Edwin Guthrie
When one first reads Guthrie’s theory of learning, it seems so simple (simplistic?) that one says to oneself that he can’t be serious. This can’t possibly work. It is to Guthrie’s credit that he pushes some very simple ideas about as far as one can push them. For Guthrie, learning consists of the association of a stimulus with a behavior. As he states in his “Psychology of Learning,” a “combination of stimuli which has accompanied a movement will on its recurrence tend to be followed by that movement.” So, if a stimulus is followed by a behavior, then the next time you encounter that stimulus, the behavior will follow. No reinforcement is necessary for this association to be formed--- the absence of any mention of reinforcement or consequences in the above definition is intentional. This definition relies on the stimulus and the response occurring together in time (temporal contiguity). There is another aspect to Guthrie’s simple notion presented above that must be noted. He doesn’t talk about an association being strengthened or needing to occur on multiple occasions. One pairing of stimulus and behavior is enough to establish the association at full strength. Guthrie’s associations are all-or-none: if a stimulus-response association exists, then it exists in a form that is as strong as it will ever be.
Although it is tempting to thinking of stimuli only in terms of observable environmental events, Guthrie expands on that notion. He considers internal stimuli--- especially proprioceptive stimuli--- as being as capable of forming stimulus-response associations as any other type of stimuli. Proprioceptive stimuli are your sensations of the movement of your muscles and tendons. These sensations can serve as stimuli to other responses (which themselves can give rise to further proprioceptive stimuli).
It is noteworthy that Guthrie uses the term “movement” in the above description of his view. It is a very deliberate formulation to draw a distinction between micro-behavior (movement) vs. macro-behavior (acts). Or, as the distinction is sometimes described, the distinction between molecular behavior (movements) vs molar behavior (acts). It is to movements that the laws of learning apply. The stimulus-movement associations can be combined to produce a molar behavior. So, the sound of the telephone isn’t connected to the act of answering the phone. It is associated with the movement of your head to the phone. That movement creates internal stimuli which get connected to your taking of a step toward the phone--- which produces more internal stimuli (and so on). The multiplicity of associations create the act of answering the telephone. Guthrie makes frequent use of the notion that associations between unobservable (internal) stimuli and micro-behavior (movements) underlie the observable stimulus-observable act connection.
Guthrie rejected Skinner’s distinction between respondent behavior (classical conditioning) and operant behavior (operant conditioning). Skinner thought that respondent behavior was compelled by the presence of a stimulus, while operant behavior was spontaneously emitted by the organism. Guthrie thought there was only one type of conditioning and that operant behavior was a result of a stimulus as well. The difference is that we usually cannot tell what stimulus is leading to the operant behavior, while it is usually obvious what stimulus is producing the classically conditioned response. According to Guthrie, all learning follows the above quoted principle.