Thorndike's research interests are very extensive. He is the main representative of American Columbia School, the pioneer of animal psychological experiment, the founder of educational psychology system and connectionism psychology, designed psychological tests, and was one of the leaders of American educational test Movement.
Because of this, some historians classify him as American functionalist psychology school, but many people think that he is more like a figure of behaviorism school, while he himself thinks that he does not belong to any school.
Extended data:
I. Main contributions
1, founded the discipline of educational psychology, which differentiated educational psychology from pedagogy and child psychology and became an independent discipline. Therefore, Thorndike is called the founder of educational psychology.
2. Borrow a lot of biological and physiological concepts to establish his associative psychology theory. Most of his conclusions are based on psychological experiments, which makes his theory more objective and contributes to the research of experimental psychology.
3. Developed the classic associative psychology. His learning psychology runs through the word "connection", so he calls himself a "connectionist". The main feature of connectionism is to emphasize the connection between situations and reactions, rather than the association or connection between ideas. So the completely objective frame of reference is combined with his psychological theory.
His learning rules are also different from those of early associative psychologists. The main shortcomings are as follows: Thorndike's learning theory is mechanical. He only pays attention to people's external behavior. In order to study this behavior, he breaks it down into the simplest element, namely the stimulus-response unit. But he neglected the study of psychological elements and consciousness.
Second, the impact of teaching
The phenomenon of trial and error discovered by Thorndike is a universal fact, and it is also a way or way for human beings to solve problems. Naturally, human trial and error is by no means blind, and usually has a purpose. Therefore, in teaching, we should ask students to use the knowledge or experience they have learned as much as possible to solve problems, instead of letting students blindly treat difficult problems.
Thorndike's practice, that is, mechanical rote learning, is not ineffective in learning. We can't completely deny the role of mechanical rote learning and excessive learning in knowledge learning, especially the memory of some foreign words, historical years and some mathematical constants, which still need repeated use and memory to keep better.
In teaching, we should use rewards and punishments reasonably and scientifically. Of course, as Thorndike realized, the role of reward is better than that of punishment. However, under certain conditions, the appropriate use of punishment means will also receive the effect that other methods can not achieve.
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