Learning: Understanding Acquired Behavior 77
over a number of years, and communicated to would-be authors that the only
way to learn to write was by taking the rocky road of learning by making one’s
own mistakes.
The first kind of learning to be studied experimentally in the United States was
trial-and-error learning.Edward L. Thorndike (1874–1949) first studied maze
learning in baby chickens (with the assistance and approval of William James). Later
he studied the escape behavior of cats from puzzle boxes. The cats had to learn to
pull a string that released a latch connected to a door. The cats learned to pull the
string, but only very gradually. They showed no sudden burst of insight or com-
prehension. Thorndike concluded that the learning was a robotlike process con-
trolled primarily by its outcomes. If a specific behavior helped a cat to escape, that
behavior was retained by the cat. Thorndike called this process stamping in,
meaning that an action that is useful is impressed upon the nervous system.
What stamps in a response, according to Thorndike, is satisfaction. The cat
that escapes from a puzzle box is rewarded with food. Thorndike called the ten-
dency to retain what is learned because satisfactory results are obtained the law of
effect.Thorndike’s law of effect is the forerunner of what today is usually known
as the process ofreinforcement(see the next section).
(a) If a specific behavior helps a cat to escape from a puzzle box, this behavior is retained by
the cat. Thorndike called this process.
(b) Thorndike’s law of effect is the forerunner of what today is usually known as the
process of.
Answers: (a) stamping in; (b) reinforcement.
Operant Conditioning: How Behavior Is Shaped by Its
Own Consequences
Operant behavioris characterized by actions that have consequences. Flick a
light switch and the consequence is illumination. Saw on a piece of wood and the
consequence is two shorter pieces of wood. Tell a joke and the consequence is
(sometimes) the laughter of others. Work hard at a job all week and the conse-
quence is a paycheck. In each of these cases the specified action “operates” on the
environment, changes it in some way.
It was B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) who applied the term operantto the kind
of behaviors described above. He saw that operant behavior is both acquired and
shaped by experience. Consequently, he identified it as a kind of learning. In
addition, he also categorized it as a form of conditioning because he believed that
such concepts as consciousness and thinking are not necessary to explain much
(perhaps most) operant behavior.
