Guthrie, Edwin R.
Guthrie, Edwin R.
Cross-disciplinary implications
American psychologist, educator, and philosopher, Edwin Ray Guthrie (1886–1959) was the oldest of five children. He was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he spent his boyhood. His mother, Harriet Pickett Guthrie, the daughter of a newspaperman, was an elementary-school teacher before marriage; his father was the son of a minister and the manager of a piano store.
Guthrie had exhibited vivid intellectual interests even as a child. At the University of Nebraska, which he entered in 1903, he majored in mathematics and minored in philosophy. After receiving his a.b. in 1907 he remained at Nebraska for graduate work, majoring in philosophy and minoring in mathematics and psychology. In 1910 he received his a.m. from Nebraska and was made a Harrison Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his ph.d. in 1912 with a thesis resolving various paradoxes of Bertrand Russell (1915a).
Professional life . For five years Guthrie taught high-school mathematics, from 1907 to 1910 in Lincoln and from 1912 to 1914 in Philadelphia. He then joined the faculty of the University of Washington, where he remained, except for temporary leaves, for the rest of his life.
At Washington, Guthrie started as instructor in the department of philosophy, then chaired by William Savery. Savery (a student of William James at Harvard) and Guthrie (a student of Edgar A. Singer at Pennsylvania) became lifetime friends. In 1918 Guthrie became assistant professor and in 1919 joined the department of psychology, chaired by Stevenson Smith, who also became Guthrie’s close friend. Guthrie was made associate professor in 1925 and professor in 1928.
Guthrie married Helen Macdonald in 1920. With her, he translated Pierre Janet’s Principles of Psy chotherapy (1924) and traveled extensively—espe cially in France, where Guthrie met Janet, and in England, Italy, and Hungary.
Guthrie was the second winner of the gold medal awarded by the American Psychological Foundation for “outstanding lifetime contributions to psychology.” Awarded an honorary ll.d.from the University of Nebraska in 1945, he was elected president of the American Psychological Association in the same year. During World War II, he was chief consultant to the overseas branch of the general staff of the U.S. War Department in 1941 and chief psychologist of the overseas branch of the Office of War Information in 1942. He was dean of the graduate school of the University of Washington from 1943 to 1951 and was honored by a building on the campus being named after him while he was still alive.
Contributions to science
Guthrie’s close association with philosophers and his formal training in philosophy at an advanced level had considerable impact on the problems to which he addressed himself and on his resolutions of some of these.
Philosophical clarifications
The nature of explanation. Guthrie deemed the question “why” as unprofitable and almost nonsensical—unless by “why” one means “how come,” “under what circum stances,” or “what next.” “Why” in the sense of “for what purpose” carries implicit teleological as sumptions perhaps unwarranted and not^the most fruitful for understanding.
The most illuminating explanations, Guthrie pointed out, are those which summarize sequences of observable events: Given this set of observable circumstances, what observable subsequent events may be most reasonably expected? Such explana tions answer the question “what next” or “how come.” An explanation states the general class of which some particular sequence is an instance, nothing more.
Causation and the nature of theory. Seeking “causes,” as ordinarily conceived, distracts and con fuses us. The usual notion of “cause” implies that there is a force within some set of circumstances which somehow pushes events in a certain direc tion. Building on the work of David Hume, Guthrie abandoned the usual notion of “cause” and thought instead in terms of sequences of events. Certain events precede other events in time. The earlier events need not be assumed to force the later ones; they simply precede them.
Certain events do precede others with great regu larity. Our problem as theorists then becomes one of devising general terms to label these classes of events and to describe these more regular se quences. Theory construction, so conceived, is an inductive process and consists in devising general statements (principles) to summarize as many sequences as possible.
Hedonism. One of the very ancient Greek philosophies (refined by Aristotle and Plato) held that man by his nature is a pleasure-seeking organism. A variation of this turns up in the popular idea that learning occurs only when some satisfaction or need reduction is involved for the learner [seelearning, article onreinforcement]. This is a very comforting view. It is heartening to believe that, whenever we learn, at least some of our needs are thereby being met. The view poses difficulties, however, in accounting for the many instances in which learning is followed by distress, and no apparent satisfaction or need reduction. To handle this difficulty, psychologists posited an ever-lengthening list of motives (conscious and unconscious) or drives (primary, secondary, tertiary) or needs, in an attempt to account for seemingly dysfunctional learning.
Guthrie handled the difficulty by abandoning the idea that we learn only what is followed by some need reduction. His approach has economy in the numerosity of presumed “needs” or “drives.” It also facilitates understanding of mistakes, learned awkwardnesses, and habitual stupidities—without having to presume a “death instinct,” “will to failure,” or anything similar—and alerts us to circumstances in which learning may lead to damage or disaster.
The unity of learning. There is, Guthrie suggested, one kind of learning only; the same principles which hold for learning in one instance hold also for learning in all other instances. The apparent diversity of learning does not stem from there being different kinds of learning following different principles but arises instead from differences of other sorts: different kinds of situations, different kinds of responses possible to organisms with different musculatures, and different kinds of stimuli that can become cues for differing species with their differing sense organs and differing neural structures. We need not formulate separate principles for each of the differing situations, differing response types, or differing stimulus sensitivities. The same set of principles may hold for all and be illustrated by all.
New concepts
Multiple “causation.” At the time when Guthrie wrote, a prevalent way of thinking about the responding organism was in terms of “a” stimulus or “the” CS (conditioned stimulus) for various responses. In contrast, gestalt psychologists (Kohler, Koffka, et al.) were stressing the importance of the totality of the situation. Their emphasis was on the totality as a unit—responses purportedly being evoked by the total situation as a unified, in some ways indivisible, whole.
Guthrie’s idea, inspired by both theories, was also different from both. He emphasized multiple stimulation as a more adequate basis for comprehending behavior than either the single stimulus or than the whole situation as merely a unitary totality. He suggested we view any response as a consequence of the interplay and, in a way, the summation of all stimuliimpinging on the organism at that mo ment. He held that the nature of the response made by the responding organism is not a function merely (or even primarily) of the feature most salient to the observer or experimenter—for example, not a function of “the” conditioned stimulus merely. Neither is the response a function of an unanalyzable total situation. Rather, the total situation can be analyzed into component stimulus patterns and their relationships, the organism’s response being predictable from these various components simultaneously considered.
Role of internal stimuli. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, psychologists primarily emphasized external stimuli, except for those internal stimuli considered under the heading of “drives.” In accord with his view that all stimuli acting on the organism should be considered in predicting behavior, Guthrie called attention to the many internal stimuli besides those thought of as drives. He emphasized that proprioceptive stimuli, kinesthetic stimuli, stimuli from visceral responses, stimuli from endocrine states, fatigue states, and chemicothermal conditions, and other internal stimuli all are present too and should be considered for the best understanding of behavior.
He saw no particular advantage in subdividing internal stimuli into two classes: drive-connected stimuli versus others. It appeared to Guthrie that the various internal stimuli and the various external stimuli all act in substantially the same way and are of equal importance when of equal duration and equal intensity. Our difficulty in under standing behavior stems largely from our failure to note enough of the dimensions of the stimulus situation acting upon the organism rather than from a lack of knowledge about an individual’s “motives” or “drives.”
Movement-produced stimuli. Every time we make any response whatsoever, a wealth of new stimuli is brought into existence: new visual stimuli, new tactual stimuli, new proprioceptive stimuli, sometimes new auditory and olfactory stimuli, and others. This class of stimuli Guthrie called “movement-produced stimuli,” emphasizing that our own responses always change the stimulus world we are in.
Conditioning. The work of Bekhterev and Pavlov was immensely stimulating to Guthrie, as it was to other American psychologists [seeLearning,article onclassical conditioning]. One re sult of their influence was Guthrie’s suggestion concerning the relationship between conditioning and learning. Instead of thinking of the phenomena found in conditioning experiments as arising primarily from a pairing of the so-called CS and US (unconditioned stimulus), Guthrie considered them as arising from the pairing of the CS and some response (the unconditioned response [UR] or others)—or more precisely, from the concomitance of various stimuli and some ongoing response. Conditioning so conceived becomes a paradigm of one subclass of the more general class of “learn ing,” and all learning, including that called conditioning, becomes the result of a pairing of new stimuli with ongoing responses. In what appears to be Pavlov’s only paper published in a United States journal (1932), he restated his original position that it is the pairing of stimuli rather than of stimuli and responses that is critical. Guthrie (1934a) rejected Pavlov’s view and the problem remains moot today.
A theory of learning
Guthrie thus created a highly original, parsimonious theory of learned behavior, presenting much of it in The Psychology of Learning (1935). Formulations of the basic principles and concepts are given in a paper by Voeks (1950).
Learning, as Guthrie conceived of it, is the process of establishing new stimuli as cues for some specified response. This process occurs in a single trial and is disrupted only through unlearning.
Recency versus postremity
Ebbinghaus, Watson, and others, on the basis of experimental work, stressed that the length of time elapsed since learning is a key dimension in the preservation of learning [seeForgetting]. Recency was adopted as a crucial factor in the preservation of learning. Sigmund Freud, through his clinical work, came to the conclusion that learning which has occurred early in childhood often is preserved strikingly even when there has been little or no opportunity for further strengthening of that learning. People observing daily life noted that sometimes things recently learned are best preserved, whereas at other times things learned in the distant past seem most intact and reappear after long lapses of time. A hodgepodge of chaotic data accumulated.
Guthrie proposed a new conceptualization and a new principle which reconciles these divergent findings. He suggested that what most other psychologists call a “response” or “behavior” is actually a series of discrete, more-or-less integrated responses. For example, the response labeled “picking up a pencil” involves a large number of separate muscular activities. Similarly, even so simple a “stimulus” as a pencil combines many visual, tactile, and other stimuli. Each component of such a compound stimulus object can be, according to Guthrie, a cue for ;o separate response and may tend to elicit such a response. The response remaining cued to each component will always be the response most recently made in the presence of that particular component.
When a series of responses is made to a changing series of situations which—while changing— have some components in common, responses are successively attached and detached from the reappearing stimulus components. Again, there sponse remaining cued to each stimulus component is the response last made to that particular part. Even when the stimulus component and the response occur early in the stimulus series and at a remote time, nonetheless the response remains cued to that component whenever the component has not turned up subsequently.
The role of recency in this theory differs a great deal from the role it plays in the traditional recency principle. According to the latter, as has been mentioned, a given stimulus-response connection tends to grow weaker with elapsed time. But Guthrie held that the cue properties of stimuli cannot be weakened by time alone. So long as the response is the last-made response to the particular stimulus component, the cue properties remain at full strength; as soon as some other response is made contiguously with the perceived stimulus, the original cue property will cease to exist and a new cue property will be at full strength. This sequential regularity has been formulated in the principle of postremity: the last response an organism makes to each component in a particular situation is the response remaining cued to that component—regardless of how long the time since that stimulus occurred.
Thus, Guthrie would argue, the old principle of recency on occasion tends to operate because the more recent the stimuli and the given bit of behavior, the less time there has been for those stimuli to reappear while any other behavior is occurring; and hence the less likelihood there is that some other response can have become cued to those stimuli. However, certainvery early stimulus-response connections will tend to be perpetuated (as Freud reported) because the particular stimulus conditions are highly unusual, thus reducing the possibility of their being present while some other new response is being made; hence it be comes likely no new response will be cued to those sets of stimuli.
Removal of stimuli established as cues
The view derived from philosophical hedonism, that we learn only those forms of behavior which are in some way rewarding, was common when Guthrie was writing. Both psychologists and laymen believed that unless a response is reinforced by drive reduction or tension reduction or in some other way satisfies some need, no learning will occur.
Guthrie, however, did not hold that view. He noted that under some circumstances men and animals learn forms of behavior that make matters worse for them, satisfy no need whatsoever, accord with no “motive,” and attain no goal. Furthermore, under some circumstances these unwanted habits are preserved.
The necessary and sufficient condition for learning, Guthrie suggested, is the occurrence of a response in the presence of a stimulus not already a cue for that response. Similarly, the necessary and sufficient condition for the preservation of learning is to have the current cues for some response absent whenever incompatible’ responses occur. By this theory, a “reward” will preserve learning either when it is itself a cue for the new response or when it closely follows the response and removes the stimulus established as a cue for that response. But any state of affairs, including “punishment,” will likewise preserve learning equally well, so long as the cue is removed from the organism (or the organism is removed from the cue) immediately after the response is made—i.e., before another response can be made in the presence of the same stimulus, thus canceling the original association. Punishment will disrupt learning when it induces the organism to make a response incompatible with the previously learned response while the original stimulus is yet present. Rewards also will disrupt learning under those circumstances. Degree of “removal from a situation” (or partial removal of the situation from the animal) may enable us to predict learning and its preservation or disruption more fully than do “re ward” and “punishment.”
One-trial learning
For two thousand years, following Aristotle and his basic assumptions, philosophers, laymen, and behavioral scientists alike have put great faith in frequency of association as a mode of strengthening associations. In our century, Pavlov, Thorndike, and Hull all stressed the desirability or even necessity of repetitive trials to inculcate learning. In contradistinction, Guthrie was much impressed by the experimental work of Kohler and others on “insight” behavior.
Guthrie suggested that frequency of trials as ordinarily conceived may well be a misleading way of thinking about learning and an often futile way of addressing oneself to the practical problems of learning. He offered his revolutionary principle of one-trial learning: Whatever stimuli happen to be acting on the behaving organism become full strength cues for whatever responses the organism is making at that time. A single occasion on which the specified response occurs concomitantly with various stimuli will establish all those stimuli as full-strength cues for the specified response. Additional trials are useful only for establishing additional stimuli as cues for the specified response.
According to this principle, repetition is often futile and under some circumstances actually worse than no trials at all. Repetition is futile to the degree that the stimuli are the same from one trial to another, that the desired response is not being made in each trial, or that the stimuli one wishes to establish as cues for the response are not those actually present.
Repetition is worse than futile whenever the responses actually being made by the organism are incompatible with the desired response; for under those circumstances more and more stimuli become cues for responses incompatible with the desired responses. This has the dual effect of increasing the number of stimuli which are cues for some undesired response (thus increasing the probability of the undesired response being the one to appear on subsequent occasions) and of decreasing the pool of stimuli which could elicit the desired response.
Frequency has value only to the degree that new stimuli are present from trial to trial and then only when the desired response actually is being made on the various trials. Under these circumstances, additional stimuli become cues for the response each time it occurs. Thus, repeatedly practicing a difficult passage on the piano will be profitable only when correct notes actually are being played in a variety of circumstances, the correct notes thus becoming cued to additional combinations of auditory, muscular, and other stimuli accompanying them or immediately preceding them. What happens otherwise is either nothing or the learning of errors.
Probability of response
The likelihood of any specified response occurring at some particular time is directly proportional to the extent to which the stimulating situation is composed of cues for that response. The greater the number of cues present at some particular time for the response desired, the greater the probability that that response will occur (if the total number of stimuli is the same for the various situations being compared). This principle in the hands of William Estes became the basis of what currently is called “modern statistical learning theory” [seeModels, Mathematical; see also Estes 1950; 1959].
Cross-disciplinary implications
Education
Dewey emphasized that “we learn by doing.” Guthrie extended this to “we learn only what we ourselves do.” If in classrooms the student watches a teacher skillfully solve problems or engage in intricate feats of cogent reasoning, the student will become an intent observer of the teacher solving problems—but he will not become better at solving problems himself, unless he himself is doing something other than watching. The responses we wish to cue to various stimuli must be made by the individual himself in the presence of those stimuli.
Guthrie’s theory of learning leads one also to place considerably less faith in drill. Making the same response over and over again will not further learning unless the circumstances are changed— and only to the extent that the circumstances are changed. Sitting in the same seat in the same room with the same internal stimuli from the same emotional make-up acting upon one while making the same response would add nothing to what was gained by making the response in the presence of those stimuli once.
A further implication is that the circumstances under which one wishes the desired response to be made in the future should be approximated as closely as possible by the present circumstances. The responses made get cued only to those stimuli actually present.
The theory implies too that teachers commonly are too prominent a part of the schoolroom situation. Whenever a learner is making desired responses, the teacher would be wise to be as small a part of the stimulating situation as possible. When the teacher is a large part of the situation, the learner’s responses will, of course, be cued to the sight and sound of the teacher (as well as to other stimuli from the teacher); when these stimuli constitute a major part of the total situation, the desired responses are being cued to relatively little else besides the teacher. Hence, in the teacher’s subsequent absence, the desired response is less apt to be made than would be the case had the teacher been less prominent.
Many further implications for formal education are presented in a book by Guthrie and Powers (1950).
Psychotherapy
We ask “Why did you do this?” assuming the person acts toward some end. We search for “motives” and speculate on what the person gains by his unwanted behavior. But possibly he gains nothing by it—even in his own eyes.
That could be the crux of his problem: he does not customarily act in accord with his own values or goals. His behavior is largely unaimed.
From Guthrie’s theory we should expect that much learned behavior may be unsatisfying even to the person engaged in it. The person does not necessarily direct his behavior toward any goal, conscious or unconscious. He is not necessarily acting in a fashion that meets his basic needs or fulfills his major hopes. He simply is doing what he has been trained to do, making the responses to various stimuli that he last made to those stimuli, responses that in some prior context he had perhaps been forced to make. The responses may meet no need and yet persist.
Instead of assuming that all behavior is goaldirected and meets some need, we should try in psychotherapy to help the person develop more goaldirected behavior and develop behavior consonant with his needs: for example, we should help him to acquire habits of aiming at goals, habits of evaluating his actions, habits of ascertaining whether any need is indeed being met by his behavior [seeMental disorders, treatment of, article onclient-centered counseling].
Further, in light of Guthrie’s theory, instead of concentrating primarily on the circumstances under which the unwanted behavior or feelings occur, we should search also for the circumstances under which the individual currently does make valued responses. The latter offer leads concerning the stimuli which already are cues for valued responses and thereby offer a basis on which to build.
Subsequently, when confronted with unwanted behavior, the appropriate question is not “Why?” but “What are the circumstances eliciting that un wanted response?” and “What stimuli are cues for it?” To get a different response cued to those stimuli, one should not present all at once many of the stimuli that are cues for the unwanted response. (That is, one should not, for example, put the individual back in the original situation.) This would make the unwanted response very likely, according to the probability principle. Rather, we should present only a few of those stimuli that now are cues for the unwanted response while simul taneously presenting many stimuli that are cues for a desired response. When the new response occurs, a few more of the stimuli may be intro duced that are cues for the unwanted response. Thus, gradually, we could detach from unwanted behavior more and more of the stimuli formerly cues for unwanted behavior and establish them as new cues for the new response. On this installment plan, unlearning of the old and learning of the new proceeds most efficaciously.
One of the most brilliant and kindly of men, Guthrie has given us a rich heritage through his teaching, articles, and books. He worked with sustained endeavor on an extraordinary array of topics. His writings, remarkably illuminating, thoughtful, and thought-provoking, reflect his high good humor, courage, and great concern for his fellow men.
Virginia Voeks
[For the historical context of Guthrie’s work, see the biographies ofBekhterev; Kohler; Pavlov.]
WORKS BY GUTHRIE
1914a Formal Logic and Logical Form. Midwest Quarterly 1:146–155.
1914b Old Solutions of a New Problem. Midwest Quar terly 1:236–241.
1915a The Paradoxes of Mr. Russell: With a Brief Ac count of Their History. Lancaster, Pa.: New Era Printing.
1915b Russell’s Theory of Types. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 12:381–385.
1916 The Field of Logic. Journal of Philosophy, Psychol ogy and Scientific Methods 13:152–158.
1921a Smith, Stevenson; and Guthrie, Edwin R. Chap ters in General Psychology. Seattle: Univ. of Washing ton Press.
1921b Smith, Stevenson; and Guthrie, Edwin R. general Psychology in Terms of Behavior. New York: Appleton.
1922 Smith, Stevenson; and Guthrie, Edwin R. Exhi bitionism. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 17:206–209.
1924 Purpose and Mechanism in Psychology. Journal of Philosophy 21:673–682.
1927a Measuring Student Opinion of Teachers. School and Society 25:175–176.
1927b Measuring Introversion and Extroversion. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 22:82–88.
1928a Psychological Bases of War and Peace. Pages 78-83 in Charles E. Martin and Edith Dobie (editors), Problems in International Understanding. Seattle: Univ. of Washington Book Store.
1928b Guthrie, Edwin R.; and Morrill, H. The Fusion of Non-musical Intervals. American Journal of Psychology 40:624–625.
1930 Conditioning as a Principle of Learning. Psycho logical Review 37:412–428.
1933a On the Nature of Psychological Explanations. Psy chological Review 40:124–137.
1933b Association as a Function of Time Interval. Psy chological Review 40:355–367.
1934a Pavlov’s Theory of Conditioning. Psychological Review 41:199–206.
1934b Reward and Punishment. Psychological Review 41: 450–460.
(1935) 1960 The Psychology of Learning. Rev. ed. Gloucester, Mass.: Smith.
1936 Thorndike’s Concept of “Belonging.” Psychological Bulletin 33:621 only.
1937a Yacorzinski, George K.; and Guthrie, Edwin R. A Comparative Study of Involuntary and Voluntary Conditioned Responses. Journal of General Psychology 16:235–257.
1937b Tolman on Associative Learning. Psychological Review 44:525–528.
(1938) 1962 The Psychology of Human Conflict: The Clash of Motives Within the Individual. Gloucester, Mass.: Smith.
1939 The Effect of Outcome on Learning. Psychological Review 46:480–485.
1940a Association and the Law of Effect. Psychological Review 47:127–148.
1940b [A Book Review of] Organizing and Memorizing: Studies in the Psychology of Learning and Teaching,(1940) by G. Katona. Psychological Bulletin 37:820–823.
1942a The Principle of Associative Learning. Pages 100-114 in Philosophical Essays in Honor of Edgar Arthur Singer, Jr., edited by F. P. Clark and M. C. Nahm. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.
1942b Conditioning: A Theory of Learning in Terms of Stimulus, Response, and Association. National Society for the Study of Education, Yearbook 41, part 2:17–60.
1943 Leadership. Pages 366-384 in National Research Council, Psychology for the Fighting Man, Prepared for the Fighting Man Himself…. Washington: In fantry Journal. → An unsigned article by Guthrie. A paperback edition was published in the same year by Penguin.
1944 Personality in Terms of Associative Learning. Vol ume 1, pages 49-68 in Joseph McV. Hunt (editor), Personality and the Behavior Disorders: A Handbook Based on Experimental and Clinical Research.New York: Ronald Press.
1945 The Evaluation of Faculty Service. American Asso ciation of University Professors, Bulletin 31:255–262.
1946a The Conditioned Response. Pages 100-104 in Philip L. Harriman (editor), Encyclopedia of Psychol ogy. New York: Philosophical Library.
1946b Guthrie, Edwin R.; and Horton, George P. Cats in a Puzzle Box. New York: Rinehart.
1946c Psychological Facts and Psychological Theory. Psy chological Bulletin 43:1–20.
1946d Recency or Effect? A Reply to V. J. O’Connor. Harvard Educational Review 16:286–289.
1949a The Evaluation of Teaching. Educational Record 30:109–115.
1949b Guthrie, Edwin A.; and Edwards, Allen L. Psychology: A First Course in Human Behavior. New York: Harper.
1950 Guthrie, Edwin R.; and Powers, Francis F. Edu cational Psychology. New York: Ronald Press.
1959a The State University: Its Function and Its Future. Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press.
1959b Association by Contiguity. Volume 2, pages 158-195 in Sigmund Koch (editor), Psychology: A Study of a Science. New York: McGraw-Hill.
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal Award 1958. 1958 American Psychologist 13:739–740.
Carter, L. F. 1936 Maze Learning With a Differential Proprioceptive Cue. Journal of Experimental Psychol ogy 19:758–762.
Estes, William K. 1950 Toward a Statistical Theory of Learning. Psychological Review 57:94–107.
Estes, William K. 1959 The Statistical Approach to Learning Theory. Volume 2, pages 380-491 in Sig-mund Koch (editor), Psychology: A Study of a Sci ence. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Janet, Pierre 1924 Principles of Psychotherapy. Translated by H. M. and E. R. Guthrie. New York: Macmillan. → Contains lectures delivered at Harvard University.
Kimble, Gregory A.; and Kendall, John W. Jr. 1953 A Comparison of Two Methods of Producing Experimental Extinction. Journal of Experimental Psychol ogy 45:87–90. → An experiment testing Guthrie’s theory.
Osgood, Charles E. (1953) 1958 Method and Theory in Experimental Psychology. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. → See especially pages 362-372, “Guthrie: A Contiguity Theory.”
Pavlov, I. P. 1932 The Reply of a Physiologist to Psy chologists. Psychological Review 39:91–127.
Sheffield, Fred D. 1948 Avoidance Training and the Contiguity Principle. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 41:165–177. → An experi mental test of Guthrie’s theory.
Sheffield, Fred D. 1949 Hilgard’s Critique of Guthrie. Psychological Review 56:284–291.
Sheffield, Fred D. 1951 The Contiguity Principle in Learning Theory. Psychological Review 58:362–367.
Sheffield, Virginia F. 1950 Resistance to Extinction as a Function of the Distribution of Extinction Trials. Journal of Experimental Psychology 40:305–313.
Voeks, Virginia W. 1945 What Fixes the Correct Re sponse? Psychological Review 52:49–51.
Voeks, Virginia W. 1948 Postremity, Recency and Fre quency as Bases for Prediction in the Maze Situation. Journal of Experimental Psychology 38:495–510.
Voeks, Virginia W. 1950 Formalization and Clarification of a Theory of Learning. Journal of Psychology 30:341–362.
Voeks, Virginia W. 1955 Gradual Strengthening of S-R Connections or Increasing Number of S-R Connections? Journal of Psychology 39:289–299. → An experiment testing Guthrie’s theory.
Zeaman, David; and Radner, Louis 1953 A Test of the Mechanisms of Learning Proposed by Hull and Guthrie. Journal of Experimental Psychology 45:239–244.