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Edward Lee Thorndike: 1874-1949Author(s): Florence L. GoodenoughSource: The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Apr., 1950), pp. 291-301Published by: University of Illinois PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1418943Accessed: 07-09-2016 06:47 UTC

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NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS

A NEW BRAZILIAN JOURNAL

The first volume of Journal Brasileiro de Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, has appeared from the University of Brazil. Its activities are to be "scientific, cultural and medico-social." Foundational psychology appears to occupy about the same subordinate place in its pages as we find in our own psychi- atrical periodicals. In its own field the treatment of disorders and dis- tempers, of theories, problems and methods, is broadly based and carefully edited. The appearance of the text is excellent. While its resources are

largely local, there are indications that its editors mean to recognize the importance also of European and North American research and practice.

M. B.

ebbmarb 3Lee ttornbife: 1874-1949

In the death of Edward Lee Thorndike on August 9, 1949, American psychology lost one of the most ardent and dauntless of its pioneers.

Thorndike was born on August 31, 1874. He received the A.B. degree from Wesleyan University in 1895, then transferred to Harvard to study under William James. There he was awarded a second A.B. in 1896 and the A.M. degree in 1897. The following year he went to Columbia to work under Cattell. It was in Cattell's laboratory that most of his investigations of animal behavior were carried out.

After taking his doctorate in 1898, Thorndike went first to Western Reserve University for a year's teaching. At Cattell's invitation he then returned to Teachers College, Columbia, where the remainder of his long professional life was spent. From an instructorship in 1899 he was pro- moted rapidly to the rank of full professor in 1904. In 1922 he became chairman of the Institute of Educational Research, a position which he held until he became emeritus professor in 1941. Although he was nominally retired at that time, his professional zeal never flagged. Writing and research continued to occupy him up to the time of his death. His last book, a selection of his papers written at various earlier periods but new with respect to its organization and comments, did not appear until after his death.

Thorndike's family is a brilliant one. His brother Ashley Horace, now deceased, was chairman of the department of English at Columbia. Another brother, Lynn, is a member of the Columbia faculty of history. His sister was a high-school teacher. Of his four living children the eldest, Elizabeth, who is now married, formerly taught mathematics at Vassar College; his

A NEW BRAZILIAN JOURNAL

The first volume of Journal Brasileiro de Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, has appeared from the University of Brazil. Its activities are to be "scientific, cultural and medico-social." Foundational psychology appears to occupy about the same subordinate place in its pages as we find in our own psychi- atrical periodicals. In its own field the treatment of disorders and dis- tempers, of theories, problems and methods, is broadly based and carefully edited. The appearance of the text is excellent. While its resources are

largely local, there are indications that its editors mean to recognize the importance also of European and North American research and practice.

M. B.

ebbmarb 3Lee ttornbife: 1874-1949

In the death of Edward Lee Thorndike on August 9, 1949, American psychology lost one of the most ardent and dauntless of its pioneers.

Thorndike was born on August 31, 1874. He received the A.B. degree from Wesleyan University in 1895, then transferred to Harvard to study under William James. There he was awarded a second A.B. in 1896 and the A.M. degree in 1897. The following year he went to Columbia to work under Cattell. It was in Cattell's laboratory that most of his investigations of animal behavior were carried out.

After taking his doctorate in 1898, Thorndike went first to Western Reserve University for a year's teaching. At Cattell's invitation he then returned to Teachers College, Columbia, where the remainder of his long professional life was spent. From an instructorship in 1899 he was pro- moted rapidly to the rank of full professor in 1904. In 1922 he became chairman of the Institute of Educational Research, a position which he held until he became emeritus professor in 1941. Although he was nominally retired at that time, his professional zeal never flagged. Writing and research continued to occupy him up to the time of his death. His last book, a selection of his papers written at various earlier periods but new with respect to its organization and comments, did not appear until after his death.

Thorndike's family is a brilliant one. His brother Ashley Horace, now deceased, was chairman of the department of English at Columbia. Another brother, Lynn, is a member of the Columbia faculty of history. His sister was a high-school teacher. Of his four living children the eldest, Elizabeth, who is now married, formerly taught mathematics at Vassar College; his

291 291


NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS

son Edward is professor of physics at Queens College. Robert is following in his father's footsteps as professor of educational psychology at Teachers College, Columbia; and Alan, a Harvard Ph.D., is a research physicist in the government service.

The list of professional honors accorded to Thorndike is far too long to be cited in detail here. Three different universities awarded him the

LL.D., and four the Sc.D. He was president of the American Psychological Association in 1912, of the American Association for the Advancement of

Science in 1934. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of many other learned societies and an honorary member of a number of European psychological and educational associations. During 1917-18 he was chairman of the committee on the classification of personnel of the United States Army. He held a number of honorary lectureships and was always a popular speaker at psychological conventions.

During the half-century of Thorndike's professional life he published well over five hundred books, monographs and scientific articles on a wide variety of topics. By far the greater number of these were reports of his own

experiments. Thorndike had little patience with theory unsupported by evidence. Logic to him was a process to be applied in the setting up of crucial tests and in the interpretation of their results. The hypotheses to be tested were in most cases the result of observation carried out in the lab-

oratory rather than of abstract philosophy. It was undoubtedly this pref- erence for factual conclusions, for close adherence to the data actually observed rather than to theories derived from them by elaborate manipula- tion of figures or to conjectures based upon introspection that led to his development of 'connectionism' as the psychological system which to him seemed to fit the observed facts and to conform best to the principle of parsimony.

Connectionism as conceived by Thorndike can be defined in rather simple terms. In all species of animals, including man, certain neurobiological connections of such a nature that the application of a given stimulus tends to elicit a particular type of response (S-R bonds) are found to exist. Some of these connections have already been established in the normal animal at the time of birth; others, which he is potentially capable of forming, are acquired as a result of post-natal experiences. All this sounds much like the Watsonian behaviorism, which was to come after Thorndike's

system had been well established and for which to some degree it paved the way. Thorndike, however, disagreed with Watson on a number of major issues, particularly on those having to do with the origin of differences

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among individuals and with the factors underlying the establishment of conditioned responses (S-R bonds in Thorndike's terminology). Thorn- dike stated repeatedly that Watson's assumption of equipotentiality in all healthy normal infants is fallacious and he cited the evidence from studies of the resemblances of siblings, twins, and orphanage children as proof of his contention. He questioned equally the claim that responses conditioned to any initially inadequate stimulus may be established with equal readiness, and cited the carefully controlled study by Bregman, which was carried out under his own supervision, to show that the mere association of a loud noise-as in Watson's classic example-with a neutral object such as the wooden rings used by Bregman is unlikely to establish a connection in the form of a conditioned fear response.

Thorndike's connectionism calls for (a) differences among individuals in their readiness to form particular types of S-R bonds; (b) differences in the external conditions most conducive to the formation and retention

of such bonds; and (c) a tendency for connections to spread or scatter to experiences that are adjacent to them in time or space. All of these principles are subject to experimental verification. Their study was the work of Thorndike's long and active life.

The following brief chronological overview of Thorndike's writings will show the gradual working out of his system during his early years, as well as its refinement and extension to various aspects of human conduct that occupied his attention later on.'

Thorndike's doctoral thesis (1898), entitled Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of Associative Processes in Animals, was in many respects a revolutionary document. From the point of view of method, it transformed the study of animal behavior from imperfectly controlled observation to predesigned experiment in which animals were set definite tasks which could be performed only in certain ways and in which the behavior could be described in quantitative terms, such as the length of time or the number of trials needed for success or the number of errors made

before success was achieved, as well as by the descriptive accounts of behavior which his predecessors used. From the standpoint of comparative psychology, Thorndike's study offered an emphatic contradiction to the belief that animals such as the cats, dogs, and chicks used in his experiments

1For Thorndike's bibliography, see his Publications from 1898 to 1940, in the commemorative number of Teachers College Record, 41, 1940, 699-725, and the sup- plement by Irving Lorge, Edward L. Thorndike's publications from 1940 to 1949, ibid., 51, 1949, 42-45. The list to 1932 was, of course, already published in C. Murchison's Psychological Register, III, 1932, 484-490.

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are capable of learning through the formation of mental images, by observa-

tion and imitation of others, or by the inductive processes leading to generalization in terms of rules and principles. Although he did not then apply his findings to human beings, he was particularly impressed with the importance of the successful act as a major determinant of the learning process. This principle was later to be given formal expression by him in his well-known Law of Effect. Even at this early date, the key-note was sounded for the long series of investigations of factors affecting the acqui- sition of skills and knowledge by the human animal, a series to which a large share of his life was to be devoted.

After the publication of Animal Intelligence Thorndike's next major interest was child development. His Notes on Child Study went through two editions (1901, 1903). A second absorbing interest of his at this time was the question of mental fatigue. Although his more important studies in this field were carried on at a later period, the need for more precise definitions of the term, for better distinction between the physical and mental elements in fatigue and for more exact measures of the work decre-

ment under varying conditions had impressed him even before the turn of the century. By the end of 1905 he had published the first editions of his Educational Psychology and his Mental and Social Measurements. He had also written a monograph on the intelligence of monkeys, thereby extending

his studies of animal behavior to a higher phylogenetic level. Again popular beliefs were shattered, for he found the alleged 'imitativeness' of monkeys to be more myth than fact. Another of his innovations at this period was his writing of one of the earliest books on psychology for the layman- The Human Nature Club. Two other publications at this time are significant because they mark the beginning of another long series of investi-

gations-his monograph on measurements of twins and his article reporting statistics on the marriages of eminent men. Both bear upon the question of the relative effects of heredity and environment on human abilities.

The years from 1906 to 1910 appear to have been mainly concerned with preparation for his great work on educational psychology. The second editions of his text-books on Principles of Psychology and Educational Psychology came out at this time, as well as a new book entitled Principles of Teaching. A monograph on handwriting and another on Empirical Studies in the Theory of Measurement as well as a chapter on Exercises in Arithmetic also foreshadowed the more complete developments of these topics to come later. In common with Ayres and other leaders in education, Thorndike at this time was much concerned over the amount of retardation

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found in the public schools. His writings on this topic attracted the attention not only of the school people but also of the general public and did much to pave the way for the use of the Binet-Simon tests of which the first English translation appeared in 1910. Some fifteen other experimental articles on various aspects of psychology and educational psychology served chiefly to further the elucidation of his psychological system, of which the major outlines were by now well blocked out.

During the years from 1911 to 1915, Thorndike's professional career reached its peak. The sheer volume of his writing during these five years is amazing. He revised and extended his first monograph on animal intelligence. He wrote the second and much enlarged edition of his Mental and Social Measurements in which for the first time the applications of statistical method to practical problems in education and psychology were clearly and simply shown. For a number of years this was the standard text-

book on educational measurements. The great work of this period, however, was his three-volume Educational Psychology with its accompanying Briefer Course, which together were to make the name of Thorndike practically synonymous with the field of educational psychology for many years to come. It was during this period also that he served as president of the American Psychological Association and delivered his famous presidential address on ideomotor action which, like many of his previous studies, was a shock to conventional ideas.

This too was the period in which the greater number of his standardized educational tests and scales appeared. These scales were an innovation in the field inasmuch as they not only provided a means of assigning equally spaced quantitative values to qualitative judgments within such areas as English composition, drawing and handwriting, where subjective estimates of merit which varied widely with the individual judge had hitherto been the only available method of appraisal. The tests carried the method to a point where the scales could be used by teachers with a modicum of professional training. The period is also marked by the publication of two other books (Individuality and Education, a First Book) and of more than twenty experimental articles. The latter incude his first report on the disciplinary value of school subjects, a topic which was later to arouse acute controversy among his colleagues, and his first article dealing specifically with the measurement of intelligence.

Like that of most American psychologists, Thorndike's work between 1916 and 1920 was interrupted by the war. He was an active and inde- fatigable member of the committee which devised and arranged for the

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administration and evaluation of the Army Alpha and Army Beta tests, as well as of other psychological devices used in World War I, and he was the author or co-author of a number of studies on various aspects of military psychology. Before the outbreak of hostilities he had published the first edition of the Thorndike Arithmetics, Books I-III, of which a

revised edition appeared some years later. He also published eight new educational tests or much improved versions of earlier tests, as well as the first edition of the Thorndike Intelligence Test for High School Graduates, a revised version of which is now known as the I.E.R. Test.

That the technical aspects of the definition and measurement of intelligence, which were to reach so brilliant a culmination in his Measurement of Intelligence (1926), were even then beginning to occupy his mind is shown by a number of critical articles on this topic that had appeared by 1920. His interest in questions of work and fatigue was extended to the effect of ventilation and humidity upon the work decrement and finally to his much quoted article on the curve of work and the curve of satisfying- ness, a paper in which he showed that, within the limits of such conditions as ordinarily obtain, differences in the amount of mental work accomplished

or in the rate of progress in learning under conditions of prolonged effort are largely the result of the loss of satisfying results that come from bore- dom, from muscular or sensory fatigue, or from interference by other more interesting pursuits. Once more, the Law of Effect! A number of other

experimental articles complete a half-decade of work which, if less stu- pendous than that from 1911-1915, would still suffice the majority of his colleagues for a life-time.

Between 1921-1925 Thorndike's great achievements were: (1) the publication of the first edition of his famous Teacher's Word Book, which, together with the revisions that were to appear later, has proved to be one of the most valuable research tools ever developed; (2) two books on the psychology of arithmetic and one on the psychology of algebra which were and to some extent still are used as textbooks or as collateral reading in teachers' colleges and in university schools of education; (3) the revised edition of the Thorndike Arithmetics, Books I-III; and (4) seven or more articles on the much-disputed question of the disciplinary value of certain school subjects and the more general question of the transfer of training. The effect of common elements in two or more skills and of differential

selection of subjects to be learned by persons of differing talents are so well understood today that we are likely to forget how hotly the question was argued a quarter of a century ago and how much Thorndike's clear-

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headed experiments had to do with demolishing the long-cherished belief of certain educators that the learning of Greek, Latin, and mathematics was not only worth while for its own sake but also because the 'mental exercise' required for learning them would 'strengthen' the mental powers.

At this time Thorndike wrote a number of articles on miscellaneous edu-

cational questions as well as several on the nature and organization of intellect in which, as always, he questioned the existence of a general factor of intelligence, such as was hypothesized by Spearman, and offered as a sub- stitute his theory of an almost infinite number of varieties of intelligent acts

of which the elements overlap to a varying extent. During this time he also published a number of new or revised tests and scales. His preoccupation with test construction is evidenced by his publication of two monographs and more than a dozen articles on this topic.

The Measurement of Intelligence (1926) was the result of a tremendous amount of previous work in this area by Thorndike and his colleagues. Like many other psychologists who had been actively concerned with the development of the Army Alpha and Army Beta tests during the war, Thorndike immediately saw the possibility of extending the method of group intelligence testing to use with the civilian population, particularly with school children. He had served on the National Research Council

Committee which devised the enormously popular National Intelligence Test for use in the elementary school, but, although he recognized the practical usefulness of this test, he did not think it sufficiently refined for use in exact research. Moreover, by this time, his concept of intelligence as a nonunitary function was well crystallized and neither the NIT nor any other of the intelligence tests then on the market had been constructed

in such a way as to conform to his theories. They were made up of different

parts, it is true, but these parts were regarded as separate elements or aspects of a unified whole, not as independent mental functions whose relationship to each other depended wholly upon the overlapping of their elements.

Thorndike's well-known CAVD test, with which The Measurement of Intelligence chiefly deals, was constructed in strict accordance with his theory of the nature of intelligence and with the principles of measurement which he had been advocating for years. Just why the test has not been more widely used is not easy to understand in view of the widespread psychological interest in the more theoretical aspects of Thorndike's book. Possibly Thorndike's very insistence upon the test's limitation of meaning to the four functions directly measured (Completion, Arithmetic, Vocabu-

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lary, and Directions) rendered it less popular with the many who were ready to accept the claims for generality of meaning made by those whose actual methods of testing covered no wider a field than the CAVD. Be that as it may, the fact remains that in The Measurement of Intelligence Thorndike presented what is probably the most brilliant and closely knit discussion of intelligence and its measurement that has appeared up to the present time. Appreciation of its significance does not hinge upon acceptance of his point of view. Much of the discussion is equally apposite to any other reasonable concept of the nature and organization of intellect. For example, the several chapters on different ways of measuring difficulty and the discussion of techniques for distinguishing between original and acquired characteristics are significant, regardless of one's theoretical position as to the nature of intelligence.

Other publications during the second half of the 1920s are Thorndike's Adult Learning and Elementary Principles of Education, both of which, as well as The Measurement of Intelligence, are joint publications. A number of scientific articles, most of which deal with some aspect of learning, also appeared at this time. During the decade from 1930 to 1939 Thorndike seems to have at-

tempted to bring his long series of experiments in the field of learning to a conclusion. His two books, Human Learning, a simply written descriptive account of his findings and his interpretation of them, and The Fundamentals of Learning, which is a technical report of statistical findings intended primarily for his professional colleagues, are summaries of previous findings rather than basically new material. Two monographs on reward and punishment, however, not only serve to clarify his later position

but indicate also the changes in his point of view that had taken place during the preceding thirty years. Reward, he says, with its double effect as a confirming reaction and as a satisfier, operates dependably and well- nigh universally as a strengthener of a connection. This backward action of later upon earlier experience is explained by the 'spread' or 'scatter' phenomenon whereby the effect of a satisfier tends to spread to those experiences adjacent to it in time or space. Punishment, on the other hand, does not necessarily weaken a connection (as was originally supposed), but may serve no other purpose than that of making the punished individual unhappy, fearful, or confused, thus interfering with his learning the right response. Its chief positive effect is to cause the punished person to search for a different type of response in the course of which he may succeed in finding the correct method. As Thorndike's studies of the learn-

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ing process advanced, there was steady progression in his formulation of the Law of Effect in the direction of his placing greater emphasis upon the positive effect of reward and less upon the effectiveness of punishment.

With his studies of learning practically completed, Thorndike was now ready to turn his attention to other areas that had long interested him but for

which his busy life of research and teaching had left too little time. He pub-

lished a revised and enlarged edition of his Teacher's Word Book and of the Thorndike Junior and Senior Dictionaries, which are unique in having all definitions couched in terms that, according to the Word Book, are in more common use than the word they define. Anyone who watched an earnest ten-year-old struggle vainly with a definition of a definition of a definition in an ordinary dictionary, only to come out in the end with some-

thing far afield from the word with which he started, will appreciate the value of a dictionary that is intelligently planned for use by children. Thorndike's growing interest in semantics is further indicated by his monograph on the psychology of language.

In his Psychology of Wants, Interests, and Attitudes (1935) he presented the results of a series of experiments showing how these factors operate to induce variations in response and to determine which of a series of responses will be selected for retention. Although his terminology differs, this is his Law of Readiness in a somewhat different setting.

The late 1930s wefe mainly devoted to a new problem-the measurement of the qualities of cities and states. By means of data on 296 different

items collected from various sources, and following essentially the same methods used in mental measurements of individuals, Thorndike devised three scales designated respectively as G, P, and I. The G scale, which, he stated, is designed to measure the "general goodness of life for good people in the community in question," is based upon such facts as pro- visions for public health and social welfare, educational and recreational facilities and the like. The P scale has to do with the personal qualities of the residents-intelligence, delinquency and crime, and so on. The I scale refers to the per capita income. Once more we find Thorndike, now well into his sixties, blazing a trail into territory hitherto unexplored. The findings he presented for the general reader in Tour City (1939) and in more detail in American Cities and States (1942). The decade of the 1930s was also marked by the publication of ap-

proximately seventy research articles on a variety of topics; by the stand- ardization of several new forms of the I.E.R. tests, and by the writing of a short autobiography which appeared in Volume III of Murchison's Psy-

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chology in Autobiography (1936). The latter has been reprinted with a short extension covering the final years in Selected Writings from a Con- nectionist's Psychology, a volume of which he finished correcting the final proofs only a few days before his death.

In 1940 he published Human Nature and the Social Order, a book designed to organize and interpret the pertinent facts of psychology for students and professional workers in the social sciences. This was his last entirely new book, although his monograph on American Cities and States (1942), in which he presents the statistical findings from the series of studies on which he had been engaged for several years, contains a good deal of new material. His major interests during the final decade of his life seem, however, to have been centered about two problems-the completion of his studies in the field of language and the nature-nurture contro-

versy. He brought out another edition of his Teacher's Word Book and in 1942, as one of the William James lectures at Harvard, he described his

'babble-luck' theory to account for the development of language by prim- itive man. This is an interesting example of the skill with which during his later years he was extending the principles of connectionism to a wide variety of aspects of behavior.

In Chapter XIII of the Selected Writings, he brought together for the first time, under the title of "Heredity and Environment," the results of his own extensive studies in this field which covered almost four decades

(1905-1944) and compared them with data collated from the literature. Of his own work, perhaps the most important is his demonstration (1944) that most of the correlations on sibling resemblance in mental traits that have been reported in the literature are in error by a considerable amount, owing to the common practice of computing deviations from the mean of the group studied rather than from the mean of the general population. This is an important statistical point that applies to other fields as well as to that of sibling resemblance. Thorndike showed that, when correc- tion is made for this factor, the resemblance of siblings in intelligence is in the neighborhood of -+.70 or even higher, rather than +.50 or less as has usually been reported.

Throughout his life Thorndike was an ardent and tireless experimenter. His experiments, moreover, were never dictated by idle curiosity. Always they were purposeful. They were tied in with the gradual development and extension of his theoretical position or practical, designed to fill some recognized scientific or educational need. He was a great tool-maker. The long list of intelligence tests and tests of educational achievement which he devised or in the making of which he was an important collaborator,

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as well as his famous Teachers Word Book, his dictionaries for use by school children, his simplified statistical devices and tables for reducing the work of computation, his methods of measuring communities, all bear witness to his remarkable ability to see what was needed and to devise methods for meeting those needs.

Most of all, perhaps, Thorndike was a great teacher. Those of us who had the privilege of attending his classes bear witness to the vividness and force of his lectures, to his essential fair-mindedness and his insistence that

no theory unsupported by fact has the right to stand. "Look to the evidence" was his constant admonition. His courses were often strenuous, but they were never dull. He had a gift for lively illustration, for the well- pointed witticism. It was largely his popularity as a teacher that brought so many hundreds of students to Teachers College year after year. Of the fifty-eight psychologists whose Ph.D.s were granted in 1905 or later and who have subsequently been 'starred' in one of the first seven editions of American Men of Science, seven named Thorndike as one of the men by whose teaching they had been most influenced.2

Whether or not one agrees with the theory of connectionism, it must be conceded that his teaching had a wholesome influence. It was practical, dealing with real and observable facts of ordinary life. It met the im- mediate needs of teachers, providing them as it did with a working philosophy of teaching that they could understand and use. No one else has shown so simply and so convincingly the superiority of reward over punishment, of praise as compared to blame. To many, Thorndike's system may seem like an oversimplification of the laws of behavior but none can deny its everyday common sense nor its value for the teachers of whose interests and needs he was at all times so keenly aware.

University of Minnesota FLORENCE L. GOODENOUGH

AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The JOURNAL is indebted to Mrs. E. L. Thorndike and to Professor Irving

Lorge, Teachers College, Columbia University, for the photograph of Edward L. Thorndike reproduced in the frontispiece of this number, and to Professor E. G. Boring for the signature that appears under it. The photograph was taken ten years ago, in 1940, shortly before Dr. Thorndike was retired from Teachers College as Professor Emeritus. K. M. D.

2M. D. Boring and E. G. Boring, Masters and pupils among the American psychologists, this JOURNAL, 61, 1948, 527-534.

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(See page 291)


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