Kenneth Spence

Kenneth Wartinbee Spence (May 6, 1907 — January 12, 1967) was an American psychologist, known for his theoretical and experimental research on learning. Considered one of early neo-behaviorists, Spence was Clark L. Hull's most famous student and later collaborator. He was the coauthor of Hull-Spence hypothesis. Under Spence's leadership, University of Iowa became a major center of theoretical psychology in the United States. The research of Spence was characterized by a concern with refining Hull's theory as well as applying those principles to varieties of behavioral processes, including an analysis of anxiety. His major contribution to the theoretical basis of Hullian behaviorism was his explanation of discrimination learning. Spence held that gradients of excitatory potential and inhibitory potential were generated around "stimulus values" that are reinforced and not reinforced, respectively, during discrimination learning.

Life

Kenneth W. Spence was born on May 6, 1907 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Mary E. Wartinbee and William James Spence, an electrical engineer. His family moved to Montreal, Canada when Spence was a child, and he grew up there. He attended the West Hill High School and later McGill University in Montreal. At the university he injured his back playing sports and as part of his therapy went on to live with his grandmother in LaCross, Wisconsin.

Spence graduated from LaCross Teachers College, majoring in physical education. At the same time he married Isabel Temte, with whom he had two children.

Spence returned to Canada in the late 1920s to complete his degree at McGill University. He switched his major to psychology, receiving his B.A. in 1929 and a master's degree in 1930. After that, Spence went to Yale University to become a research assistant in the laboratory of Robert M. Yerkes. Spence received his Ph.D. in 1933 with a dissertation on visual acuity in the chimpanzee, supervised by Yerkes. During his time at Yale, Spence met Clark L. Hull with whom he would remain associated for the next two decades.

After receiving his degree, Spence went to Orange Park, Florida on a National Research Council fellowship to the Yale Laboratories of Primate Biology. He stayed there for four years, studying discrimination learning in the chimpanzee. This study eventually became his seminal work, providing him national fame.

In 1937, Spence became assistant professor at the University of Virginia, staying in that position for only a year. In 1938, he left for the State University of Iowa (now University of Iowa), where he stayed next twenty-six years. From 1942 he served as the head of the Department of Psychology, where he replaced late John A. McGeoch. Under his leadership and with help from Kurt Lewin, and the science philosopher Gustav Bergmann, the University of Iowa became a major center of theoretical psychology in United States.

Kenneth Spence received many awards, among others the Prince of Wales Gold Medal in Mental Sciences and the Governor General's Medal for Research. He was a member of the Society of Experimental Psychologists, where he received its Howard Crosby Warren Medal for outstanding research in psychology. He also received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association. He also served on the U.S. Air Force Committee on Human Resources and the Army Scientific Advisory Panel.

In 1960, Spence married Janet Taylor, his long-time assistant and colleague.

In 1964, Spence moved from the University of Iowa to the University of Texas. He was in his mid-fifties. On January 12, 1967, he died of cancer.

Work

Kenneth Spence was one of the major contributors to the theory of learning. His name is often linked with Clark L. Hull, with whom he participated in numerous projects. During 1940s and 1950s, the two scientists became the leading force behind the neo-behavioristic theory of conditioning, learning, and motivation. In the period between 1936 and 1966 Spence published thirteen papers on the theory of learning in Psychological Review and numerous other articles and books.

Spence’s contribution to psychology can be divided into three areas – (1) theory of learning and motivation; (2) experimental psychology of learning and motivation; and (3) philosophy of science. He did a great amount of work in the area of discrimination learning, doing experiments first with chimpanzees and then rats. By the end of his career he turned to the study of human behavior.

Hull-Spence Hypothesis

Spence extended the research done by Clark L. Hull, formulating precise mathematical formulae to describe the acquisition of learning. He focused his research to the area of classical conditioning, where he used simple techniques to measure behavior. For example, he measured salivation in anticipation to eating, or eye-blinking behavior in relation to anxiety.

Spence believed that reinforcement was not necessary for learning to occur, and that organisms learn through “latent learning.” This idea was consistent with the fact that organisms do not perform always in accord of what they have learned. Spence believed that reinforcement was a strong motivator for organisms to perform certain actions, but that it does not play a role in learning itself. In other words, reinforcement influences the enactment of a response but not the learning of a response. This idea later became famous as Hull-Spence hypothesis of conditioning and learning. It generally states that organisms learn stimulus-response associations whenever a specific stimulus and response occur together. Reinforcement serves to motivate and increase the enactment of learned behavior.

Spence departed from Hull’s theory which was a "habit theory" of behavior. Spence believed that improved performance in learned behavior cannot be attributed to habituation, but rather to motivational factors behind it. When by the end of his career he turned to the study of human behavior, he warned that his previous theories of learning were to be applied to non-human organisms, and that human behavior is greatly influenced by cognitive factors.

Philosophy of science

In the area of the philosophy of science, Spence tried to explain the difficulties psychologists face in doing psychological research and in formulating psychological theories. He believed that psychology as a scientific discipline was somewhat different that other sciences. Psychologists, unlike physical scientists, have to heavily rely on theory and speculation, as human behavior is often unpredictable and cannot be confined to a few laws. Variables that influence human behavior are part of an open system and psychologists cannot rely on simple scientific methods such as induction to create general laws of behavior. Spence wanted to close the gap between physical sciences and psychology, trying to confine psychological laws to mathematical formulae. He collaborated with Gustav Bergmann on logical positivism.

Spence also worked on the systematization of the theories in psychology. He identified four different types of theories in psychology – (1) theories with "animistic conceptions"—the belief that the soul, libido, or some other "force" within the organism guides behavior; (2) "neurophysiological theories," such as theories of Pavlov and Kohler; (3) "Response-inferred theoretical constructs," such as theories of Gestalt psychologists; and (4) "intervening variable" theories of Hull and Tolman.

Legacy

Although influenced by both Pavlov and Watson, Spence was not a hard-core behaviorist. His doctrinal stance, like Hull's and Tolman's, is now characterized as a form of neo-behaviorism.

During his 26 years at the University of Iowa, Spence turned the Department of Psychology into one of the leading psychological institutions in the nation. As the head of the department he supervised more than seventy doctoral dissertations and influenced numerous generations of psychology students, a large number of whom have made significant achievements on their own.

Publications

• Spence, Kenneth W. 1932. The reliability of the maze and methods of its determination. Comparative psychology monographs, v. 8, serial no. 40. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
• Spence, Kenneth W. 1937. Weight, growth and age in chimpanzee. Philadelphia: Wistar Institute Press.
• Spence, Kenneth W. 1939. The solution of multiple choice problems by chimpanzees. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press.
• Spence, Kenneth W. 1945. An experimental test of the continuity and non-continuity theories of learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 35, 253-66.
• Spence, Kenneth W. 1948. The postulates and methods of behaviorism. Psychological Review, 55, 67-69.
• Spence, Kenneth W. 1952. Mathematical formulations of learning phenomena. Psychological Review, 59, 152-60.
• Spence, Kenneth W. 1960. Behavior therapy and learning: Selected papers. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall.
• Spence, Kenneth W. 1978 (original published in 1956). Behavior theory and conditioning. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0837185793
• Spence, Kenneth W, Kendler, Howard H, and Spence, Janet T. 1971. Essays in neobehaviorism: A memorial volume to Kenneth W. Spence. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. ISBN 0390503401
• Spence, Kenneth W. and Spence, Janet T. 1967. The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0125433018

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Hilgard, E. R. 1967. Kenneth Wartinbee Spence. American Journal of Psychology, 80, 315
• Kendler H.H. 1967. Kenneth W. Spence, 1907-1967. Psychological Review, 74(5), 335-41.
• Kenneth Wartinbee Spence. National Academies Press, Retrieved on October 6, 2007, from <http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/biomems/kspence.html>
• Kimble, Gregory A., Michael Wertheimer, and Charlotte White. 1991. Portraits of pioneers in psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. ISBN 0805806202

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