Edward Tolman: biography and study of cognitive maps

We review the life and work of this dissident of classical behaviorism and precedent of cognitivism.

Edward C. Tolman was the initiator of propositional behaviorism and a key figure in the introduction of cognitive variables in cognitive mapping. and a key figure in the introduction of cognitive variables in behavioral models.

Although the study of cognitive maps is Tolman's best-known contribution, the theory of this author is much more important than that of cognitive mapping.s theory is much broader and was a real turning point in scientific psychology.

Biography of Edward Tolman

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Edward Chace Tolman was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1886. Although his father wanted him to continue the family business, Tolman decided to study electrochemistry; however, after reading William James he discovered his vocation for philosophy and psychology, the discipline to which he would eventually devote himself.

He graduated from Harvard with a degree in psychology and philosophy.. Shortly thereafter he moved to Germany to continue his education on his way to a doctorate. There he studied with Kurt Koffka; through him he became familiar with Gestalt psychology, which analyzed perception by focusing on the overall experience rather than on individual elements.

Back at Harvard, Tolman researched nonsense syllable learning under Hugo Münsterberg, a pioneer of applied and organizational psychology. He earned his Ph.D. with a dissertation on retroactive inhibition.a phenomenon that consists in the interference of new material in the retrieval of previously learned memories.

After being expelled from Northwestern University, where he worked as a teacher for three years, for publicly opposing the American intervention in World War I, Tolman began teaching at the University of Berkeley in California. There he spent the rest of his career, from 1918 until his death in 1959.

Theoretical contributions to psychology

Tolman was one of the first authors to study cognitive processes from the cognitive processes within the framework of behaviorism; although he relied on the methodologyAlthough based on behaviorist methodology, he wanted to demonstrate that animals could learn information about the world and use it in a flexible way, and not only automatic responses to specific environmental stimuli.

Tolman conceptualized cognitions and other mental contents (expectations, goals...) as intervening variables that mediate between stimulus and response. The organism is not understood as passive, in the manner of classical behaviorism, but as actively managing information.

This author was particularly interested in the intentional aspect of behavior, i.e., in goal-oriented behavior. his proposals are categorized as "propositional behaviorism"..

E-E and E-R learning models

In the middle of the 20th century there was a deep debate within the behaviorist orientation about the nature of conditioning and the role of reinforcement. Thus, the Stimulus-Response (S-R) model, personified in authors such as Thorndike, Guthrie or Hull, and the Stimulus-Stimulus (S-S) paradigm, of which Tolman was the most important representative, were opposed.

According to the E-E model, learning is produced by the association between a conditioned stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus, which evokes the same conditioned response in the presence of reinforcement; on the other hand, from the E-R perspective, it was argued that learning consists of the association between a conditioned stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus, which evokes the same conditioned response in the presence of reinforcement. association between a conditioned stimulus and a conditioned response..

Thus, Tolman and related authors considered that learning depends on the subject detecting the relationship between two stimuli, which will allow him to obtain a reward or avoid a punishment, as opposed to the representatives of the E-R model, who defined learning as the acquisition of a response conditioned to the appearance of a previously unconditioned stimulus.

The E-R paradigm proposed a mechanistic and passive vision of the behavior of living beings, while the E-E model affirmed that the role of the learner is active, since it implies a component of voluntary cognitive processing with a determined goal. voluntary cognitive processing, with a determined goal..

Experiments on latent learning

Hugh Blodgett had studied latent learning (which does not manifest itself as an immediately observable response) through experiments with rats and mazes. Tolman developed his famous proposal on cognitive maps and much of the rest of his work from this concept and Blodgett's work.

In Tolman's initial experiment three groups of rats were trained to run through a maze. In the control group, the animals obtained food (reinforcement) when they reached the end; in contrast, the rats in the first experimental group only obtained the reward from the seventh day of training, and those in the second experimental group from the third day.

Tolman found that the error rate of the rats in the control group declined from the first day, whereas those in the experimental groups declined sharply from the introduction of food. These results suggested that the rats learned the route in all cases, but only reached the end of the maze if they expected to get reinforcement.

Thus, this author theorized that the execution of a behavior depends on the expectation of obtaining reinforcement****obut that the learning of such behavior can nevertheless occur without the need for a reinforcement process.

The study of cognitive maps

Tolman proposed the concept of cognitive maps to explain the results of his and Blodgett's experiments. According to this hypothesis the rats constructed mental representations of the maze during training sessions without during training sessions without the need for reinforcement, and therefore knew how to reach the goal when it made sense.

The same would be true for people during everyday lifeWhen we repeat a route frequently, we learn the location of a large number of buildings and places; however, we will only go to them if it is necessary to reach a particular goal.

To demonstrate the existence of cognitive maps, Tolman did another experiment similar to the previous one, but in which after the rats learned the route through the maze, the maze was filled with water. Despite this, the animals still managed to reach the place where they knew they would find food.

Thus he confirmed that the rats did not learn to execute a chain of muscular movements, as the theoristsas advocated by the theorists of the E-R paradigm, but that cognitive, or at least unobservable, variables were necessary to explain the learning they had acquired, and the response used to reach the goal could vary.