A short history of psychological theories of learning

Daedalus

Volumn 133, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 13-20

  Bruner, Jerome ^a  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 38949093425     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/001152604772746657     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. Wolfgang Koehler, The Mentality of Apes (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1926). This was originally published in German in 1917.
2. The classic article was Gustav Fritsch and Eduard Hitzig, "Ueber die elektrische Errigbarkheit des Grosshirns," Archiv der Anatomie und Physiologie (1870): 300-332.
3. Ebbinghaus's 1885 classic is available in English only in brief, but representative excerpts may be found in Wayne Dennis, Readings in the History of Psychology (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1948), 304-313. Interestingly enough, Ebbinghaus's original monograph was published in its entirety in English translation in 1913 by Teachers College, Columbia Univer-sity-very much in keeping with the then dominant emphasis on rote learning in American education. It has long been out of print.
4. For Koehler's philosophical allegiances, see Mary Henle, ed., The Selected Papers of Wolfgang Koehler (New York: Liveright, 1971).
5. Perhaps the best and most accessible account of Gestalt psychology's empirical accomplishments (mostly before Hitler's rise to power) is Kurt Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1935).
6. Lev Vygotsky, Thought and Language (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962);
7. Aleksandr Romanovich Luria, The Role of Speech in the Regulation of Normal and Abnormal Behavior (New York: Liveright, 1961).
8. Edward L. Thorndike's classic is the three-volume Educational Psychology, which appeared in 1913-1914.
9. Tolman's most influential book was Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men (New York: Century, 1932).
10. His Berkeley lecture was later elaborated in his International Congress address, "Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men," Psychological Review 55 (4) (1948): 189-208.
11. Krech's bold study (written under his original name) is I. Krechevsky, '"Hypothesis' versus 'Chance' in the Presolution Period in Dis-crimination Learning," University of California Publications in Psychology 6 (1932): 27-44.
12. B. F. Skinner, "Are Theories of Learning Necessary?" Psychological Review 57 (1950): 193-216.
13. Clark L. Hull, Principles of Behavior (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1942)
14. A Behavior System: An Introduction to Behavior The ory Concerning the Individual Organism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1952).
15. The most detailed and authoritative volume on the classic learning theories is Ernest R. Hilgard, Theories of Learning, 2d ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1956).
16. Alan Newell and Herbert A. Simon, Human Problem Solving (Englewood, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1972);
17. Jerome Bruner, Jacqueline Goodnow, and George A. Austin, A Study of Thinking (New York: Wiley, 1956);
18. George A. Miller, Eugene Galanter, and Karl Pribram, Plans and the Structure of Behavior (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1960).
19. B. F. Skinner, Verbal Behavior (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947).
20. Chomsky's structuralist-mentalist views were first published in his Syntactic Structures (The Hague: Mouton, 1957).
21. His frontal attack on Skinner's Verbal Behavior (in Language 35 [1959]: 26-34) only two years later came as a rather unexpected, though scarcely a conceptual, surprise.