The latent learning debate is particularly interesting for this series!
As It turns out, the "common wisdom" version of the history as being taught to most psychology undergrads is somewhat apocryphal. And in fact this is [another] example that many such big scientific debates in psychology & neuroscience are/were never "settled" -- people just stopped caring and moved on to the next question, or next methodology, or whatever.
> The ensuing debate was propelled by the experimental work of the preeminent learning psychologists of the time, and the debate lasted for 30 years.
> Experimenters and their doctoral students from each side of the debate devised increasingly sophisticated research to answer the theoretical questions that arose from each previous generation > of experiments.
> Yet notwithstanding the experimental, methodological, and theoretical creativity of many of the key figures in the history of psychology, by the mid-1960s many psychologists considered the matter of latent learning to be dead (Goldstein, Krantz, & Rains, 1965).
> However, the end of an era of inspired research productivity and sharp theoretical debate had come to an end not because one theory prevailed over all others.
> Rather, as Thistlethwaite’s (1951) review of 30 years of latent learning amply demonstrated, it was because the issues that arose out of the extensive latent learning experimentation remained unsettled, and no resolution was thought to be forthcoming.
> Thus, what had begun as a lively, empirically based debate over fundamental issues in learning ultimately ended in a stalemate.
[I wanted to write a post on that for some time, but I need to find a way to re-start my dead substack...]
I don't know whether this also jumped out at you, but there is a bit of a conflict between Meehl's discussion of the effect the handling of rats had on the experimental outcome and his view that the interaction between the measurement device and the thing being measured does not matter as much in psychology as it does in physics.
The latent learning debate is particularly interesting for this series!
As It turns out, the "common wisdom" version of the history as being taught to most psychology undergrads is somewhat apocryphal. And in fact this is [another] example that many such big scientific debates in psychology & neuroscience are/were never "settled" -- people just stopped caring and moved on to the next question, or next methodology, or whatever.
Here's an excerpt from an interesting historical/sociological review (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03392130; which also refers to some of Meehl's works on the topic):
> The ensuing debate was propelled by the experimental work of the preeminent learning psychologists of the time, and the debate lasted for 30 years.
> Experimenters and their doctoral students from each side of the debate devised increasingly sophisticated research to answer the theoretical questions that arose from each previous generation > of experiments.
> Yet notwithstanding the experimental, methodological, and theoretical creativity of many of the key figures in the history of psychology, by the mid-1960s many psychologists considered the matter of latent learning to be dead (Goldstein, Krantz, & Rains, 1965).
> However, the end of an era of inspired research productivity and sharp theoretical debate had come to an end not because one theory prevailed over all others.
> Rather, as Thistlethwaite’s (1951) review of 30 years of latent learning amply demonstrated, it was because the issues that arose out of the extensive latent learning experimentation remained unsettled, and no resolution was thought to be forthcoming.
> Thus, what had begun as a lively, empirically based debate over fundamental issues in learning ultimately ended in a stalemate.
[I wanted to write a post on that for some time, but I need to find a way to re-start my dead substack...]
The link doesn't work for me, so please resend. And definitely restart your substack while we're at it.
And yes, I think "problem abandonment" is a repeated pattern in research.
Strange, the link seems to be working for me.
Here's a link to the pubmed version
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2223150/
Jensen, R. Behaviorism, latent learning, and cognitive maps: Needed revisions in introductory psychology textbooks. BEHAV ANALYST 29, 187–209 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03392130
I don't know whether this also jumped out at you, but there is a bit of a conflict between Meehl's discussion of the effect the handling of rats had on the experimental outcome and his view that the interaction between the measurement device and the thing being measured does not matter as much in psychology as it does in physics.
Replication, replication, replication