Thorndike, Edward Lee (1874-1949), in Williamsburg (Massachusetts) geborener amerikanischer Psychologe und Pädagoge, ein Schüler von William James. Von 1901 bis 1904 war Thorndike Professor für Schulpsychologie, von 1904 bis 1940 Professor für Psychologie an der Columbia University. Mit seinen Untersuchungen zum Verhalten der Tiere gilt Thorndike als einer der Väter des Behaviorismus. Später wandte er seine zunächst an Tieren erprobte Trial-and-error-Methode, die Lernen als Prozess aus Versuch und Irrtum begreift, zur Entwicklung von Lehrtechniken für den Unterricht an. Bekannt wurden auch seine verschiedenen Intelligenz- und Begabungstests. Zu Thorndikes Arbeiten gehören Animal intelligence (1898, Die Intelligenz der Tiere), Educational Psychology (1903, Psychologie der Erziehung) und The fundamentals of Learning (1932, Grundlagen des Lernens).
The learning theory of Thorndike represents the original S-R framework of behavioral psychology: Learning is the result of
associations forming between stimuli andresponses. Such associations or "habits" become strengthened or weakened by the nature and frequency of the S-R pairings. The paradigm for S-R theory was trial and error learning in which certain responses come to dominate others due to rewards. The hallmark of connectionism (like all behavioral theory) was
that learning could be adequately explained without refering to any unobservable internal states.
Thorndike's theory consists of three primary laws: (1) law of effect - responses to a situation which are followed by a rewarding state of affairs will be strengthened and become habital responses to that situation, (2) law of readiness - a series of responses can be chained together to satisfy some goal which will result in annoyance if blocked, and (3) law of exercise -connections become strengthened with practice and weakened when practice is discontinued. A corollary of the law of
effect was that responses that reduce the likelihood of achieving a rewarding state (i.e., punishments, failures) will decrease in strength. The theory suggests that transfer of learning depends upon the presence of identical elements in the original and new learning situations; i.e., transfer is always specific, never general. In later versions of the theory, the concept of
"belongingness" was introduced; connections are more readily established if the person perceives that stimuli or responses go together (c.f. Gestalt principles). Another concept introduced was "polarity" which specifies that connections occur more easily in the direction in which they were originally formed that the opposite. Thorndike also introduced the "spread of
effect" idea, i.e., rewards affect not only the connection that produced them but temporally adjacent connections as well.
References:
Thorndike, E. (1913). Educational Psychology: The Psychology of Learning. New York: Teachers College Press.
Thorndike, E. (1921). The Teacher's Word Book. New York: Teachers College.
Thorndike, E. (1922). The Psychology of Arithmetic. New York: Macmillan.
Thorndike, E. (1932). The Fundamentals of Learning. New York: Teachers College Press.
Thorndike, E. at al. (1927). The Measurement of Intelligence. New York: Teachers College Press.
Thorndike, E. et al. (1928), Adult Learning. New York: Macmillan |
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