Edward Thorndike - National Academy Of Sciences
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCESEDWARD LEE THORNDIKE1874—1949A Biographical Memoir byROBERT S. WOODWORTHAny opinions expressed in this memoir are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the views of theNational Academy of Sciences.Biographical MemoirCOPYRIGHT 1952NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCESWASHINGTON D.C.
E D W A R D LEE T H O R N D I K EBY ROBERT S. WOODiWORTHA t the turn of the century, when psychology a s an experimental science was very much in its beginnings but attractinga group of energetic young investigators, an outstandinglyenergetic, daring and even iconoclastic member of the groupwas the man who now, at the end of a very active career offifty years, is recognized as the most productive psychologist ourcountry has produced. Edward Thorndike started young andcontinued his scientific output until his death at nearly 75 yearsof age. His full bibliography counts up to over 500 titles ofwhich over 50 are books ; and almost everything he wrote wasbased directly on data, usually on new data; for it was characteristic of him to dislike any abstract discussion not tied closelyto concrete facts.His parents and grandparents were all natives of the stateof Maine. His father, Edward Roberts Thorndike, a vigorous,fine-looking man of active mind and generous, impulsive disposition, first practiced law in Maine and then became a Methodist clergyman and a noted preacher in Massachusetts wheremost of his pastorates were located. H e married Abigail Brewster Ladd, described as an extraordinarily intelligent and capable person, of marked artistic ability, deeply religious and ofshy, gentle manner but with a will of steel. Her widowedmother, a woman of unusual ability and courage, was a helpfuland much-appreciated member of the Thorndike household.Four highly gifted children were reared in this household, allof whom lived to make their mark in the scholarly world:Ashley and Mildred in English literature, Lynn in medievalhistory, and Edward in psychology and the science of education.Ashley was the oldest and Edward the next in order.Edward learned to read at home but attended school regularly from the time he turned five years old. Beginning at theage o f twelve he attended the high schools of Lowell, Bostonand Providence. H e made a superior undergraduate record at
NATIONAL ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICALMEMOIRS-VOL.XXVIIWesleyan University, 1891-95. His interest so far, conformingto his family background, was in literature and "general erudition" and not in science. Going next to Harvard for graduatestudy, he still made literature his major subject. Meanwhile, asa cdlege junior, he had occasion to study certain chapters of thePrinciples of Psychology by William James and found thatbook the most stimulating he had ever read. At Harvard, accordingly, he attended James's lecture course, with the resultthat during that first year he made a decisive shift from literatureto psychology. In the second year he undertook as his researchproject an experimental study of the instinctive and intelligentbehavior of young chicks, a topic which he himself suggestedthough not at the time with any far-reaching plan-"notat all,"as he said later, "because I knew animals or cared much forthem, but because I thought I could do better than had beendone." Since animals were not allowed in the laboratory hedid the work in his own room and later in Professor James'scellar. He got results; the experimental method proved fruitful; and when he went to Columbia as a Fellow the followingyear, he was encouraged by Professor Cattell to continue thisline of work. The resulting dissertation on Anivnal Intelligence,1898, is a landmark in the history of psychology. It inauguratedthe laboratory study of animal learning and demonstrated thatanimal behavior observed under experimental conditions couldhelp solve the general problems of psychology. It was quicklyparalleled at Clark University and followed up in many otheruniversities, and the animal laboratory has ever since been animportant factor in the development of scientific psychology.Thorndike delighted to honor James and Cattell as his mastersin psychology. Neither of them was responsible for this epochmaking investigation of animal learning nor for his resultingdevotion to the experimental method. James was responsiblefor his initial attraction toward psychology as a natural sciencedealing with the "rich details of concrete human nature." Cattellwas responsible for initiating him into the "quantitative treatment of mental facts," and Franz Boas at Columbia showed himthe value of the newer statistical methods. Experiment and
EDWARD LEE THORNDIKE-WOODWORTHmeasurement-thesetwo were Thorndike's guiding starsthroughout his career.That first paper of his on Animal Intelligence is a landmarkin more ways than one. Not only did it inaugurate the animallaboratory in psychology, but it also announced as its majorresult a new law of learning, additional to the old standard lawsof association and important enough, though often combatedby other psychologists, to become and remain the focal point ofmost subsequent discussions of the theory of learning. Thisnew result could emerge because of Thorndike's novel form ofexperiment. Previous experimental work on learning-someof it excellent-had assigned the learner a poem to memorize,the Morse telegraphic code to master in sending and receivingmessages, or some other fixed lesson to be learned. Thorndikeplaced his chicks, cats or dogs in a problem situation wherealternative responses were possible and the first response wasunlikely to be successful. The question was whether the animal,perhaps after much trial and error, would learn to do the rightthing in the situation-andhow rapid his learning might be.For example, a kitten was placed in a slatted box the door ofwhich was loosely bolted, and a bit of fish was placed just outside as a reward. Usually a kitten would not touch the boltexcept after making a number of more natural responses. Butin a series of trials the ullsuccessful responses would fade outand the correct response would occur more and more quickly.The "effect" or outcome of any response was thus a powerfulfactor in its elimination or establishment. As Thorndike usedto phrase it, the law of effect stated that a satisfactory outcomeof any response tended to "stamp in" its connection with thegiven situation, while an unsatisfactory outcome tended to"stamp out" the connection. Whereas previous theories hadaccepted repetition as the potent factor in learning, Thorndikelaid at least equal stress on "effect," i.e., on success or failure,reward or punishment, satisfaction or annoyance to the learner.Furthermore, the process of stamping in or out appeared fromthe data on cats and dogs to be gradual and not indicative ofsudden insights such as may often occur in man. I n a follow-
NATIONAL ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS-VOL.XXVIIup study of monkeys (1901) Thorndike found more evidenceof rapid learning, but it still seemed probable that what waslearned was stimulus-response connections, and that the superiority of monkey to cat, and even of man to monkey, was fundamentally a greater facility it; forming connections or associations.This was the germ of his "quantitative theory of intelligence."After a single year of teaching at Western Reserve University he returned to Columbia in 1899 and undertook the taskof developing a scientific educational psychology in TeachersCollege. H e brought to this task his firm conviction of thevalue of experiment and measurement, and it can fairly besaid, as it has been said repeatedly, that Thorndike more thanany other man introduced scientific methods into the study ofeducation. In this field, once more, he was the pioneer whoopened the way for an immense amount of investigation. Thefurther development of animal psychology he left mostly toothers, devoting his own efforts to educational psychology. Thelaw of effect he found directly applicable to education, sinceit indicated that mere repetitive drill would be ineffective. Thechild should obtain satisfaction from his correct responses, andhis lessons should be such as would enlist a child's interest andawaken a zeal for immediate achievement. By experimentalstudies of children's specific difficulties in reading, arithmetic,algebra and other subjects Thorndike and his pupils worked outprocedures for meeting the child on the child's own ground andfor individualizing education.A major contribution was his attack on the doctrine of "formaldiscipline," an attack dating from 1901 but repeated at intervals,always with fresh evidence. Traditionally, education was supposed to exercise and develop the mental faculties, so that theeducational value of geometry, for example, lay in its power todeveIop the faculty of reasoning. Thorndike was suspicious ofthis doctrine from the start. He proceeded to test it by use ofthe "transfer" experiment. H e would give a person intensivetraining in some narrow field and then test that person's abilities in a more inclusive field and determine how much improvement could be demonstrated beyond the limits of the special
EDWARD LEE THORNDIKE-WOODWORTHtraining. The experiment showed on the whole a meager transfer effect which could be explained without the assumption ofgeneralized faculties and abilities. The ability developed bytraining in one line of work was specific and did not spread t oother lines of work except when what had been learned couldbe utilized in a concrete way. Accordingly he urged that schoolsubjects should be valuable for their content and not merely fordrill. H e applied this criterion both to the detailed content ofeach school subject and to the curriculum as a whole. H e didnot rest his case entirely on this laboratory experiment. Muchlater (1924, 1927) he published extensive investigations of theafter-effects of different high-school subjects. I t appeared thatthe only justification for any subject was the intrinsic value ofits subject matter to the student. A good student will gain fromany subject that enlists his interest and wholehearted effort."When the good thinkers studied Greek and Latin, these studiesseemed to make good thinkers. Now that the good thinkersstudy physics and trigonometry, these seem to make good thinkers. If the abler pupils should all study physical education anddramatic art, these subjects would seem to make good thinkers.These were, indeed, a large fraction of the program of studiesfor the best thinkers the world has produced, the AthenianGreeks."Both of his early experiments-the one on transfer and theone on animal learning-led up to Thorndike's celebrated theoryof the specificity of abilities. A third approach which he soonadopted was statistical rather than experimental; it utilizedKarl Pearson's correlation coefficient, then newly invented. Ifabilities are manifold and specific, an individual can be strongin some while weak in others, even within the range of sucha "faculty" as memory or reasoning; but so far as ability isgeneralized, the correlation between different performances willbe high. Large-scale investigations showed low correlationsbetween abilities, as a rule, and so confirmed Thorndike in hisspecificity theory. H e soon encountered strong opposition,however, from the British psychologist, Charles Spearman, whoshowed how the correlational facts could be interpreted as
NATIONAL ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS-VOL.XXVIIindicative of one general ability combined with many specificabilities. ' So began a controversy which lasted for severaldecades, enlisting able supporters on both sides, unearthingmany important facts, and developing new statistical methodssuch as are now used in factor analysis. Thorndike adhered tohis "quantitative theory" which held that the only generalability was the ability to learn associations or connections. Ahigher level of ability simply depends on more numerous andmore subtle connections. In this as well as other controversiesThorndike revealed one of his most notable characteristics : hewould hold up his end with all vigor and assurance, but withoutany personal animosity. Indeed the contestants joined in a cooperative effort to make sure of the relevant facts.Very influential in the early days was Thorndike's Introdwtion to the Theory of Mental and SociaC Measureurzents, 1904,a textbook based on the view that non-mathematical investigators in psychology and education should be enabled to makeintelligent use of statistical methods, understanding the principles involved and appreciating both the great need for quantitative study of human behavior and the inherent difficulties of suchan enterprise. Without being himself a highly trained mathematician, he possessed a keen sense for the realities and probabilities. In his own researches he successfully attacked a wholeseries of ticklish statistical problems. Many of his studentsjoined in promoting the cause of measurement in education:measurement of the individual child's capacity and readiness forthe school subjects, measurement of the pupil's achievement,measurement of teaching effectiveness. Thorndike was e s p cially active in the invention and improvement of tests. Heworked out scales of achievement in arithmetic, reading, Englishcomposition, handwriting, drawing, etc., by which a child'sprogress could be objectively measured. He insisted on theneed for tests scaled in equal units and based, wherever possible,on an absolute zero of achievement in each kind of ability.The three-volume text on Educational Psychology, 1913-14,brought together his major research interests in the period preceding the first World War. The psychology of learning was
EDWARD LEE THORNDIKE-WOODWORTHgiven full treatment, starting with the laws of learning derivedfrom his animal experiments and proceeding to a critical analysisof all available data on the improvement of human abilities bytraining. In the section on the "original nature of man," whichwas based largely on his personal observations of young children, he sought to escape from the customary vague generalitiesconcerning instincts and to substitute specific statements oninnate connections between situations and responses. Anotherlarge section of the same book dealt with individual, family, raceand sex differences and their dependence on heredity and environment, this being one of his long-continued interests. Therewas also an extensive treatment of mental fatigue and the workcurve, representing an early line of research which he did notcontinue, except for his study in 1914-16 of the effect of roomventilation on mental work.During the first World War, while remaining in civilianstatus, he was one of the most active and effective psychologistswho participated in the personnel work of the Army. H e contributed to the introduction of the group intelligence tests andtests for aviators. T h e psychologists of that day made a genuinecontribution to the war effort and acquired much new techniqueand knowledge of testing. Thorndike was one of those whomade good use of this experience for civilian purposes afterthe war. The Thorndike college entrance test was especiallyfamous. Always responsive to the call of duty and opportunity,he engaged in a wide variety of scientific and educational enterprises. A s he said in his brief autobiography (1934), "Withincertain limits set by capacity and interest I did in those earlyyears and have done since what the occasion seemed to demand. . . Probably it would have been wiser to plan a more consistent and unified life-work . . . but I am not sure."From 1922 on, however, he was enabled t o devote his energiesto large-scale investigations in the Institute of Educational Research at Teachers College, with financial assistance from thelarge Foundations. H e was now free to choose his lines ofwork, and he chose two main lines, mental measurement andlearning.
NATIONAL ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICALMEMOIRS-VOL.XXVIIIn the work published in 1926 on The Measurement of Intelligence he made a determined effort to provide a measuringinstrument that would meet the requirement of equal unitsreckoned from an absolute zero. The technical scaling methodsare rather intricate, but the resulting instrument has stood upunder continued use and expert criticism. This test scale, the"CAVD," combines four sorts of task: completion, arithmetic,vocabulary, directions. There are 17 levels of difficulty, rangingfrom the level of the three-year-old child up to that of a verysuperior adult. The child of three is nowhere near the absolutezero, being already 23 of those equal units above zero, morethan halfway up toward the peak of intellectual ability. Thepeak, according to Thorndike's results, is not reached till latein the teens or early in the twenties, and the decline from thepeak is very slow and gradual in the next two decades at least.I n his studies of Adult Learning (1928) and of Adult I n t e e s t s(1935) he showed that both the ability to learn and the interestin learning something new and valuable were still good enoughin the forties to justify adult education as a means of enablingpeople to keep pace with their changing world.In his renewed investigation of the process of learning (reported largely in the Fundavnentals of Learning, 1932, and thePsychology of Wants, Interests and Attitudes, 1935) he rechecked his early theory by means of a whole array of novelexperiments, designed to separate the results of reward andpunishment, of satisfaction and annoyance. The law of effectstood firm in its positive phase but showed weakness in itsnegative phase. The "stamping in" of successful responseswas fully as important as he had ever believed, but the "stamping out" of unsuccessful responses was a much less potentfactor. Satisfaction, he concluded, brought into play a "confirming reaction" of the organism, but annoyance did not havea directly opposite effect. Punishment could do good indirectlyby inducing the organism to shift from the punished responseto some other response which might prove successful; but thelearning was due essentially to the confirmation of the successful response. Punishment, as well as reward, could be informa216
EDWARD LEE TIIORNDIKE-WOODWORTHtive, but reward and satisfaction operated not only at the conscious level of clear observation and definite selection of thesuccessful responses but aIso a t a much more primitive andphysiological level. Reward, he found, could even at timesreinforce an unsuccessful act that happened to occur close to asuccessful act-the"spread of reward" which we might alsocall the blunderbuss effect. I n his subsequent applications oflearning theory to educational and social problems, accordingly,Thorndike laid much greater stress on rewards than on punishments. "Except when and as it causes the person to shift tothe right behavior and receive a reward therefor, the punishment has no beneficial effect comparable to the strengtheningby a reward. . . . Psychology emphasizes the importance ofmaking a community attractive to the able and good rather thanunpleasant for those who are incompetent and vicious." Sohe wrote in one of his last books, Human Nature and the SocialOrder, 1940.Thorndike was unwilling to recognize any limits to the scopeof quantitative science. In 1903, indeed, he admitted that theaim and goal of education were to be determined "not by factsbut by ideals," and that science was therefore concerned onlywith discovering the best route to the ideal goal. But his mature view was altogether different. In his 1934 presidentialaddress before the American Association for the Advancementof Science he urged on the scientific world the view that values,being dependent on human wants, were facts of nature, lyingproperly within the scope of natural science, even though anyadequate measurement of human values might be a difficultundertaking. A n often quoted statement dates from 1918 : "Allthat exists, exists i
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Any opinions expressed in this memoir are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences. EDWARD LEE THORNDIKE 1874—1949 A Biographical Memoir by ROBERT S. WOODWORTH Biographical Memoir COPYRIGHT 1952 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES WASHINGTON D.C.
national academy of sciences biographical memoirs volume xii fifth memoir biographical memoir of granville stanley hall i846-1924 by edward l. thorndike presented to the academy at the annual meeting, 1925. granville stanley hall 1846-1924 by edward h- thorndike it is undesirable to follow the usual custom in respect of the
Edwards’ most memorable and respected mentors were Edward L. Thorndike (Teachers College, Columbia University) and Titchener at Cornell. Both Thorndike and Titchener were preeminent among early psychologists in America. Thorndike was well known for pioneering studies in . A National Academy of Sciences volume (Yerkes, 1921), includes a
Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949) Thorndike studied at Wesleyan Univ, founded by the Methodist church –a very shy but brilliant student. He read Principles of Psychology & it changed his life. Thorndike went to Harvard and studied with James. Mind-reading experiments with children looked for subtle movements in the face, rewarding children
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National Academy. New York Academy of Sciences. Organisasi Masyarakat untuk kemajuan Pendidikan.17 2. Teori dan Karya-karya Edward Lee Thormdike Teori koneksionisme adalah teori yang ditemukan dan dikembangkan oleh Edward Lee Thorndike berdasarkan eksperimen yang ia lakukan pada tahun
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES-NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL F. S. Strong, Jr., Chairman . C. Leslie Mitchell Simon Ramo Howard A. Rusk Augustus Thorndike CONSULTANT Robert S. Allen . Artificial Limbs VOLUME 5, 1958 PROSTHETICS RESEARCH BOARD NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL . Hector W. Kay and Edward Peizer 31 VII .
Book Review: The Outsiders by William P Thorndike I am writing to bring to your attention a wonderful book by William P Thorndike. The full title is The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success. Warren Buffet calls this“an outstan
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