CONTIGUITY THEORY

Edwin Ray Guthrie (1886-1959)

 Edwin Ray Guthrie (1886-1959), was a philosopher, mathematician,
and later became a behavior psychologist. Guthrie is best known for
his one trial theory, nonreinforcement, and contiguity learning. One
word that could describe Guthrie is “simple." His approach to
learning and theories was simple. His simplistic nature was carried
into his teachings where he took great pride in working with and
teaching students, especially undergraduate students (Clark, 2005).
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 Guthrie received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a masters
degree in philosophy from the University of Nebraska. He got his
Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania (1912). He
taught high school math until he was offered a position as a
philosophy professor at the University of Washington (1914). One of
Guthrie’s influences was his professor in college, Harry Kirke Wolfe,
who was one of Wilhelm Wundt’s Ph.D. students. In 1919 Guthrie
changed from philosophy to the department of psychology. He later
became the dean of the graduate school in 1943 and president of the
American Psychological Association (1945) (Clark, 2005).
 A stimulus or combination of stimuli that is
followed by a particular response will, upon its
reoccurrence tend to be followed by the same
response again. Thus, S-R connections gain its full
strength on one-trail (Ormrod, 1999) or on the
first pairing of the S-R connection: “contiguity,
and not frequency!” (UCONN Department of
Psychology, 2006). According to Guthrie
repetitions neither strengthen nor weaken the
connection already made.
 According to Guthrie:
 1. Reward and punishment play NO significant
role in learning: This is because the reward and
punishment are occurring after the association
between stimulus and response has been made. 
"According to this position what arises is a
principle called 'postremity' which says we
always learn the last thing we do in response to a
specific stimulus situation" (Brooks, 2006).
 Guthrie's approach, according to Cech (1998), is
that "we ought to look at what individual animals
do, and not just at what the group as a whole
does: averaged learning may not represent the
type of learning found with individuals."
According to Cech (1998) since Guthrie’s writings
are ambiguous, one of his students, Voeks, formalized
them into three principles:
 One Trial Learning

 “A Stimulus pattern gains its full associative

strength on the occasion of its first pairing with a
response” –Guthrie
 Learning is not dependent on reinforcement
because it comes after the association has
occurred between the stimulus and the response.
 The Recency Principle
 The last action done in the presence of a stimuli
will tend to be done again if the same
circumstances are repeated. The time relation
between the substitute stimulus and the response
is the important factor. When similar
circumstances are presented, the more recent
response will prevail. The S-R connections tend
to grow weaker with longer time intervals.
 Movement-Produced
Stimuli
 After a response has been initiated by an external
stimulus, the body itself can produce the stimulus
for the next response, and that response can
furnish the stimulus for the next one, and so on.
• Guthrie also based his beliefs on Watson's law of
recency (the idea that an organism will respond to a
stimulus in the same way that it responded on the
most recent previous encounter with that stimulus)
as being critical to learning (Ormrod, 1999).
According to Ormrod (1999) this idea of recency
implies that habits, once formed, are difficiult to
break (leading an individual to make a new response
to the same old stimulus).
Thus, Guthrie proposed three techniques
for breaking habits (Ormrod, 1999):
 1. Exhaustion Method: Exhaustion
Method/Fatigue Method
 Continue to present the stimulus until the
individual is too tired to respond in the habitual
way or too tired to produce the old response. At
this point, a new response will occur and a new
S-R habit will form or the animal will do nothing.
 Performing an act until the stimuli is no longer
enjoyable.
 2. Threshold Method
 Present the stimulus so faintly that the individual
does not respond to it in the habitual manner.
Then, increase the intensity of the stimulus
gradually that the individual continues NOT to
respond to it.
 Introducing the stimulus that is weak, then
gradually increasing its intensity.
 3. Incompatible Response
Method
 Present the stimulus when the habitual response
cannot occur and when an opposite, or
incompatible, response will occur.
 The stimuli for the undesired response are
presented along with other stimuli that produce a
response incompatible with the undesired
response.
 Examples:
 A cat learned to repeat the same sequence of
movement associated with the preceding escape
from the box, but improvement does take place.
 A girl use to always throw her clothes around after
coming back home from school. Even after
repeated admonishment from her parents. One day
her mother told her to go out of the house, reenter
and put the clothes in order. The throwing on the
floor habit disappeared and the more recent habit of
cleaning-up response became a new habit for the
girl (Ormrod, 1999).
Thank you and have a nice day!
 One of your instructors glares at you as she hands
back the exam that she has just corrected. You
discover that you have gotten a D - on the exam,
and you get an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of
your stomach. The next time your instructor
glares at you, the same uncomfortable feeling
returns (Ormrod, 1998).
 Another instructor smiles and calls on you
everytime you raise your hand. Although you are
fairly quiet in your oter classes, you find yourself
raising yourhand and speaking up more and more
frequentlyin this one (Ormrod, 1998).