Theories of Learning (Part 6)

Clark L. Hull (1943) formulated a system of behavior highlighted by the principles of habit-formation. He stated that the value of habits is dependent on their usefulness to the individual.

In Hull's system, feeling and consciousness are not of great importance. He makes no distinction between emotional and other forms of behavior. In his careful mathematical description of human functioning, everything is behavior.

In his later work, Hull stated that "learning is a process by means of which the vertebrate individual survives in a world characterized by needs."

The keynote to his explanation of learning is reinforcement and his theory is founded on order and arrangement. Learning is the means by which the organism comes to perceive its world, through the stimuli to its neurological structure. Thus, in Hull's view of habit-formation, learning is conditioning-planning for proper responses, and need is the one for action. Drive gives direction to the response, satisfaction of need leads to reinforcement of stimulus-response connections.

Hull's students, Dollard and Miller, carrying on the idea that human behavior is learned, say that maladjustment is a manifestation of inadequate learning. For which we can no doubt substitute inadequate conditioning. In this connection, we are reminded again of Huxley's Brave New World and the responsibilities of the promoters of sleep-study and sleep therapy.

If the behaviorists are right, the speculation arises that perhaps all of humanity could be beautifully adjusted into an appalling uniformity.

Norbert Wiener, author of Cybernetics, attempts to relate human beings' learning mechanisms to the workings of electronic calculators, speaking of the feedback principle, which "means that behavior is scanned for its result, and, that the success or failure of this result modifies future behavior." This implies an integrating process measuring success and failure which will decide the response.

B. F. Skinner (1932) observed behavior and examined habit-building in order to find laws of behavior. The strength of the reflex was his basis of measurement. Although he did not use equations, he too devised numerous laws, including one measuring a threshold of stimulus intensity below which there is no response; one which indicates a latent period between stimulus and response varying with the intensity of the stimulus; one which describes responses persisting after the stimulus has ended, and one which states a similar effect when a stimulus is prolonged as when the intensity of the stimulus is increased.

These are the static laws. He also lists dynamic laws of reflex strength: the law of the refractory phrase, stating that the strength of the reflex is low or zero immediately after it has been evoked; the law of reflex fatigue, stating that the strength of the reflex diminishes during repeated elicitation, and returns to its former strength during inactivity; the law of facilitation, which states that a second stimulus, not capable by itself of eliciting a response, may increase the strength of a reflex; and the law of inhibition, which is that a second stimulus which has no other relation to the effector involved may decrease the strength of the reflex.