Reading for today’s lecture
B. M Thorne & T. B. Henley, Connections in the
History and Systems of Psychology:
Pages 100-107, 211-216, 301-306, 318-323
Dr. Paul Dockree, History of Psychology: PS1203, 2009
Early Associationism and
Connectionism
A natural neural network. The Golgi method of staining brain tissue
renders the neurons and their interconnecting fibres visible in silhouette
Dr. Paul Dockree, History of Psychology: PS1203, 2009
Associationism: Learning and Memory
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Tabula rasa – “blank slate”
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Repeated experiences become
habitual patterns (associated ideas
and behaviours) that form our character
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First associationist – Aristotle
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Aristotle proposed three laws of association in memory:
• 1. similarity - (cows and horses)
• 2. dissimilarity - (hot and cold)
• 3. closeness in time and space - (lightning and thunder)
• Aristotle’s biological or naturalistic account of how memories are
formed: impressions and traces.
David Hartley (1705-1757)
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Observations on Man (1747/42)
Physiology of Associations: Hartley undertook to
define the physiological facts upon which memory
images and their sequences depend
application of atomistic Newtonian philosophy to
physiological psychology
Vibrations of "white medullary substance of the brain"
and miniature vibrations that reach the brain are faint
copies or traces of a sensation
Different vibrations become associated upon being
repeatedly linked together (re: law of contiguity)
A series of sensations A, B, C, D forms such a pattern
in the brain (through miniature vibrations) that later
arousal of A alone will set going B, C, D – i.e., the
memory images of B, C, D
By Hartley rationale, clusters and sequences of sense
impression are the clue to mental life
James Mill
• James Mill (1773-1836)
• Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind
(1829/56)
• single principle of association contiguity:
• the more frequent sensations and idea are paired
the higher the strength of association between
them.
• He reduced mental life down to elementary
sensory particles
• Perception is a process by which a number of bits
are put together to make a whole through
additive summation
• the process of association of elementary parts is
passive and is demonstrated through ‘trains of
thought’
James Mill
John Stuart Mill
• John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
• phenomenally precocious (IQ of 190)
• a free-thinker (“On the Subjection of Women,”
1869/66)
• active conception of mind: “mental chemistry”
• JS Mill notes that chemical compounds often
represent qualitatively new things, not the
summation of single components
• In psychology, qualitatively different ideas could
be created by combinations of smaller parts
John Stuart Mill
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)
• PhD in Philosophy aged 23!
• Gustav Fechner's book Elements of
Psychophysics spurred him to conduct his
famous memory experiments. Ebbinghaus
dedicates his work Fundamentals of
Psychology to Fechner.
• University of Berlin appointment in 1880
but lost his seat
• Ebbinghaus set a new direction in
psychology introducing experimental
control, and quantitative analysis.
Ebbinghaus and Associative Memory
• Father of associative memory
• Ebbinghaus devised the nonsense syllable:
To avoid the pre-established associations of
ordinary verbal materials, he devised some
2,300 trigrams:
• E.g, "WID" and "ZOF".
• Ebbinghaus initial experiments using
trigram-word pairs (e.g., ZOF-APPLE, WIDSHOE)
Graph showing average number of repetitions
• How many iterations of the list was
required (on y axis) for first errorless reproduction
of increasing numbers of nonsense syllables (on x
needed to get the participant to
axis)
errorless performance in learning?
From “Memory: A Contribution to Experimental
Psychology” Chapter V Hermann Ebbinghaus
(1885)
Ebbinghaus’ normal forgetting curve
•The forgetting curve exhibits an
exponential curve that illustrates
how fast we tend to forget the
information we have learned.
•The sharpest decline is in the first
twenty minutes, then in the first
hour, and then the curve evens off
after about one day.
Ebbinghaus and Savings
•Another technique that
Ebbinghaus used to determined the
strength of memory was through a
measure he called Savings
•So savings becomes a measure of
the persistence and efficiency of
memory
•Effective practice starts with
massed practice for fast learning
and proceeds to distributed
practice later for retention.
Ebbinghaus and Savings
• Savings upon relearning (even after 100%
forgetting) implies subconscious influences.
• Ebbinghaus’ savings imply the memorial
records are intact but inaccessible
• Drawing a parallel between cognitive and
psychoanalytic theories
Ebbinghaus and the Serial Position Curve
• The earliest and most recent
items are best recalled and the
intermediate items are least
recalled
• On theory that explains this is
one of interference between
items in the list.
• Interference effects are greatest
over the middle range and are
least at the beginning and at the
end of the list.
Primac
y effect
Recenc
y effect
Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949)
• A very diligent and prodigious
American psychologist raised
in New England in a Methodist
family with a keen interest in
science.
• Doctoral dissertation in 1898
(aged 24): Animal Intelligence: An
Experimental Study of the
Associative Process in Animals
• Approximately 507
publications!
• Basic View of Psychology: the
mind is a “connection system”
Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949)
Studied animal behavior using puzzle
boxes; formulated the “law of effect,”
a precursor to later Skinnerian
operant or “instrumental”
conditioning paradigm.
Four of Thorndike’s cat puzzle boxes
Thorndike’s basic data was the learning curve:
the time needed to escape in increasing numbers of trials
Thorndike formulated two “laws”:
1) “Law of effect”:
Behaviors followed by rewards/punishments
become more/less frequent
The greater the reward or punishment, the greater the
change in “connection” between S - R
2) “Law of exercise”
A response is more strongly connected to a situation
in proportion to the number of times it has been
connected to the situation, and to the average vigor
and duration of the connection
Thorndike and beyond
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‘‘Complex as human life is, it is at bottom explainable by a few principles’’.
More pointedly, ‘‘it has been shown that in great measure the intellects and
characters of men are explainable by a single law [the law of effect]’’
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Thorndike influenced the beginnings of behaviourism and anti-mentalism
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Behaviourism produced some useful principles but., as we will see, historical
developments led to opposition to this extreme position and new schools
emerged
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Association and connectionism are alive today in a different guise: explaining
connections of neural networks in animals and in artificial intelligence or
computational models that mimic neural networks.