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In an experiment that Thorndike conducted, he placed a hungry cat inside a "puzzle box", where the animal could only escape and reach the food once it could operate the latch of the door. At first the cats would scratch and claw in order to find a way out, then by chance / accident, the cat would activate the latch to open the door.
Edward Thorndike conducted some key experiments on cats' learning capacity. In one of Thorndike's experiments, cats were placed in various boxes approximately 20 in × 15 in × 12 in (51 cm × 38 cm × 30 cm) with a door opened by pulling a weight attached to it.
Edward Lee Thorndike (() August 31, 1874 – () August 9, 1949) was an American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University.His work on comparative psychology and the learning process led to his "theory of connectionism" and helped lay the scientific foundation for educational psychology.
Original puzzle box designed by Edward Thorndike. In 1898, American psychologist, Edward Thorndike proposed the 'law of effect', which formed the basis of operant conditioning. [8] Thorndike conducted experiments to discover how cats learn new behaviors. His work involved monitoring cats as they attempted to escape from puzzle boxes.
In his famous experiment, a cat was placed in a series of puzzle boxes in order to study the law of effect in learning. [4] He plotted to learn curves which recorded the timing for each trial. Thorndike's key observation was that learning was promoted by positive results, which was later refined and extended by B. F. Skinner's operant conditioning.
Thorndike's experiment established the field of comparative cognition and an experimental science and not simply a conceptual thought. [11] The progressive decrease in escape time observed by Thorndike's cats lead to his development of the Law of Effect , which states that actions and behaviors conducted by the organism which result in a ...
Courtney, who used to run a cat rescue sanctuary and is still the proud cat-mom to four rescue kitties, also has a baby and a toddler in her home. When it comes to myths about cats and babies ...
A number of experiments have studied this in animals. In one experiment, a tone and a light are presented simultaneously to pigeons. The pigeons gain a reward only by choosing the correct combination of the two stimuli (e.g. a high frequency tone together with a yellow light).