Jerome Bruner A short history of psychological theories of learning Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/133/1/13/1828748/001152604772746657.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 Learning remains an elusive topic, de- form-wise? How do we learn the lay of spite the endless research lavished on it. the land? How do we learn to concen- And what we mean by it, of course, is trate our attention? shaped by how we choose to study it. And then there are questions about Concentrate on how children master differences in how learning occurs. Do their native language and you arrive at all species learn in the same way and do a very different conception of learning the bright and the dull go about it in like than had you researched how under- manner? And what about external in- graduates memorize nonsense syllables. ducements, rewards, and punishments? Does learning to ½nger a Bach cello so- Are all learning situations comparable? nata tap the same learning processes as I used to give the star performers of learning to trace your way through a the experiments I’d just completed to ½nger maze? Is all learning alike, re- my young daughter. These rats seemed ducible to a common set of principles? to develop a more open curiosity under Two learning tasks are said to be alike her magnanimous care. What, indeed, if mastering one makes mastering the does domestication do to an animal’s other easier–the so-called transfer cri- approach to learning? Were those in- terion. But what is transferred? Is it re- sights achieved by Wolfgang Koehler’s sponses? Rules? Or do we simply learn pampered chimpanzees–their ½guring how to learn, as when with enough out how to rake in an out-of-reach ba- practice we become exam-wise or tax- nana by putting two sticks together, for instance–simply the result of the Jerome Bruner, a Fellow of the American Acade- leisurely tutelage they received on that 1 my since 1954, is University Professor at New York German island of Tenerife? It used University, where he teaches principally in the to be said, only half jokingly, that Yale School of Law. With George Miller he founded stimulus-response-reinforcement learn- Harvard’s Center for Cognitive Studies in the ing theory was different from more cog- early 1960s. He has published widely, his work nitive California theory because Clark principally focusing on the interaction of mind Hull in New Haven taught his graduate and culture. His latest book is “Making Stories: students that rats “should get on with Law, Literature, Life” (2002). 1 Wolfgang Koehler, The Mentality of Apes © 2004 by the American Academy of Arts (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1926). This was originally published in German in 1917. & Sciences Dædalus Winter 2004 13 Jerome it,” while Edward Tolman counseled his goes, psychology is forever subject to Bruner on at Berkeley that rats need time enough to physics envy.) The atomism of learning learning pause at the choice points in a maze. theory embodies the notion that learn- And ½nally, do we learn for learning’s ing consists of the association of ideas, sake, or must we be extrinsically moti- memories, sensations, whatever; at its vated to do so? Assuming the latter, the heart is the conception of the associative Yerkes-Dodson law tells us that too bond, the linkage that co-occurrence or much or too little motivation reduces spatial proximity produces between two learning. I checked that out once myself sensations or ideas. While association- and got a surprise. I found that very hun- ism is of ancient provenance, it had Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/133/1/13/1828748/001152604772746657.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 gry and just moderately hungry rats more recent philosophical adherents learned to ½nd their way through a suc- as well–not only Aristotle, but Locke, cession of pairs of doors. The correct Berkeley, Hume, and pére et ½ls Mills. path through was marked redundantly Indeed, by the mid-nineteenth century, in two ways: follow a left-right-left-right philosopher-psychologist Johann Frie- path, or just choose the darker door at drich Herbart had proclaimed the asso- each choice point. The hungry rats ciative bond as the keystone of the new learned only one of the two cues; the psychology. moderately hungry rats learned both. This paradigm found further, if indi- The less hungry rats had a more open rect, support in the newly burgeoning curiosity–like my daughter’s pets. brain physiology of those times. As the nineteenth century entered its last quar- Given all this, it is natural enough that ter, the older phrenology of the days of scientists would want somehow to sim- Gall and Spurzheim was reformulated in plify what we mean by ‘studying learn- terms of newly discovered cortically lo- ing.’ And, of course, the standard way of calized ‘centers’ in the cerebral cortex, doing that is to agree on some paradigm each dedicated to a particular function. that would make it possible to compare Perhaps the most compelling localiza- results. That is exactly what happened at tion study was the one conducted in 1870 the very start of learning research. But, by the German physiologists Fritsch and as often happens, rival paradigms came Hitzig. In their study, electrical stimula- into existence and, alas, this research tion of different spots in the medial- soon became a war of would-be para- lateral cortex produced particular, quite digms. Indeed, the learning theory wars ½nite motor responses: stimulating one that resulted came to dominate the psy- spot produced flexion of a monkey’s chological research scene from the latter forearm, another would turn his eyes nineteenth century until a decade after upward, still another would turn them World War II, with various ‘schools’ downward.2 If the brain were organized devising clever experiments to demon- in this localized punctate way, psycholo- strate how well their paradigm worked, gists asked, why not the mind as well? or how poorly rival ones fared. One needs to remember that the pre- There were two competing paradigms vailing philosophical view among those from the start, each with its variants. The principal one, a child of its times, 2 The classic article was Gustav Fritsch and was molecular associationism, a meta- Eduard Hitzig, “Ueber die elektrische Errig- phoric extension of the atomism of barkheit des Grosshirns,” Archiv der Anatomie nineteenth-century physics. (As the quip und Physiologie (1870): 300–332. 14 Dædalus Winter 2004 scholars was psychophysical parallelism, the beginning or end–are easily repro- Psychological 3 theories of which held that mind and brain move ducible. learning along parallel tracks. But the associative bond, even be- Their critics, however, championed tween nonsense syllables, soon came to another model–that of molar con½gura- seem mentalistic, too fragile to suit the tionism. This paradigm took as its major scienti½c taste of the times. So by the premise that mind and brain alike oper- turn of the century it was replaced by ate as integral systems controlling the Pavlov’s more scienti½cally solid ‘condi- functioning of component parts. Like its tioned reflex.’ Pavlov’s paradigm physi- rival, it too rested its case on brain phys- calized associationism, turning its con- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/133/1/13/1828748/001152604772746657.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 iology, for there was already plenty of tent into something more measurable evidence that overall cortical processes while preserving its associative form in- controlled localized centers–the neural tact. All his paradigm required was link- ‘mass action’ holism represented by the ing and relinking stimuli and responses: renowned Pierre Flourens. a salivary reflex, once produced by food, The brain’s mass action was analogous was now evoked by a bell signaling the to the phenomenology of everyday life– coming of food. Pavlov’s Nobel Prize in that ordinary experience transcends its physiology seemed to clinch the triumph bits and pieces. The ‘urban scene,’ after of physicalism. But Pavlov himself was all, is more than just a collection of taxis, not altogether pleased, as we’ll see later. buildings, pedestrians; its properties as a Now turn to con½gurationism, which whole shape the elements that make it had no shortage of psychologists to sup- up. Gestalt psychology was, of course, port it, dubious as many were of associa- the most direct expression of this view, tionism’s abstractness and its remote- and it had much to say about how learn- ness from ordinary experience. Con½g- ing was a matter of overall organization urationism had the support of brain re- rather than of local associative linkages. search as well, with the holistic neurolo- gy of the indomitable Flourens still very Consider now the rise of the associa- much in vogue. Also in those ½n de siècle tionist paradigm. That closing quarter times there was a rising tide of interest of the nineteenth century was a time of in how language and culture shaped many new studies of learning–mostly mind, with ½gures like Emile Durkheim concerned with the memorization of and Max Weber in the neighboring dis- lists of words or pairs of words to be as- cipline of sociology urging that culture– sociated. But it was the nonsense syllable not just individual encounters with the principally that gave associative bonding world of physical nature–also forms its scienti½c flavor. Hermann Ebbing- mind. haus used nonsense syllables in order to 3 Ebbinghaus’s 1885 classic is available in Eng- rule out past experience and ‘meaning’ lish only in brief, but representative excerpts in explanations of learning.