Edward Tolman, with Ritchie and Kalish, let rats explore a maze freely for several days with no food reward at all. When food was then placed at one point in the maze, the rats found it almost immediately, far faster than a group that had never explored the maze before. Tolman argued the unrewarded rats had already built an internal cognitive map of the maze during exploration, learning that stayed hidden (latent) until there was a reason to use it, a result hard to explain if learning only happens through reward.
Facts
Key FindingRats can learn the layout of an environment without any reinforcement and apply that latent learning as soon as a goal appears, evidence that learning is not only a matter of reinforced stimulus-response associations. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
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In Branch
Tolman's maze work is a standing bridge figure between behaviorism and the later cognitive branch; the study is placed in both branches rather than picking one over the other.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Edward C. Tolman
Wikimedia FoundationPurposive behaviorism sectionQuote, Purposive behaviorism section
After some trials, a food item was placed to a certain point of the maze, and the rats learned to navigate to that point very quickly.
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