THEORIES OF LEARNING: Page 50

Hull's students, Dollard and Miller, carrying on the idea that human behavior is learned, say that maladjustment is a manifestation of inadequate learning. For which we can no doubt substitute inadequate conditioning. In this connection, we are reminded again of Huxley's Brave New World and the responsibilities of the promoters of sleep-study and sleep therapy. If the behaviorists are right, the speculation arises that perhaps all of humanity could be beautifully adjusted into an appalling uniformity. Norbert Wiener, author of Cybernetics, attempts to relate human beings' learning mechanisms to the workings of electronic calculators, speaking of the feedback principle, which "means that behavior is scanned for its result, and, that the success or failure of this result modifies future behavior." This implies an integrating process measuring success and failure which will decide the response. B. F. Skinner (1932) observed behavior and examined habit-building in order to find laws of behavior. The strength of the reflex was his basis of measurement. Although he did not use equations, he too devised numerous laws, including one measuring a threshold of stimulus intensity below which there is no response; one which indicates a latent period between stimulus and response varying with the intensity of the stimulus; one which describes responses persisting after the stimulus has ended, and one which states a similar effect when a stimulus is prolonged as when the intensity of the stimulus is increased. These are the static laws. He also lists dynamic laws of reflex strength: the law of the