APA Dictionary of Psychology

statements describing the circumstances under which learning generally occurs. Over the centuries, such laws have been hypothesized and studied by philosophers such as Aristotle, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill and physiologist Ivan Pavlov, among others: The modern laws of learning were formalized in 1911 by Edward L. Thorndike and have been modified numerous times since. Among the currently accepted laws of learning are the law of effect, the law of contiguity, the law of frequency, the primacy effect, and the recency effect.