The effects of punishment on perceptual learning and verbal meaning

Abstract

The principles involved in the Law of Effect, which is usually considered a relatively modern doctrine in Psychology, have strong historical antecedents. Reflected in the law are the elementaristic and connectionistic trends which are basic to associationist theories, a strong hedonistic or pleasure-pain postulate which underlies most approaches to motivation, and an evolutionary principle, with its central problem of adaptive behaviour. Generally speaking, a good deal of modern psychological theory adopts hedonism in some form or another as a principle accounting for the selection of certain superior adaptive responses from a multiplicity of possible responses, and the laws of association as a principle accounting for the fixation and perpetuation of such responses. The immediate precursors of Thorndike and the modern effect theorists were Spencer (1872), Bain (1868), and, to a lesser extent, William James (1890). These emphasized random movement and spontaneous muscle discharge in the problem situation, the causal efficacy of pleasure and pain in fixating successful responses through repetition, and the importance of the motor or movement aspect of the connection between situation and response, movement which is strengthened by pleasure and by increased neural activity.