Edward Chance Tolman

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Edward Chance Tolman

• Tolmans Purposive Behaviorism

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Time Line of Tolmans Life

• Born in Newton, Mass. April 14, 1886
• Died Nov. 19, 1959

• 1911 Earned BS from Mass. Institute of Tech. in
  electrochemistry
• 1912 Introduced to Gestalt psychology
• 1915 Earned Doctorate from Harvard-retroactive
  inhibition

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Tolmans Career

• 1915 Began teaching at Northwestern Univ.
• 1918 Began teaching at Univ. of Calif. Berkeley.
• 1923 Returned to Giessen in Germany to study
  Gestalt psychology.
• 1930 Studied the role of reward in experiments
  of maze running with rats.

• 1932 Wrote Purposive Behavior in Animals and
  Men.
• 1937 Presented Presidential address to APA.
  Pres. Of APA.
• 1940 Chairman of Lewins Society for the
  Psychological Study of Social Issues.
• 1942 Published Drives Toward War

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Tolmans Career cont.

• 1946 Tolmans latent learning experiments
  criticized by Spence and Lippitt.
• 1948 Wrote Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men
• 1949 Wrote There is More than One Kind of
  Learning.

• 1957 Received APA award for distinguished
  scientific contributions.
• 1958 Wrote Behavior and Psycholgidcal Man
  Essays in Motivation and Learning
• 1959 Received honorary LL.D.-Univ. of Calif.

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The Blocked-Path Study

• Rat is released into maze.
• Has several routes in which to choose from.
• Allowed to run freely until it has learned maze.
• Barriers are placed in some paths.
• Paths vary in length.
• Conclusions is that learning involves

• development of cognitive maps.
• Cognitive maps look at relationships between
  goals and behaviors as well as knowledge of the
  environment.
• Rats develop series of expectations with respect
  to behavior-sign significant relationships.

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An Expectations Study

• Everything behaves as if they have expectations.
• Example A banana is placed under a cup in
  full view of a monkey. When the monkey is not
  looking, the banana is replaced with lettuce.
  The monkey turns the cup over expecting to find a
  banana. When it does not, it becomes agitated.

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A Place Learning Study

• Cognitive Map of the Area
• Mental representation of a physical
  environment where goals are reached.
• Internal representation of relationships
  between behavior and goals.
• Related Expectancies
• Directed Behavior

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A Latent Learning Experiment

• Rats spent several nights in mazes with- out
  being fed.
• ½ found their way to the goal box without
  reinforcement.
• They develop cognitive maps without rewards.

• There is delayed learning which is called latent.
• Latent learning shows distinction between
  performance and learning.

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Four Summary Principles

• Behavior is purposive
• Behavior is cognitive
• Emphasis on molar aspects of behavior
• Reinforcement establishes and confirms
  expectancies

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Contributions

• Tolman is best remembered for being a pioneer in
  cognitive psychology.
• Cognitive maps were a precursor to concepts of
  spatial memory and spatial thinking.
• Created a cognitive theory of learning.
• He was well known for his experiments using rats
  and maze running.

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• In the end the only sure criteria is to have
  fun. And I have had fun.
• Tolman
• Edward Chace Tolman-another neobehaviorist-deliber
  ately gave behaviorism a different twist he gave
  it a purpose (Lefrancois, 2000).