ABSTRACT
Imagine you were Eleanor Jack Gibson arriving in New Haven in 1934 to undertake graduate study in psychology at Yale. You had been an honors student at Smith College, received your BA, and then gone on for a MA at Smith. Your undergraduate study led you to a strong interest in animal psychology. So you went to Yale with the goal of working with the well-known comparative psychologist, Robert Yerkes. You went to his office to introduce yourself, tell him of your plan, and ask him to take you on as an advisee. He told you abruptly that he accepted no women to work in his laboratory. That might have been an overwhelming encounter, but you had the perseverance to investigate other possibilities, including listening to advice from a number of more advanced graduate students. You decided to approach Clark Hull, another noted scholar at Yale. His area of research involved development of a systemic approach to learning. Eleanor Gibson with granddaughter, 1979. (Courtesy of David Rosenberg. With permission.) https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203806135/53033083-3e02-48c0-88bf-b3501014f267/content/fig14_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
