1. Cognitive Maps Edward C. Tolman (1948)
Source: Classics in the History of Psychology
Tolman makes some leaps at the end of the article that require some thought. Follow this progression and hopefully you will see the connections between Tolman’s hypothesis regarding ‘mediation’ of stimulus and response and the connection he makes to human behavior based on one element of his thesis.

2. Who is Tolman?
First of all he is, or at least considers himself a behaviorist.
In the article he mentions two schools of thought regarding behaviorism that are worth mentioning.
First the school of animal psychologists that believe behavior is stimulus and response.
Second, the field theorists who believe a map is formed.
Tolman always considered himself a behaviorist however he could not accept the premise that all behavior was simply stimulus and response. He believed that learning did not always require and immediate change in behavior.
Tolman refers to various schools of thought on Behaviorism that impact the views of animal and human behavior. (In most cases they were referring to animal behavior not human)
School #1 - The school of animal psychologists which believes that the maze behavior of rats is a matter of mere simple stimulus-response connections. Learning according to them, is the strengthening of some of the connections and the weakening of others. According to this stimulus-response school the rat in progressing down the maze is helplessly responding to a succession of external stimuli-sights, sounds, smells, pressures, etc forcing the behavior.The rat’s central nervous system could be likened to a complex telephone switchboard.

3. Behaviorist Schools
School number 1 believes that stimulus and response is the sole cause of behavior
They would believe that the “rat’s” central nervous system acts like a switchboard.
Learning according to this group consists in the respective strengthening and weakening of the various connections. Those connections which result in the animal’s going down the true path become relatively more open to the passage of nervous impulses, whereas those which lead him into the blinds become relatively less open.
There is a subgroup which holds that the mere mechanics involved in the running of a maze is such that the crucial stimuli from the maze get presented simultaneously with the correct responses more frequently than they do with any of the incorrect responses. (ratio?) Greater frequency creates stronger neural connections.
There is a second subgroup that holds that the reason the appropriate connections get strengthened is rather the fact that the responses resulting from the correct connections are followed more closely in time by need reductions. The rat gets food and so the need is reduced. In this case it is as if the central mechanism is saying to the operator - maintain that connections because it was good but that other connection can be dropped because it just didn’t cut it.

4. Behaviorist Schools
School number 2, Tolman’s position believes that the rats create a ‘cognitive map’ of the challenge.
This second main school of behaviorists is where Tolman can be placed. This group may be called field theorists. Field theorists believe that in the course of learning something like a map of the environment gets established in the rat’s brain. (This is true of humans as well) They agree that the rat in running a maze is exposed to stimuli and is finally led as a result of these stimuli to the responses which actually occur. However, during the intervening time the brain processes are more complicated and that they occur outside the stimulus-response limitation. They admit that the rat is bombarded with stimuli but that the nervous system is more selective in what it responds to at any point in time.
Secondly, they assert that the central office (the operator) is itself is more like a map control room than an old-fashioned telephone. (cognitive maps) The current example might be the digital links between soldiers in the field and the command center.
Thirdly, the maps Tolman believes are either narrow and strip-like or relatively broad and comprehensive.

5. A Narrow or Strip-like Map
Please keep in mind this is simply an illustration of a narrow map. Let’s discuss what narrow maps could mean to both rats and people.

6. A Broad Map
Also, please keep in mind this is simply an illustration of a relatively broad map.

7. The Difference
The difference between the narrow cognitive map and the broader cognitive map will only become apparent when there is a new task presented or a change in the old task.

8. Review Behaviorist Stimulus / Response Field theorists.
Tolman always considered himself to be part of the ____ school.
The radical behaviorist believes that behavior is altered through ____.
Tolman refers to two basic schools of behaviorism. He places himself in the ____ ____ group.
Behaviorist
Stimulus / Response
Field theorists.

9. Types of Experiments ‘latent learning’
‘vicarious trial and error’ - VTE
‘searching for the stimulus’
‘hypothesis’
‘spatial orientation’

10. Latent Learning
Blodgett in 1929 runs rats through the 6 unit alley maze.
1 Control Group-one trial per day with food at the goal box.
2 Experimental Groups -one trial per day no food for 3 or 6 days depending on group.
Anthropomorphically interpreting the results you could say, and Tolman does, Blodgett calls it ‘latent’ learning because it did not manifest itself until after the reward had been presented.

11. Latent Learning Replicated
Tolman and Honzik repeated the experiment with 14-unit T mazes
Spence and Lippitt at University of Iowa did one of the best experiments with a simple Y maze.
Tolman and Honzik replicate the initial latent learning experiment. The use a 14-unit T-maze with a larger group of animals. The resulting curves are shown in Fig. 6. Two control groups - one that never found food in the maze (HNR) and one that found it throughout (HR) The experimental group (HNR-R) found food at the end of the maze from the 11th day on with a similar sudden drop in errors.
Spence and Lippitt at University of Iowa used a simply Y maze with two goal boxes. One contained Water and the other contained food. During the training period the rats were run satiated before each trial. They were willing to run because after each run they were taken out of the maze and put into a living cage (reinforcement by companionship) Four trials per day for seven days. Two trials to the right and two to the left. Following that they were divided into two subgroups one made hungry and the other thirsty. Their results showed that despite the fact that the earlier training was done without the need for reward (reinforcement) they acquired a cognitive map of the correct arms and received their goal.

12. Vicarious Trial and Error - VTE
Muenzinger at University of Colorado noticed there is a behavior by rats presented with a problem.
Given a choice the rats will look back and forth in what appears to be an attempt to decide.

13. Searching for the Stimulus
Bradford Hudson questions if one trial is enough.
Apparatus presents the stimulus
An Electric Shock then occurs creating the response.
Hudson notice that the animals, anthropomorphically speaking, often seemed to look around after the shock to see what it was that had hit them. I hypothesized that if the stimulus was removed or covered immediately the animals would not associate the shock with the object. The animals indeed did learn what object to avoid. This calls into question the passive model of stimulus and response.

14. Hypothesis
I. Krechevsky developed a four-compartment discrimination box.(above)
The experimenter determines what will happen at each choice point.
Krech found that the rats went through systematic choices to solve the problem.
Krech placed the four-compartment discrimination box in front of the rats and then could select the choices available. The maze could be set up so that at the choice point for each of the rats Krech could either light the path or darken the path, he could have it direct them left or right or various combinations of these. In total they had 40 possible choices during 10 runs each day.
The rats would make systematic choices (example: they would try all right turns then try all left turns, then choose all dark doors and then all light doors. They would continue these choices until the problems was solved. “These relatively persistent, and well-above-chance systematic types of choice Krech called “hypotheses”
Tolman would call these trials the attempt to develop a cognitive map.
We could look at these as the difference between Algorithm and Heuristic.

15. Spatial Orientation Experiments
Carl Lashley who had done experiments with rats noticed that some of his rats took a short cut.

16. Spatial Orientation
The rats most often will choose 6 as their second choice if 1 is blocked.
This indicates that the rats have a mental picture of the direction and location of the food.
This experiment seems to confirm the hypothesis that a cognitive map is stored somewhere allowing the subject to make choices leading to the “goal”

17. Review
The difference between strip maps (narrow) and comprehensive maps most often only presents itself _____.
“latent learning” brings into question the behaviorist concepts of ______.
when a new task or a change in task is presented.
contiguity

18. Review part deux Explain what VTE means.
Now that you have defined VTE explain how you would identify it.
Once learning is strengthened what happens to VTE?
Vicarious trial and error.
The subject (rats) are see looking back and forth
VTE diminishes

19. And on it goes…Searching for the Stimulus
Hudson, in his PhD. Dissertation raised the question of could a single trial cause an avoidance reaction.
How did he test this question?
What did he find?
He tested the question by setting up an apparatus where the subject (rats) were shocked upon the presentation.
It could occur in one presentation.

20. Can rats develop a “hypothesis”?
Krech tested rats in a four compartment discrimination box.
What evidence, anthropomorphically speaking, did he observe that indicated rats form a hypothesis?
In Krech’s experiments the rats would try systematic choices to solve the problem.
Is this algorithmically or heuristically formed?
Algorithm - a formulaic response to a problem.
Heuristic - a rule of thumb or hypothesis testing form of problem solving.

21. Tolman’s Leap
Tolman is suggesting that there are three ‘dynamism’ that influence behavior.
Regression - a term used for cases in which an individual in the face of a difficult problem will behave in a “childish fashion”
Fixation - undue persistence in light of earlier maps.
“displacement of aggression onto out groups” - the tendency to stay in a particular social group and the rejection of outside groups.