"The mind is man's connection."
　　Edward L. Thorndike was born in Williamsburg, MA in 1874. He studied at Wesleyan University and Harvard, and became professor at Teachers College, Columbia (1904-40), where he worked on educational psychology and the psychology of animal learning. He did pioneer work not only in learning theory but also in education practices, verbal behavior, comparative psychology, intelligence testing and the application of quantitative measures to sociopsychological problem. His works include Psychology of Learning (1914) and The Measurement of Intelligence (1926).
　　Edward L. Thorndike's Theory:
　　The learning theory of Thorndike represents the original S-R framework of behavioral psychology: Learning is the result of associations forming between stimuli and responses. Such associations or "habits" become strengthened or weakened by the nature and frequency of the S-R pairings. The paradigm for S-R theory was trial and error learning in which certain responses come to dominate others due to rewards. The classic example of Thorndike's S-R theory was a cat learning to escape from a "puzzle box" by pressing a lever inside the box. After much trial and error behavior, the cat learns to associate pressing the lever (S) with opening the door (R). This S-R connection is established because it results in a satisfying state of affairs (escape from the box). The law of exercise specifies that the connection was established because the S-R pairing occurred many times (the law of effect) and was rewarded (law of effect) as well as forming a single sequence (law of readiness). As a result of studying animal intelligence, he formulated his famous "laws of learning".
　　Law of effect
　　This law states that the strength of a connection is influenced by the consequences of a response. Before 1930, Thorndike believed that pleasurable consequences strengthened a connection and annoying consequences weakened a connection. After 1930, however, he believed the only pleasurable consequences had an effect on the strength of a connection.
　　Law of exercise
　　This law states that the strength of a connection is determined by how often the connection is used. It contains two portions: law of use-the strength of a connection increases when the connection is used; law of disuse-the strength of a connection diminishes when the connection is not used.
　　Law of readiness
　　This stated that when an organism is ready to act it's reinforcing for it to do so and annoying for it to do so. Also, when an organism is not ready to act, forcing it to act will be annoying to it.
　　Spread of effect
　　Rewards affect not only the connection that produced them but temporally adjacent connections as well.