ABSTRACT
Early psychological theories of learning had as their underlying theme the celebrated doctrine of Associationism. Bain's approach was through a study of the physical basis of mind and he propounded an Associationism based on the most detailed and elaborated physiological findings. The sense organs, sensory and motor nerves, brains and muscles were all considered in detail. Another important influence on the study of learning in the late nineteenth century consisted of Ebbinghaus's memory experiments which were carried out at Breslau in the 1880's. The psychology of learning was influenced by advances in neurological and physiological studies which occurred in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The Gestalt movement was strongly opposed to attempts to analyse consciousness into what was thought to be its constituent elements, as well as to other descriptions of mind based on stimulus-response relationships.
