Problems and Approaches in the Comparative Psychology of Learning

Abstract

Comparative psychology originated during the 19th Century because of the influence of evolutionary theory and its application to the human species. It was to provide support for one of Darwin's central hypothesis: psychological continuity between species. After a period of rapid development, it concentrated in few species, an almost exclusive use of laboratory situations as analítical tools, an emphasis on proximal causes, and the exclusive  influence of associationism in animal learning theory. During the sixties, comparative psychology was criticized on two grounds: 1) that the traditional anagenetic basis of comparative research had no basis in evolutionary biology; 2) that traditional principIes of learning were not general (e.g., acquired food aversions in rodents; song-Iearning in birds). A critical review of both issues is presented; the conclusion is that both fundamen­tal approaches (anagenesis and cladogenesis) to the comparative study of learning point to relatively independent problems and are, therefore, compelmentary rather than com­peting approaches.