ABSTRACT
Learning has three principal effects on the adaptive process: on the drives; on the goals; and on the means of getting from drive to goal. The organic foundations of learning are more or less determined by heredity and by prenatal and early postnatal maturation. Trial-and-error learning brings about a simplification and organization of the movements between drive and goal; there is also a reduction, to a smaller and more partial character, of the cue or initial stimulus that starts the activity. The internal functions make possible an increased ability to respond to more and more distant goals, to develop values and ideals which reach far beyond the mere physiological imperatives with which all begins the life. The chapter concludes that that the development from infancy to maturity is marked by an extension of drives and goals and of the means of moving from the former to the latter and in this change, learning plays the basic part.
