Associationism
Aptly named, Associationism is a theory about how items combine in the mind to produce thought and learning. Not only are a great many of histories great minds associated with associationism, such as John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill, to name a few, but the theory was also to give rise to behaviorism.
The basic tenants of Associationism are quite easy to understand: items are associated in the mind through experience. These items are derived from experience, and combine to form thought. For example, a small child learns not to touch a fire because that child associates the fire with pain, the pain coming from past experience. Each item can combine with other items to form a more complex idea. A good analogy is that of a sentence. Each word in a sentence is represents an item; the words are combined to form ideas and thought, the sentence. An infinite number of sentences can be formed by rearranging the words.
There are four typical principles of associationism, and three main processes. The principles state that items that are contiguous in time or space are lined by association, that items that are similar are linked by association, that items that contrast are linked and that items that have a cause/effect relationship are also linked. These linkings all occur through the three processes of sequencing, compounding and decompositioning. Sequencing refers to a type of chronological pattern, where as compounding refer to the building up and breaking down of items, respectively.
Associationism can be traced all the way back to Aristotle, who believed it was “common sense” that different aspects of an object combined together to become the idea of the object. For example, the color, taste, feel and smell of an apple combined together to become the idea of an apple (Boeree, 2000). After Aristotle, associationism fell out of common philosophy as it was considered a basic description of every day events. However, John Locke and David Hume began to revive associationism. Locke argued that there were not innate ideas, only ideas that were dependent on association of sensations. Hume reinforced the ideas of resemblance, contiguity and cause and effect. John Stuart Mill, the most famous proponent of associationism, later expanded these procedures.
Associationism is seen as the beginning of cognitive psychology, and began to explain the existences of a conscious and of altruistic motives. Associationism paired experience to create thought and learning. Learning was seen as the formation of associations between unrelated information based on their contiguity. Importantly, the sum (thought) can be created without conscious memory of the individual parts.
Although associationism gave way to behaviorism, remnants of associationism can still be seen in psychology as well as learning. The famous ink-blot tests use associationism to help understand other underlying psychological issues. Most of us have used association techniques to remember an address or a friend’s birthday, or the answers to a test question. The possible educational benefits of successfully incorporating associationism into instructional technology are great. In fact, it would be difficult to image learning some aspect of technology without it building on and being associated with a former.