Comparative psychology of learning: It’s foundations a hundred years after Thorndike's dissertation

Abstract

A hundred years after Thorndike's dissertation, the comparative psychology of learning seems ready for a reassessment of its foundations. Research has been influenced in recent decades by an ecological view that emphasizes adaptive significance. Recent progress in evolutionary biology suggests that many aspects of the genotype and phenotype of widely divergent species are strikingly stable. Such findings provide a sound biological basis for the type of general-process view of learning advocated by Thorndike in his dissertation, according to which learning mechanisms are common to a wide range of species.