Edwin Guthrie argued that learning occurs as a gradual process because
A) learning that a particular response leads to a particular outcome is more difficult than learning a stimulus-stimulus association.
B) only a small set of stimulus elements gets connected to the response on each trial.
C) learning to perform a response correctly takes practice, since the subject inevitably gets confused or has difficulty producing a series of behaviors in the correct sequence.
D) competing evolutionary tendencies must be overcome before a subject can learn to produce the arbitrary instrumental response the researcher has designated.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Guthrie proposed that learning occurs in a single trial without the need for repetition or reinforcement, but he acknowledged that only a small subset of the total stimulus situation gets associated with the response at any one time. This means that learning is seen as a gradual process because it involves the accumulation of various stimulus-response connections over time, rather than because the learning itself inherently requires multiple repetitions.

Edwin Guthrie Argued That Learning Occurs as a Gradual Process