Edward Chace Tolman (1886 - 1959) was an American psychologist. He was most famous for his studies on behavioral psychology. 1886 is a common year starting on Friday (click on link to calendar) // Events January 18 - Modern field hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England. ... 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Psychology (ancient Greek: psyche = soul or mind, logos/-ology = study of) is an academic and applied field involving the study of mind and behavior. ... Behaviorism (or behaviourism) is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior is interesting and worthy of scientific research. ...

Born in West Newton, Massachusetts, brother of CalTech physicist Richard Chace Tolman, Edward C. Tolman studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1915. Most of his career was spent at the University of California, Berkeley (from 1918 to 1954), where he taught psychology. West Newton is a village of Newton, Massachusetts. ... State nickname: Bay State Official languages English Capital Boston Largest city Boston Governor Mitt Romney (R) Senators Edward Kennedy (D), John Kerry (D) Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 44th 27,360 km² 25. ... ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. MIT is one of the worlds leading research institutions in science and technology, as well as in numerous other fields, including management, economics, linguistics, political science, and philosophy. ... Doctor of Philosophy, or Ph. ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... 1915 (MCMXV) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (also known as California, Cal, UCB, UC Berkeley, The University of California, or simply Berkeley) is a public coeducational university situated east of the San Francisco Bay in Berkeley, California, overlooking the Golden Gate. ... 1918 (MCMXVIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. ... 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Tolman is best known for his studies of learning in rats using mazes, and he published many experimental articles, of which his paper with Ritchie and Kalish in 1946 was probably the most influential. His major theoretical contributions came in his 1932 book, Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men, and in a series of papers in the Psychological Review, "The determinants of behavior at a choice point" (1938) and "Cognitive maps in rats and men" (1948), and "Principles of performance" (1955). 1932 (MCMXXXII) is a leap year starting on Friday. ... Psychological Review is a highly-acclaimed scientific journal that publishes review articles in the field of psychology. ...

Although Tolman was firmly behaviorist in his methodology, he was not a radical behaviorist like B. F. Skinner. As the title of his 1932 book indicates, he wanted to use behavioral methods to gain an understanding of the mental processes of humans and other animals. In his studies of learning in rats, Tolman sought to demonstrate that animals could learn facts about the world that they could subsequently use in a flexible manner, rather than simply learning automatic responses that were triggered off by environmental stimuli. In the language of the time, Tolman was an "S-S" (stimulus-stimulus), non-reinforcement theorist: he drew on Gestalt psychology to argue that animals could learn the connections between stimuli and did not need any explicit biologically significant event to make learning occur. The rival theory, the much more mechanistic "S-R" (stimulus-response) reinforcement-driven view, was taken up by Clark L. Hull. JON S is a plague on the human race Within that broad approach, there are different emphases. ... Radical behaviorism is a philosophy that underlies the experimental analysis of behavior approach to psychology, developed by B. F. Skinner. ... Burrhus Frederic Skinner Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist and author. ... In operant conditioning, reinforcement is any change in an animals surroundings that (a) occurs after the animal behaves in a given way, (b) seems to make that behavior re-occur more often in the future and (c) that reoccurrence of behavior must be the result of the change. ... Gestalt psychology (also Gestalt theory of the Berlin School) is a theory of mind and brain that proposes that the operational principle of the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies. ... Clark Hull was an important American psychologist. ...

A key paper by Tolman, Ritchie and Kalish in 1946 demonstrated that rats that had explored a maze that contained food while they were not hungry were able to run it correctly on the first trial when they entered it having now been made hungry. However, Hull and his followers were able to produce alternative explanations of Tolman's findings, and the debate between S-S and S-R learning theories became increasingly convoluted and sterile. Skinner's iconoclastic paper of 1950, entitled "Are theories of learning necessary?" persuaded many psychologists interested in animal learning that it was more productive to focus on the behavior itself rather than using it to make hypotheses about mental states. The influence of Tolman's ideas declined rapidly in the later 1950s and 1960s. However, his achievements had been considerable. His 1938 and 1955 papers, produced to answer Hull's charge that he left the rat "buried in thought" in the maze, unable to respond, anticipated and prepared the ground for much later work in cognitive psychology, as psychologists began to discover and apply decision theory - a stream of work that was recognised by the award of a Nobel prize to Daniel Kahneman in 2002. And his 1948 paper introduced the concept of a cognitive map, which has found extensive application in almost every field of psychology, frequently among scientists who have no idea that they are using ideas first formulated to explain the behavior of rats in mazes. // Events and trends This map shows two essential global spheres during the Cold War in 1959. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive. ... Cognitive psychology is the psychological science which studies cognition, the mental processes that are hypothesised to underlie behavior. ... Decision making is the cognitive process of selecting a course of action from among multiple alternatives. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Daniel Kahneman Daniel Kahneman (born March 5, 1934 in Tel Aviv, in the then British Mandate of Palestine, now in Israel), is a key pioneer and theorist of behavioral finance, which integrates economics and cognitive science to explain seemingly irrational risk management behavior in human beings. ... 2002 (MMII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Cognitive Maps, Mental Maps, Mind Maps, Cognitive Models, or Mental Models are a type of mental processing, or cognition, composed of a series of psychological transformations by which an individual can acquire, code, store, recall, and decode information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday or...

Furthermore, when in the last quarter of the twentieth century animal psychologists took a cue from the success of human cognitive psychology, and began to renew the study of animal cognition, many of them turned to Tolman's ideas and to his maze techniques. Of the three great figures of animal psychology of the middle twentieth century, Tolman, Hull and Skinner, it can reasonably be claimed that it is Tolman's legacy that is currently the liveliest, certainly in terms of academic research. (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar (often from (1900 to 1999 in common usage). ... Animal cognition is the title given to a modern approach to the mental capacities of animals. ...

Tolman was much concerned that psychology should be applied to try and solve human problems, and in addition to his technical publications, he wrote a book called Drives Toward War. He was one of the senior professors whom the University of California sought to dismiss in the McCarthyite era of the early 1950s, because he refused to sign a loyalty oath - not because of any lack of felt loyalty to the United States but because it infringed on academic freedom. Tolman was a leader of the resistance of the oath, and when the Regents of the University of California sought to fire him, he sued. The resulting court case, Tolman v. Underhill, led to the California Supreme Court in 1955 overturning the oath and forcing the reinstatement of all those who had refused to sign it. In 1963, at the insistence of the then President of the University of California Clark Kerr, the University named its newly constructed Education and Psychology faculty building at Berkeley "Tolman Hall" in his honour; his widow was present at the dedication ceremony. His portrait hangs in the entrance hall of the building. The University of California (UC) is a public university system within the State of California. ... McCarthyism took place during a period of intense suspicion in the United States primarily from 1950 to 1954, when the U.S. government was actively countering American Communist Party subversion, its leadership, and others suspected of being Communists or Communist sympathizers. ... // Events and trends This map shows two essential global spheres during the Cold War in 1959. ... Academic freedom is the freedom of teachers, students, and academic institutions to pursue knowledge wherever it may lead, without undue or unreasonable interference. ... The Regents of the University of California make up the governing board of the University of California. ... In the United States, the state supreme court (known by other names in some states) is usually the highest state court in the state court system. ... 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Clark Kerr (May 17, 1911 – December 1, 2003) was the first Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley (1952–1958) and the 12th President of the University of California (1958–1967). ...

External links

• Biography on Edward Tolman
• Account of Tolman's "Sign Learning" theory from the Theory Into Practice database, compiled by Greg Kearsley
• History of Tolman Hall

References

• Skinner, B. F. (1950). Are theories of learning necessary? Psychological Review, 57, 193-216.
• Tolman, E. C. (1932). Purposive behavior in animals and men. New York: Century.
• Tolman, E. C. (1938). The determinants of behavior at a choice point. Psychological Review, 45, 1-41.
• Tolman, E. C. (1942). Drives towards war. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
• Tolman, E. C. (1948). Cognitive maps in rats and men. Psychological Review, 55, 189-208.
• Tolman, E. C. (1955). Principles of performance. Psychological Review, 62, 315-326.
• Tolman, E. C., Ritchie, B. F., & Kalish, D. (1946). Studies in spatial learning: II. Place learning versus response learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 37, 385-392.