ABSTRACT
With the admittedly important exception of Pavlov – on whom we shall comment briefly in a moment – the psychology of learning has not been a product of the European scientific tradition. It has been linked in the first half of the twentieth century with the behaviourist school of thought, and therefore it has been developed mainly in the United States. Chapters on learning in European textbooks, when they occurred, reviewed material from American laboratories. Experts in the field were very few on the Continent, and usually their contribution consisted in importing some experimental or theoretical aspect(s) of the behaviourist production. Interestingly enough, they did not establish a research group that would significantly extend and perpetuate their own work. Maybe they did not succeed in – or they simply did not really want to achieve – that goal. In any event, European psychology of learning remained essentially in the hands of individuals. There has been no school to be compared with the Hullian or Skinnerian groups, and it has remained so until today. The situation is somewhat different in the UK, where a number of individuals and groups were active in the last thirty years or so, not only contributing important empirical studies, but major theoretical work (e.g. Mackintosh 1974).
