Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Psychology 253
ice of a new goal, or a segment arranged in relation to the following one in a
sequence that eventually constitutes a new whole. Further, the activity of the
subject is not entirely disregarded, for not only the latter repeats what he has
learnt and generalizes according to generalizations of the response R or of the
stimulus S (and Hull foresaw, without using them, combined stimulus-response
generalizations), but he also breaks up and re-arranges his responses or speeds
them up as the goal approaches (goal gradients). However, in principle everything
learnt by the subject is already contained in the objects, so that constructivism
is thus minimal since it involves only the construction of ‘copies’.
With Tolman, on the other hand, there are two notable innovations. Firstly,
the environment is no longer presented as a set of independent sequences that
the subject learns to ‘copy’ one by one: it is immediately organized by the
subject into significant totalities that Tolman calls ‘sign-Gestalts’. The term
alone is instructive. There is a ‘Gestalt’ in the sense that there is a structured
whole, for example from the point of view of spatial organization and of the
itineraries to be covered (the subject of these theories of learning was for a long
time the domesticated white rat, although it is a fairly degenerate animal that
has lost the main characteristics of a rodent). There are also the meanings, and
this takes us beyond associationism and shows that the characteristics perceived
are assimilated and not only associated with the possible actions of the subject.
Tolman further refers to an essential activity of the subject in learning, namely
continual expectation, resulting of course from former assimilations, but testifying
to active and constant generalizations and not confined to applying the
same response to similar stimuli or closely related responses to the same stimulus.
From the explanatory point of view, these theories of elementary learning
have given rise to three kinds of studies, apart from the logical formalization
that Hull and Fitsch have carried out (see section 2, heading III), which deserve
mention due to their general current interest. Firstly, Bush and Mosteller
have produced a probabilist schema of learning, in which in a given situation
characterized by given parameters it can be deduced, knowing certain given
laws, that a given reaction wil take place in accordance with a given calculable
probability. This is merely expressing, in terms of calculation, de facto states and
observed laws, and the reason for the probabilities still has to be explained. H.
Harlow has made an important point here by distinguishing between the learning
of a given reaction and general behaviour, which he calls ‘learning-to learn’.
It is here that the real crux of the matter lies, for without an internal 1ogic‘:urging
subjects to assimilate external facts to his schematism while adjusting it to
their diversity, one cannot see where the innovations come from, and any
reference to the satisfaction or reduction of needs is only a finalist interpretation
as long as we do not understand how adaptations to new situations take place.
Thirdly, L. Apostel has workeqout in a general study of the theories of learning,
and specifically taking into account Harlow’s.notion of ‘learning sets’, an algebra
of learning, the essential operators of which raise the question of the structuralizing
activities of the subject.