45 Facts About Edward Thorndike

Edward Lee Thorndike was an American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Edward Thorndike worked on solving industrial problems, such as employee exams and testing.

Edward Thorndike had a powerful impact on reinforcement theory and behavior analysis, providing the basic framework for empirical laws in behavior psychology with his law of effect.

Edward Thorndike's thesis is sometimes thought of as the essential document of modern comparative psychology.

In 1937 Edward Thorndike became the second President of the Psychometric Society, following in the footsteps of Louis Leon Thurstone who had established the society and its journal Psychometrika the previous year.

Edward Thorndike was a pioneer not only in behaviorism and in studying learning, but in using animals in clinical experiments.

Edward Thorndike was able to create a theory of learning based on his research with animals.

Edward Thorndike was interested in whether animals could learn tasks through imitation or observation.

Edward Thorndike saw the same results with other animals, and he observed that there was no improvement even when he placed the animals' paws on the correct levers, buttons, or bar.

Edward Thorndike found that after accidentally stepping on the switch once, they would press the switch faster in each succeeding trial inside the puzzle box.

From his research with puzzle boxes, Edward Thorndike was able to create his own theory of learning.

Edward Thorndike meant to distinguish clearly whether or not cats escaping from puzzle boxes were using insight.

Edward Thorndike reasoned that if the animals were showing insight, then their time to escape would suddenly drop to a negligible period, which would be shown in the learning curve as an abrupt drop; while animals using a more ordinary method of trial and error would show gradual curves.

Edward Thorndike's finding was that cats consistently showed gradual learning.

Edward Thorndike put his testing expertise to work for the United States Army during World War I, participating in the development of the Army Beta test used to evaluate illiterate, unschooled, and non-English speaking recruits.

Edward Thorndike stated the law of effect, which says behaviors that are followed by good consequences are likely to be repeated in the future.

Edward Thorndike's research focused on instrumental learning, which means that learning is developed from the organism doing something.

At first, Edward Thorndike emphasized the importance of dissatisfaction stemming from failure as equal to the reward of satisfaction with success, though in his experiments and trials on humans he came to conclude that reward is a much more effective motivator than punishment.

Edward Thorndike emphasized that the satisfaction must come immediately after the success, or the lesson would not sink in.

Edward Thorndike was among some of the first psychologists to combine learning theory, psychometrics, and applied research for school-related subjects to form psychology of education.

Edward Thorndike opposed the idea that learning should reflect nature, which was the main thought of developmental scientists at that time.

Edward Thorndike instead thought that schooling should improve upon nature.

Unlike many other psychologist of his time, Edward Thorndike took a statistical approach to education in his later years by collecting qualitative information intended to help teachers and educators deal with practical educational problems.

Edward Thorndike's theory was an association theory, as many were in that time.

Edward Thorndike believed that the association between stimulus and response was solidified by a reward or confirmation.

Edward Thorndike thought that motivation was an important factor in learning.

Unlike later behaviorists such as John B Watson, who placed a very strong emphasis on the impact of environmental influences on behavior, Thorndike believed that differences in the parental behavior of men and women were due to biological, rather than cultural, reasons.

Edward Thorndike's beliefs about inborn differences between the thoughts and behavior of men and women included arguments about the role of women in society.

Edward Thorndike composed three different word books to assist teachers with word and reading instruction.

Edward Thorndike influenced many schools of psychology as Gestalt psychologists, psychologists studying the conditioned reflex, and behavioral psychologists all studied Edward Thorndike's research as a starting point.

Edward Thorndike was the first to apply psychological principles to the area of learning.

Edward Thorndike's research led to many theories and laws of learning.

In 1929, Edward Thorndike addressed his early theory of learning, and claimed that he had been wrong.

Edward Thorndike got rid of half of the law of effect, after finding that a satisfying state of affairs strengthens an association, but punishment is not effective in modifying behavior.

Edward Thorndike placed a great emphasis on consequences of behavior as setting the foundation for what is and is not learned.

Edward Thorndike's work represents the transition from the school of functionalism to behaviorism, and enabled psychology to focus on learning theory.

Skinner, like Edward Thorndike, put animals in boxes and observed them to see what they were able to learn.

Edward Thorndike's research drove comparative psychology for fifty years, and influenced countless psychologists over that period of time, and even still today.

In 1912, Edward Thorndike was elected president for the American Psychological Association.

Edward Thorndike was admitted to the National Academy of Sciences in 1917.

Edward Thorndike was one of the first psychologists to be admitted to the association.

Edward Thorndike is well known for his experiments on animals supporting the law of effect.

Edward Thorndike was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1932 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1934.

That same year, Edward Thorndike was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Edward Thorndike's connectionism has been criticized for being too simplistic and reductionistic.