Edwin Ray Guthrie - Nonreinforcement

Nonreinforcement

Guthrie did not feel reinforcement had an effect on learning. He did not think reinforcement is important for a stimulus response association because it occurs after the association had previously been made (Clarke, 2005). Guthrie also believed punishment was effective not by how painful it was but by whether it elicited a behavior that was incompatible with the undesirable behavior. He felt extinction was the result of the process of establishing new responses to old stimuli (Encyclopedia of Psychology, 2001).