Theories of Learning (Part 5)

Further, as an argument against the Gestaltist, who declared that patterns are the basis of the learning process, Thorndike described the "spread or scatter" phenomenon. Each connection, he said, affects all the other connections, past or future, according to satisfaction. He based this explanation on biological foundations.

Another law had to do with Transfer of Learning and stated that a successful response could be gained to a new stimulus, if this new stimulus was similar to a past one. Since learning is transference, adjustments are possible and further learning can take place.

Recent research tends to discount Thorndike's theory of neural bonds, but much of what we accept today about learning still rests on his theoretical structures. There is little argument with his pronouncement that:

It is the first principle of education to utilize any individual's original nature as a means of changing him for the better. . . . All schemes of improving human life must take account of man's original nature, most of all when their aim is to reverse or counteract it.

An interesting postscript for our purpose is that Thorndike considered his laws of learning applicable to animals as well as humans. At least one sleep-learner felt the same way—the man who taught his parakeet its huge vocabulary.

Another school of thought about how we learn is that of conditioning. Its belief is that the nervous system is the basis of conditioning. This theory is a continuation of Ivan Pavlov's studies of the physiology of learning. Pavlov's experiments, with his celebrated dogs salivating at the sound of a bell, showed that conditioning can bring about reflexive responses to stimuli other than the originally effective ones. The conditioned reflex is explained as being the result of impulses traveling along the brain's neurons in chain fashion and creating a "reflex arc."

John B. Watson espoused behaviorism (1925) and asserted that learning is a simple matter of stimulus and response. For example, fear is learned or unlearned. It is a simple matter of conditioning.

E. B. Guthrie (1952) developed Bain's idea of contiguity. He held that: "A combination of stimuli which has accompanied a movement will on its recurrence tend to be followed by that movement." For him, response is divided into movement (motor and glanular phenomena) and act (class of movements expressed through results). He sees learning as action as the result of repetition.

He finds that a combination of movement helps to bring about the response, and Guthrie writes, "Effective practice is conducted in the general situation in which we desire the future performance to be given/'

Logically then, Guthrie would understand that sleep-learners would well be able to recall what they have learned while asleep.

Guthrie felt that forgetting is the inhibition of a response by a competing one, that habit-formation is linked to successful acts and that motivation affects the process since the last response modifies the situation and makes learning possible. This coincides with the rote-learning-plus-motivational approach of the sleep-study school.