The Psychology Book

IN CONTEXT

APPROACH

Connectionism

BEFORE

1885 In his book On Memory, Hermann Ebbinghaus describes the “forgetting curve”—the rate at which human memories fade.

1890s Ivan Pavlov establishes the principle of classical conditioning.

AFTER

1918 John B. Watson’s “Little Albert” experiments apply conditioning to a human baby.

1923 English psychologist Charles Spearman proposes a single general factor—the “g factor”—in measurements of human intelligence.

1930s B.F. Skinner develops a theory of conditioning from consequences—“operant conditioning.”

At much the same time as Pavlov was conducting his experiments on dogs in Russia, Edward Thorndike began researching ...