Here are some on-line resources for Learning. I got these links, and even this HTML source, from the fantastic Classics in the History of Psychology page.


Plato. (ca. 380 BC). Meno. (Internet Classics Archive at MIT) [The first major treatise to put forward the claim that knowledge is innate.]

Plato. (ca. 380 BC). Excerpts from Republic, Meno, and Symposium.

Thorndike, Edward L. (1911). Animal intelligence. [Most important book of the significant Columbia functionalist.]

Pavlov, Ivan P. (1927). Conditioned reflexes: An investigation of the physiological activity of the cerebral cortex (G. V. Anrep, Trans.). (Original work published 1927)

Pavlov, Ivan P. (1924). Lectures on the work of the cerebral hemispheres (Lecture 1). (The Value of Knowledge). [From the "grandfather" of behaviorism.]

Watson, John B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, 20, 158-177. [The classic manifesto of behaviorism.]

Watson, John B. & Rayner, Rosalie. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3, 1-14. [The famous "Little Albert" study.]

Jones, Mary Cover. (1924). A laboratory study of fear: The case of Peter. Pedagogical Seminary, 31, 308-315.

Guthrie, Edwin R. (1946). Psychological facts and psychological theory. Psychological Bulletin, 43, 1-20. [Guthrie's APA Presidential address.]

Hull, Clark L. (1934a). The concept of the habit-family hierarchy and maze learning: Part I. Psychological Review, 41, 33-54.

Hull, Clark L. (1934b). The concept of the habit-family hierarchy and maze learning: Part II. Psychological Review, 41, 134-152.

Hull, Clark L. (1935). The conflicting psychologies of learning -- A way out. Psychological Review, 42, 491-516.

Tolman, Edward, C. (1948). Cognitive maps in rats and men. Psychological Review, 55(4), 189-208. [Major revision of Tolman's "cognitive" behaviorism.]

MacCorquodale, Kenneth & Meehl, Paul E. (1948). On a distinction between hypothetical constructs and intervening variables. Psychological Review, 55, 95-107. [Classic attempt to clarify a major terminological problem in psychological methodology.]

Skinner, B. F. (1950). Are theories of learning necessary? Psychological Review, 57, 193-216.

Skinner, B. F. (1989). The origins of cognitive thought. (The Value of Knowledge). [The primary radical behaviorist's crtitique of cognitivism.]

Breland, Keller & Breland, Marian. (1961). The misbehavior of organisms. American Psychologist, 16, 681-684. [Classic critique of the assumptions underlying radical behaviorism.]

Chomsky, Noam. (1959). A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior. Language, 35, 26-58. (CogPrints)

Miller, George A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97. [A classic in memory research and one of the earliest contributions to the "cogntive revolution."]


James, William. (1890). The principles of psychology. [Perhaps the most important English-language psychology text in history.]

James, William. (1884). What is an emotion? Mind, 9, 188-205. [The major statement of the James-Lange theory of emotion: "I see a bear, I run, I am afraid."]

Koffka, Kurt. (1922). Perception: An introduction to the Gestalt-theorie. Psychological Bulletin, 19, 531-585. [The first English-language article on Gestalt psychology.]

Köhler, Wolfgang. (1959). Gestalt psychology today. American Psychologist, 14, 727-734. [Köhler's APA Presidential address.]

Wertheimer, Max. (1938). Laws of organization in perceptual forms. In W. Ellis, W (Ed. & Trans.), A source book of Gestalt psychology (pp. 71-88). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original work published in 1923 as Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt II, in Psychologische Forschung, 4, 301-350.) [One of the most influential of all Gestalt papers.]

Gibson, J.J.. (1955). Perception as a function of stimulation, with glosses by U. T. Place. (Cognitive Questions).