Reading 4:

Dewsbury, D. A. (1998). Celebrating E. L. Thorndike a century after Animal Intelligence. American Psychologist, 53, 1121-1124. (excerpt)

Galef, B. G., Jr. (1998). Edward Thorndike: Revolutionary psychologist, ambiguous biologist. American Psychologist, 53, 1128-1134. (excerpt)

One hundred years after the publication of Thorndike's landmark 1898 monograph ("Animal intelligence: An experimental study of the associative processes in animals"), the American Psychological Association honored Thorndike by reprinting parts of his monograph along with four commentary articles in the October 1998 issue ("Celebrating E. L. Thorndike") of the American Psychologist. Reading 4 is comprised of short excerpts from two of those commentary articles. Dewsbury's article sets the historical context which prevailed in the late 1890s, discusses the impact of Thorndike's monograph, and mentions some of Thorndike's later contributions. Galef's article covers similar ground, but in more detail and provides additional information about the implications of the 1898 monograph.

Thorndike's (1898) monograph was based on his doctoral dissertation. The data from puzzle-box experiments with cats and dogs, and maze experiments with chicks, suggest a gradual, trial-and-error, form of learning rather than sudden solution which might suggest thinking and reasoning. Thorndike was critical of the then prominent view (held by Romanes, Morgan, and others) that if an animal can perform new adjustments or behaviors, then it must be able to associate ideas and hence could be said to possess mind (the ability to think and reason). Thorndike found that "putting through" altered neither the time course of learning nor the topography (form) of the response acquired. He argued that the results of putting through experiments suggested strongly that associations involved antecedent stimuli and responses (or impulses to action) rather than ideas. Thorndike was thus arguing, based on experimental evidence, that there are two types of reflexes; the innate reflexes which had long been recognized, and a second category of learned or acquired reflexes (in the early 1900s, Pavlov also provided experimental evidence which suggested that reflexes can be either innate or learned). Later psychologists, notably Watson and Hull (and even Thorndike beginning in 1911), attempted to extend this stimulus-response analysis of behavior to humans. Watson, Hull and other S-R behaviorists argued that all behavior, in both humans and animals, could be explained as the result of S-R habits (or reflexes), some of which were innate and others of which were acquired.