Watson's 1915 Presidential Address To American Psychology

Following the Yerkes and Margulis Psychological Bulletin article that introduced Pavlovian learning into the American psychological literature, Watson's 1915 presidential address to the American Psychological Association was influential in establishing the Pavlovian learning paradigm in American psychology. Watson devotes Chapter II, How to Study Human Behavior, almost entirely to the utility Vol.What is surprising in retrospect is that Watson often appeared to have based his central behavior...change engine upon such a limited learning model as Pavlov's, that is superimposed on a short litany of sometimes-atypical renexes.

While Pavlov had credited Thorndike with being the first to show a bold accurate approach to the immense task of objective research on animal learning, Watson's emphasis nearly-always appeared to be on the Pavlovian learning paradigm that necessarily ignores the important and wide-ranging role of behavior change. The Thorndike-learning model based on the consequences of behavior has seemed more appropriate for much of Watson's later emphasis on training, as exemplified in the paragraph quoted above.

Furthermore, Thorndike had written a positive and sympathetic review of Watson's Manifesto of Behaviorism. Dr. Peter Harum, who is preparing a biography of J. B. Watson, has informed me that, in the Watson Archive at the Johns Hopkins University, he had It:at a friendly letter that Watson wrote in 1919, inviting Thorndike to collaborate in an important research project. Some Possible Bases for Walson's Ignoring the Thorndike's-Learning Paradigm. There are a number of plausible speculative negative reasons why, singly or in some combination, Thorndike'S learning paradigm might not have appealed to