clinical internship at the Wichita Kansas Guidance Center. The following year, in 1953, Bandura accepted a teaching position at Stanford where he continues to teach today. While at the University of Iowa Bandura's interests in learning and behaviorism began to grow. Bandura has done a great deal of work on social learning throughout his career and is famous for his "Social Learning Theory" which he has recently renamed, "Social Cognitive Theory". Bandura is seen by many as a cognitive psychologist because of his focus on motivational factors and self-regulatory mechanisms that contribute to a person's behavior, rather than just environmental factors. This focus on cognition is what differentiates social cognitive theory from Skinner's purely behavioristic viewpoint. Albert Bandura focuses on the acquisition of behaviors. He believes that people acquire behaviors through the observation of others, then imitate what they have observed. Several studies involving television commercials and videos containing violent scenes have supported this theory of modeling. In 1986 Bandura wrote Social Foundations of Thought and Action which provides a framework of his social cognitive theory. In addition he has written many articles and a total of nine books on various topics in psychology. Bandura has made important contributions to the field of psychology, as seen in the many honors and awards he has received. Bandura has received several honorary degrees from universities all over the world. This year (1998) he will receive the Thorndike Award for Distinguished Contributions of Psychology to Education from the American Psychological Association.

Theory: Bandura has conducted many studies involving observational learning, or modeling. The modeling process includes several steps: 1) Attention- In order for an individual to learn anything, he or she must pay attention to the features of the modeled behavior. Many factors contribute to the amount of attention one pays to the modeled activities, such as the characteristics of both the observer and the person being observed and competing stimuli. 2) Retention- If an individual is to be influenced by observing behaviors he or she needs to remember the activities that were modeled at one time or another. Imagery and language aid in this process of retaining information. Humans store the behaviors they observe in the form of mental images or verbal descriptions, and are then able to recall the image or description later to reproduce the activity with

their own behavior. 3) Reproduction- Reproduction involves converting symbolic representations into appropriate actions. Behavioral reproduction is accomplished by organizing one's own responses in accordance with the modeled pattern. A person's ability to reproduce a behavior improves with practice. 4) Motivation- To imitate a behavior, the person must have some motivating factor behind it, such as incentives that a person envisions. These imagined incentives act as reinforcers. Negative reinforcers discourage the continuation of the modeled activity. Albert Bandura combines both behavioral and cognitive philosophies to form this theory of modeling, or observational learning. He sees the human personality as an interaction between the environment and a person's psychological processes. Bandura says that humans are able to control their behavior through a process known as self regulation. This process involves three steps: 1) Self observation- Humans look at themselves and their behavior and keep track of their actions. 2) Judgment- Humans compare these observations with standards. These standards can be rules set by society, or standards that the individual sets for him or herself. 3) Self response- If, after judging himself or herself, the person does well in comparison with the set standards, he or she will give him or her- self a rewarding self-response. If the person does poorly he or she then administers a punishing self-response to him or herself. Self regulation has been incorporated into self control therapy which has been very successful in dealing with problems such as smoking. One of Bandura's more famous experiments dealing with modeling is his study with Bobo dolls. In one particular experiment Bandura showed a video to children in which an adult beat up on a doll, called it names, etc. Bandura divided the children into three groups, and each group watched a video with a different ending. The first video showed the adult being rewarded for his behavior, the second video showed the adult being punished for his behavior, and the third video showed no consequences for the behavior. He then studied the differences between how male children and female children reacted to this video in regard to whether they imitated the observed behavior or not. The results are shown to the left. This graph represents the number of imitative responses by males and females after observing one of the three different videos. The results show that males in all cases imitated the viewed behavior more so than females. The results also show that the children who watched the video in which the person was rewarded for his actions duplicated the behaviors more so than when the person was punished or did not receive either a punishment or reward. This was consistent in both male and female children, supporting Bandura's argument that people learn from observing others.

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Psychologist: Edwin Guthrie Short bio: Edwin Ray Guthrie was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. After graduating from high school, he attended the University of Nebraska where he obtained his bachelors degree in mathematics. He remained there and received his masters degree in philosophy. Guthrie then taught mathematics at several high schools, while he worked on his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. After receiving his doctorate, he was hired as an instructor in the department of philosophy at the University of Washington. After five years, he moved to the psychology department where he remained for the remainder of his career. Dr. Guthrie was 33 years old when he made the transition from philosophy to psychology. He was the winner of the second gold medal awarded by the American Psychology Association for outstanding lifetime contributions. During World War II, he worked with the overseas branch as both a chief consultant and psychologist. He later became Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Washington. The Psychology Department at the University is in a building named Gutherie Hall. Dr. Guthrie made contributions in the philosophy of science, abnormal psychology, social psychology, educational psychology and learning theory (Dallenbach, Bitterman & Newman, 1959). He is remembered best for his theory of learning based on association. Theory: Law of Contiguity: Guthrie's law of contiguity states that a combination of stimuli which has accompanied a movement will on its recurrence tend to be followed by that movement (Guthrie, 1952). He said that all learning is based on a stimulus-response association. Movements are small stimulus-

response combinations. These movements make up an act. A learned behavior is a series of movements. It takes time for the movements to develop into an act. He believed that learning is incremental. Some behavior involves repetition of movements and what is learned are movements, not behaviors (Internet, 1999). Guthrie stated that each movement produces stimuli and the stimuli then become conditioned. Every motion serves as a stimulus to many sense organs in muscles, tendons and joints. Stimuli which are acting at the time of a response become conditioners of that response. Movement-produced stimuli have become conditioners of the succession of movements. The movements form a series often referred to as a habit. Our movements are often classified as forms of conditioning or association. Some behavior involves the repetition of movements, so that conditioning can occur long after the original stimulus. Guthrie rejected the law of frequency. He believed in one-trial learning. One-trial learning states that a stimulus pattern gains its full associative strength on the occasion of its first pairing with a response. He did not believe that learning is dependent on reinforcement. He defined reinforcement as anything that alters the stimulus situation for the learner (Thorne and Henley, 1997). He rejected reinforcement because it occurs after the association between the stimulus and the response has occurred. He believed that learning is the process of establishing new stimuli as cues for some specified response (Sills, 1968). Guthrie believed that the recency principle plays an integral role in the learning process. This principle states that which was done last in the presence of a set of stimuli will be that which is done when the stimulus combination occurs again. He believed that it is the time relation between the substitute stimulus and the response that count. Associative strength is greater when the association is novel. When two associations are present with the same cue, the more recent will prevail. The stimulusresponse connections tend to grow weaker with elapsed time. Contiguity theory implies that forgetting is a form of retroactive or associative inhibition. Associative inhibition occurs when one habit prevents another due to some stronger stimuli. Guthrie stated that forgetting is due to interference because the stimuli become associated with new responses (Internet, 1999). He believed that you can use sidetracking to change previous conditioning. This involves discovering the initial cues for the habit and associating other behavior with those cues. Sidetracking causes the internal associations to break up. It is easier to sidetrack than to break a habit. Other methods used to break habits include threshold, fatigue, and the incompatible response method. Fatigue is a change in behavior-altered chemical states in the muscle and blood stream. It has the effect of decreasing the conditioned response. The stimulus conditions the other responses thus inhibiting the response. The threshold method involves presenting cues at such low levels that the response does not occur. The stimulus is then increased thus raising the response threshold. The incompatible stimulus method involves presenting the stimulus for the behavior we want to remove when other aspects of the situation will prevent the response from occurring (Thorne and Henley, 1997). Excitement facilitates learning and also the stereotyping of a habit. It is the conflict responsible for the excitement that breaks

up the old habit. Breaking up a habit involves finding the cues that initiate the action and practicing another response to such cues. Experiment: Guthrie did a collaborative study with George P. Horton which involved the stereotyped behavior of cats in the puzzle box. Horton set up the trials and supervised the photography, while Guthrie took notes in shorthand. The Guthrie-Horton experiment illustrated the associative theory of learning. They used a glass paneled box which allowed them to photograph the cats' movements. The box was constructed so that the cat could open the door by touching a post. It took approximately 15 minutes for the cat to touch the post. The second time, the cat had the tendency to duplicate its first behavior. The photographs showed that the cats repeated the same sequence of movements associated with their previous escape from the box. This showed an example of stereotyped behavior. The Guthrie-Horton experiment allows us to assume than an animal learns an association between a stimulus and a behavioral act after only one experience. Guthrie stated that numerous trials are not duplications, but learning to respond to similar stimulus complexes. Only after we form several associations can the behavioral criterion of learning be achieved (Wolman, 1973). Education: Guthrie used the contiguity theory while teaching at the University of Washington. "We learn only what we ourselves do" (Sills, 1968). The responses we wish to cue to various stimuli must be made by the individual himself in the presence of those stimuli (Sills, 1968). He extends this philosophy when emphasizing that circumstances must be changed in order to further learning. Teachers often limit their involvement in the classroom in order to further student learning. By doing this, they allow the student to make the desired responses without stimuli from the teacher. Guthrie had a large interest in the evaluation of teaching ability. He stressed the idea that the circumstances under which he wishes the desired response to be made in the future should be approximated as closely as possible by the present circumstances (Sills, 1968). Although Guthrie's theory of contiguity has been criticized for its simplicity, it remains popular to many psychologists due to its use of simple terms in illustrating complex ideas.

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Psychologist: Clark Leonard Hull Short bio: Clark Hull grew up handicapped and contracted polio at the age of 24, yet he became one of the great contributors to psychology. His family was not well off so his education had to be stopped at times. Clark earned extra money through teaching. Originally Clark aspired to be a great engineer, but that was before he fell in love with the field of Psychology. By the age of 29 he graduated from Michigan University. When Clark was 34 when he received his Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Wisconsin in 1918. Soon after graduation he became a member of the faculty at the University of Wisconsin, where he served for 10 years. Although one of his first experiments was an analytical study of the effects of tobacco on behavioral efficiency, his life long emphasis was on the development of objective methods for psychological studies designed to determine the inderlying principles of behavior. Hull devoted the next 10 years to the study of hypnosis and suggestibility, and in 1933 he published Hypnosis and Suggestibility, while employed as a research professor at Yale University. This is where he developed his major contribution, an elaborate theory of behavior based on Pavlov's laws of conditioning. Pavlov provoked Hull to become greatly interested in the problem of conditioned reflexes and learning. In 1943 Hull published,Principles of Behavior, which presented a number of constructs in a detailed Theory of Behavior. He soon he became the most cited psychologist.

Theory: Hull believed that human behavior is a result of the constant interaction between the organism and its environment. The environment provides the stimuli and the organism responds, all of which is observable. Yet there is a component that is not observable, the change or adaptation that the organism needs to make in order to survive within it's environment. Hull explains, "when survival is in jeopardy, the organism is in a state of need (when the biological requirements for survival are not being met) so the organism behaves in a fashion to reduce that need" ( Schultz & Schultz, 1987, p 238). Simply, the organism behaves in such a way that reinforces the optimal biological conditions that are required for survival. Hull was an objective behaviorist. He never considered the conscious, or any mentalistic notion. He tried to reduce every concept to physical terms. He viewed human behavior as mechanical, automatic and cyclical, which could be reduced to the terms of physics. Obviously, he thought in terms of mathematics, and felt that behavior should be expressed according to these terms. "Psychologist must not only develop a thorough understanding of mathematics, they must think in mathematics" (Schultz & Schultz, 1987, p 239). In Hull's time three specific methods were commonly used by researchers; observation, systematic controlled observation, and experimental testing of the hypothesis. Hull believed that an additional method was needed, - The Hypothetico Deductive method. This involves deriving postulates from which experimentally testable conclusions could be deduced. These conclusions would then be experimentally tested.

Hull viewed the drive as a stimulus, arising from a tissue need, which in turn stimulates behavior. The strength of the drive is determined upon the length of the deprivation, or the intensity / strength of the resulting behavior. He believed the drive to be non-specific, which means that the drive does not direct behavior rather it functions to energize it. In addition this drive reduction is the reinforcement. Hull recognized that organisms were motivated by other forces, secondary reinforcements. " This means that previously neutral stimuli may assume drive characteristics because they are capable of eliciting responses that are similar to those aroused by the original need state or primary drive" (Schultz & Schultz, 1987, p 240). So learning must be taking place within the organism. Hull's learning theory focuses mainly on the principle of reinforcement; when a S-R relationship is followed by a reduction of the need, the probability increases that in future similar situations the same stimulus will create the same prior response. Reinforcement can be defined in terms of reduction of a primary need. Just as Hull believed that there were secondary drives, he also felt that there were secondary reinforcements - " If the intensity of the stimulus is reduced as the result of a secondary or learned drive, it will act as a secondary reinforcement" ( Schultz & Schultz, 1987, p 241). The way to strengthen the S-R response is to increase the number of reinforcements, habit strength. Clark Hull's Mathematico Deductive Theory of Behavior relied on the belief that the link between the S-R relationship could be anything that might effect how an organism responds; learning, fatigue, disease, injury, motivation, etc. He labeled this relationship as "E", a reaction potential, or as sEr. Clark goal was to make a science out of all of these intervening factors. He classified his formula sEr = (sHr x D x K x V) - (sIr + Ir) +/- sOr

as the Global Theory of Behavior. Habit strength, sHr, is determined by the number of reinforces. Drive strength, D, is measured by the hours of deprivation of a need. K, is the incentive value of a stimulus, and V is a measure of the connectiveness. Inhibitory strength, sIr, is the number of non reinforces. Reactive inhibition, Ir, is when the organism has to work hard for a reward and becomes fatigued. The last variable in his formula issOr, which accounts for random error. Hull believed that this formula could account for all behavior, and that it would generate more accurate empirical data, which would eliminate all ineffective introspective methods within the laboratory (Thomson, 1968). Although Hull was a great contributor to psychology, his theory was criticized for the lack of generalizability due to the way he defined his variables in such precise quantitative terms. "Thus, Hull's adherence to a mathematical and formal system of theory building is open to both praise and criticism" (Schultz & Schultz, 1987, p 242).

Experiment: Applications/Findings/Conclusion:

References http://muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/pavlov.htm http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1904/pavlov-bio.html http://muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/hull.htm http://muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/bandura.htm http://muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/kohler.htm http://muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/guthrie.htm http://muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/skinner.htm http://muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/thorndike.htm http://muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/tolman.htm http://muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/watson.htm http://www.helpingpsychology.com/ebbinghaus-forgetting-curve

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