ABSTRACT
Learning theorists have always had difficulty in agreeing among themselves whether there is just one principle of learning or whether there might be at least two principles, the other usually being the law of effect, as propounded by Thorndike. Thorndike's law of effect says that the effects or results of the cats' responses, in pulling strings or pressing latches which opened the door to their problem box, gradually stamped in a connection between the stimuli of being in the box and the movements required to pull the strings and press the latches. Individual cats showed even more striking improvements in speed of making the releasing response from one trial to the next, but some animals made their biggest improvement after the first trial, some after the second and some after the third. The strengthening effects of intermittent reinforcement are apparent in many circumstances, and are said to be readily visible in human gambling.
