What Is the Guthrie Test?

Edwin Ray Guthrie 1886.01.09-1959.04.23, American psychologist, one of the representatives of neo-behavioralism. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA, he died of a heart attack in Seattle, Washington, USA.

Edwin Guthrie

Edwin Ray Guthrie 1886.01.09-1959.04.23, American psychologist, one of the representatives of neo-behavioralism. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA, he died of a heart attack in Seattle, Washington, USA.

This name

Edwin Guthrie

Age

Modern

Time of birth

January 9, 1886

Time of death

April 23, 1959

Major achievements

One of the representatives of neo-behavioralism

Foreign name

Edwin Ray Guthrie

His father is the owner of the piano shop, his mother is an elementary school teacher, he is the eldest of five children in the family, reads well at an early age, and can read in eighth grade.

In 1943, he returned to the University of Washington and served as the dean of the graduate school and the professor of psychology. When he retired in 1956, the University of Washington named a building after Guthrie in recognition of his contribution to psychology.

Guthrie's shift from mathematics and philosophy to psychology was mainly due to the influence of his teacher and philosopher EA Singer. In Singh's view, many philosophical problems can be reduced to problems of behavior and analyzed at the level of behavior. In other words, philosophical problems can be better solved through experimental methods. Guthrie's early theoretical views were similar to those of Watson and Pavlov, but after many years of development, he formed his own unique learning theory.

In 1935, in the book "Learning Psychology", he proposed a learning rule on which all other rules of learning can be understood: "A certain combination of stimuli, if accompanied by a certain action, then when this kind of When the combination of stimuli reappears, this action will often follow. "This learning law does not include variables such as reinforcement or motivation that other learning theorists focus on, but only emphasizes the connection between stimulus and response. In his opinion, when the organism responded to a certain stimulus, the strength of the connection between them was fully achieved. When this stimulus reappears, it will respond again. Therefore, learning is done all at once. He reduced all learning to a combination of stimulation and action.

In response to this law, in 1942, he added a second statement: "The first time a stimulus mode is combined with a response, a sufficient linking force is obtained." That is to say, when a stimulus and its response occur simultaneously , It is enough to establish a connection between the two, and this connection will be maintained indefinitely, unless a subsequent event occurs to replace it. This is his famous one-trial learning theory.

To elaborate his theory of learning, Guthrie made a distinctive interpretation of stimulation, response, and reinforcement.

People often think of the whole stimulus situation as a stimulus. Guthrie believes that in reality, the stimulus situation is composed of a large number of stimulus elements that are constantly changing. In fact, the organism only responds to certain stimulus elements in the stimulus situation at a certain moment. Therefore, Guthrie's concept of "stimulus" is equivalent to those characteristics that affect sensory receptors in the environment.

Behaviorists generally regard reaction as the unit of action, and what individuals learn in response to stimulus situations is response. Guthrie distinguishes between a reaction as a movement and a reaction as an act: the former refers to individual muscle actions; the latter refers to a complex of actions composed of a series of muscle actions. In his opinion, actions cannot be described truthfully and realistically. Actions take place in the overall response, which is infinitely complex and at the same time fused with other responses. Therefore, the overall response is neither named nor descriptive. For example, shooting basketball is not a single action, but an action consisting of a series of muscle movements. He cares about the action (that is, the movement of various muscles when shooting) but not the action or the result of the action (that is, he does not care about the entire shooting process and whether the ball is hit). Guthrie believes that it is the connection between these actions and the various stimulus elements that is the real connotation of learning. In other words, learning is the connection between the stimulus and muscle movement.

Therefore, he further believes that as long as the organism makes an action on a set of stimulus elements, a connection is formed between them and learning is complete. Learning is an all or none connection. If the organism takes another action next, it means that the organism has formed a new connection, or a new learning has taken place. In this way, the previous connection will fade. So, what kind of response will the organism encounter when it encounters similar stimuli in the future? According to the principle of proximity, the organism's final response under certain stimulus conditions is the best predictor of what he will do when he encounters this stimulus in the future. Because his learning theory is based on the proximity of the stimulus-response connection, that is, he believes that the most important mechanism in learning is the temporary connection, that is, the close connection between stimulus and response, so it is also called proximity. Contiguity theory of learning.

Obviously contradicts the gradual nature of learning that people have observed. Because many skills only make perfect by repeated practice. Guthrie's explanation for this is: a complex action or skill is composed of many individual actions, which requires the formation of a connection between multiple actions and multiple stimulus elements. Moreover, although the learning process itself is simple and deterministic, any stimulus situation is quite complex and uncertain, and is composed of many stimulus elements that change over time. Therefore, the organism needs to constantly form new and appropriate bonds to eliminate the improper bonds that may have formed. Therefore, the process of forming a complex action may be the process of forming thousands of subtle stimulus-response connections. In this way, Guthrie resolved the contradiction between one-time learning and learning gradualness.

To illustrate these basic points, Guthrie and Horton (1946) designed a special puzzle box. In front of the fan box is a large piece of glass, with a small exit door in the middle, and a small pillar in the center of the fan box bottom. The cat starts from the starting box behind the puzzle box and enters the puzzle box through a passage. As soon as the cat touched the pillar, no matter how it was touched, the small door opened immediately, and the cat could escape the box. When the door was opened, a camera automatically shot the cat touching the pillar.

That is, the cat's actions are basically similar each time they are released. If a cat escapes the box after biting the pillar for the first time, then it will bite the pillar again and again; the other cat opens the door when it retreats to the pillar for the first time, and then it will almost Always stepping back to the pillar to escape the box. Some cats use their front paws and some use their hind paws, but after learning how to escape, they will basically repeat the same method again and again. In other words, if we know how the cat escaped on the 10th attempt, we can accurately predict what the cat will do on the 11th attempt (see the figure below). Guthrie believes that the cat's escape action is repeated repeatedly because it escapes the labyrinth, thus preventing the possibility of a new stimulus-response connection. The cat's consistent response confirms Guthrie's law of learning.

Photo of the cat when it was released. This is a reactive pattern used repeatedly by a cat during its 9th to 12th attempts

Guthrie's theory of one practice study only admits that the close proximity of stimulus and response time is a necessary condition for learning, and negates the existence of two conditions of practice and reinforcement. Then, in Century Animal Learning Experiments, animals will not learn a specific reaction without providing reinforcement. His explanation for this is that the strengthening effect of the reinforcement is not a strong chemical behavior, but only that the individual learns the behavior at the time to help retain the learned behavior. Take the white rat in the T-shaped labyrinth as an example. For example, when the white rat goes to the T-junction and turns right to the end to get food, the role of food is not to strengthen the white rat's right turn behavior, but to keep the white rat's right turn behavior from being affected by others. Disturbance from stimuli.

In order to adhere to the behaviorist stance that "all reactions are triggered by stimuli," Guthrie put forward a new perspective: the action itself is a source of stimulus. He believes that in addition to the external environment, the response also provides a stimulus for behavior, that is, proprioceptive stimuli or endogenous stimuli caused by muscles or other internal events. Since there is a very short-term association between two successive actions, it is possible to form a connection between one action and the residual stimuli caused by the previous action. Guthrie refers to this type of stimulus as "action-generated stimulus," which means "stimulus that results directly from some action."

Guthrie, like J. Watson, insists that science should only study objective observable events, and that the objects of psychology are observable, measurable, and appropriate experimental research behaviors. Guth is a representative of neo-behavioralism. His learning theory is considered one of the most important learning theories of the 20th century and praised for its simplicity and comprehension. But some views have also been criticized by some opponents. They claim that he explained too many questions on the basis of too few principles and underestimated reinforcement. He was President of the American Psychological Association in 1945 and was awarded the Gold Medal by the American Psychological Association Foundation in 1958.

General Psychology: Chapters in General Psychology, co-authored with Stevenson Smith, 1921

Learning Psychology: ThePsychology ofLearning, 1935, 1952

Human conflict psychology: ThePsychology of HumanConflict, 1938