Edward Lee Thorndike Over in America, things were happening as well.

Edward Lee Thorndike, although technically a functionalist, was setting the stage for an American version of Russian behaviorism. Thorndike (1874-1949) got his bachelors degree from Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1895 and his masters from Harvard in 1897. While there he took a class from William James and they became fast friends. He received a fellowship at Columbia, and got his PhD in 1898. He stayed to teach at Columbia until he retired in 1940. He will always be remembered for his cats and his poorly constructed puzzleboxes. These boxes had escape mechanisms of various complexities that required that the cats do several behaviors in sequence. From this research, he concluded that there were two laws of learning: 1. The law of exercise, which is basically the same as Aristotles law of frequency. The more often an association (or neural connection) is used, the stronger the connection. Naturally, the less it is used, the weaker the connection. These two were referred to as the law of use and disuse respectively. 2. The law of effect. When an association is followed by a satisfying state of affairs, the connection is strengthened. And, likewise, when an association is followed by an unsatisfying state of affairs, it is weakened. Except for the mentalistic language (satisfying is not behavioral!), it is the same thing as Skinners operant conditioning. In 1929, his research led him to abandon all of the above except what we would now call reinforcement (the first half of law 2). He is also known for his study of transfer of training. It was believed back then (and is still often believed) that studying difficult subjects -- even if you would never use them -- was good for you because it strengthened your mind, sort of like exercise strengthens your muscles. It was used back then to justify making kids learn Latin, just like it is used today to justify making kids learn calculus. He found, however, that it was only the similarity of the second subject to the first that leads to improved learning in the second subject. So Latin may help you learn Italian, or algebra may help you learn calculus, but Latin wont help you learn calculus, or the other way around.

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/beh.html