Latent Learning and the Goal Gradient Hypothesis: By Claude E. Buxton. No. 6 of Contributions to Psychological Theory. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1940. 75 pp.

The field of learning has furnished the chief problems for theoretical controversy in recent experimental psychology. In the field of perception the superiority of the gestalt or field-theoretical approach is generally admitted. In learning, however, the associationistic and conditioned reflex type of theory still has many eminent supporters. The reviewer believes that the field-theoretical approach will also win out here. Dr. Buxton's monograph supports this viewpoint. In a series of ingenious and evidently carefully controlled learning experiments on rats he shows that learning occurs through previous 'familiarity' with the situation independent of the conditioning situation proper. His findings thus support the field-theoretical position of Lewin and Tolman, rather than the associationistic position of Hull. Since the field-theoretical position is much more easily reconcilable with psychoanalysis these findings may be of some general interest to psychoanalysis. Anyone who is interested in the delimitation of scientific problems, clever experiments and attempted precision of deduction, will find this monograph worth looking into.