Has the Wheel Turned Full Circle? Fifty Years of Learning Theory,1946–1996

Abstract

Fifty years ago, learning theory, whose principles were derived from experiments on conditioning in animals, was a central focus of much of experimental psychology. But the cognitive revolution that swept through human experimental psychology in the 1960s, especially when it was taken up by many animal psychologists themselves, seemed to consign traditional learning theory to the scrap heap. Liberation from the shackles of old-fashioned behaviourism, however, should not be bought at the price of dismissing associative learning theory. Suitably modified and extended, associative theory is capable of explaining much of the behavior of animals and of pointing precisely to the ways in which that behaviour is complex. And under some circumstances, at least, the behaviour of people mirrors that of other animals and is equally amenable to an associative analysis.