Thorndike's contributions to the fledgling science of psychology are of the highest importance and come down to us well into the end of the twentieth century.
The Study of Animal Intelligence
To Thorndike goes the credit for putting what was to become the experimental psychology of animal learning (the study of animal intelligence) on a sound laboratory and theoretical footing. Thorndike's studies (1911), which began around 1896 at Harvard and continued at Columbia University, were much more controlled than those of any of his predecessors. He employed a variety of vertebrate species (fish, chicks, dogs, cats, monkeys) and typically placed them in a problem situation, such as a puzzle box or a maze, from which they had to escape in order to get food and/or join companions. He observed the number of errors or latency to escape across trials and generally published quantitative information on the behavior of his experimental subjects. He attempted to control the life history or extra-experimental experiences of his animals and also kept the problem situation standard.
General Learning Theory
From his experimental observations, Thorndike proposed a general theory of learning that held that the animal learned the association between an act and a situation on the basis of the success of the act in bringing about a "satisfying" state of affairs.
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