Thorndike
Thorndike (1874-1949) American psychologist, pioneer of animal psychology, founder of psychological connectionism and founder of the educational psychology system. He proposed a series of laws of learning, including the law of practice and the law of effect. In 1917, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Biography
Edward Lee Thorndike (1874–1949) was born on August 31, 1874 in Massachusetts, usa, the son of a lawyer who later became a pastor. As a child, his appearance is not proud, shy and lonely, only in learning can find fun, but also especially talented in learning, high school results have been in the top one or two. In 1891, he embarked on Wesleyan University in Middleton, Connecticut, majoring in English. When he graduated in 1895, he achieved the highest grade average in 50 years. In his autobiography, he wrote that he did not remember "hearing or having seen the word psychology" before his third year of college, when he had to take a compulsory course. After reading William James's Principles of Psychology, he became interested in psychology. He went to Harvard to continue his graduate studies, planning to study English, philosophy, and psychology, but after listening to James's two classes, he was completely fascinated by the last course.
In 1896, he earned another Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard and a master's degree in 1897. Despite his great respect for James, he chose a subject that was very unscathed by James, "The Intuition and Intellectual Behavior of Chickens." James stopped engaging in experimental psychology at the time, but he agreed to the topic and gave a place in his basement to Thorndike, who didn't have a large enough laboratory, for animal testing.
In 1898, Thorndike was hired by Columbia University as a university councilor, offered him a scholarship, and he took two of his best-trained chicks to New York to continue his Ph.D. in a place where it was more convenient for his research. The instructor was James McKinn Cartel, a professor who was conducting research to measure intelligence through human tests. Although Thorndike later took a psychiatric test, in order to complete his doctoral dissertation, he had to continue his animal learning research. He completed his famous labyrinth studies and thus received his Ph.D. Sandike became a lecturer in psychology at Columbia University's Teachers College in 1899, and according to Cartel's suggestion, Thorndike applied his animal research techniques to children and young people, and then he used more and more people as test subjects, and spent a lot of time in human learning, educational psychological testing and other fields.
Academic perspective
1. Connection - Mistake Learning Theory
Thorndike first used experimental methods to study the learning psychology of animals. He created experimental tools such as lost circles, mazes, and cages to experiment with the learning of fish, chickens, cats, dogs, and other animals. Based on these experiments, Thorndike argues that animal learning does not have the mind of deduction and deduction, and does not have any conceptual role. Animals learn by mistake, i.e. animals gain experience by repeatedly trying and making mistakes. The essence of this learning is to form a connection between the stimulus and the response, that is, the "induction knot". So the essence of learning is to form a connection between the situation and the response, and the connection formula is S-R.
2. Learn the law
Based on the experiment, Thorndike proposed three laws of learning:
(1) Law of Readiness. The strengthening or weakening of the connection depends on the learner's state of mental readiness and psychological regulation.
(2) Law of Exercise. The law of practice means that the connection between the stimulus and the response will be strengthened by repetition or practice, and if it is not repeated or practiced, the strength of the connection will weaken.
(3) Law of Effect. The law of effect means that the connection between stimulus and response can be strengthened by the resulting satisfactory result, or weakened by the result that leads to annoyance.
In short, Thorndike emphasizes that all the connections formed by stimuli and responses are enhanced by application and satisfaction. Education must therefore follow these two main laws of learning. Teachers should first tell students about the fun in their homework, or use their enthusiasm to stimulate children's preparation; The order of reactions should be carefully prescribed and strictly controlled, and through continuous practice, the desired habits should eventually be formed; Pay attention to whether the student is tired and bored during the practice; It is necessary to pay attention to the difficulty of learning the content, and not to make the students feel very difficult, which will lead to discouragement.
3. The same element theory (learning transfer theory)
Sandike et al. argue that migration is very specific, conditional, and requires common elements. Only when there are the same elements in two functional factors will a change in one function change the acquisition of the other function. Migration occurs only when the stimulus is similar and the response is similar in both contexts. The more identical features in both scenarios, the greater the amount of migration.
Outstanding contribution
During his academic career, he produced five hundred and seven books, monographs, and academic papers, a record achievement that later psychologists, probably no one but Piaget, could match. Thorndike's main contributions are as follows:
(1) The discipline of educational psychology was created, so that educational psychology diverged from pedagogy and child psychology and became an independent discipline. For this reason, Thorndike is known as the founder of educational psychology.
(2) Borrowed a large number of biological and physiological concepts to establish his associative psychology theory. Most of his conclusions are based on psychological experiments, which makes his theory have strong objectivity and contributes to the study of experimental psychology.
(3) Developed classical associative psychology. His study of psychology is the word "connection", so he calls himself a "connectionist". The main feature of its connectionism is that it emphasizes the connection between situations and reactions, rather than talking about associations or connections between ideas. Thus combining a completely objective frame of reference with his psychological theory.
Thorndike was one of the most important figures in the development of psychology. Although many of his insights have aroused controversy and refutation, his theory of learning has always occupied an important position in psychology. Some of his views, especially his law of effects, have always been a topic of debate, and there are still people who artificially verify the effect of the law of effect and reinforcement, and immerse themselves in meticulous experimental research work. Although some new theories and models of learning have emerged after Thorndike, the impact of his research methods and conclusions on animal and human learning in the history of psychology cannot be denied.
Social evaluation
Thorndike's research interests are very extensive, he is the main representative of the Columbia School in the United States, the initiator of animal psychological experiments, the founder of the educational psychology system and associative psychology, and designed psychological tests, one of the leaders of the American educational testing movement. Because of this, some historians classify him as a member of the American school of functionalist psychology, but many consider him to be more of a figure of the behaviorist school, but he himself believes that he does not belong to any one school.