Association (psychologie)

Association in psychology refers to a mental connection between concepts, events, or mental states that usually stems from specific experiences. Associations are seen throughout several schools of thought in psychology including behaviorism, associationism, psychoanalysis, social psychology, and structuralism. The idea stems from Plato and Aristotle, especially with regard to the succession of memories, and it was carried on by philosophers such as John Locke, David Hume, David Hartley, and James Mill. It finds its place in modern psychology in such areas as memory, learning, and the study of neural pathways. Associative learning is when a subject creates a relationship between stimuli (e.g. auditory or visual) or behavior and the original stimulus. The higher the concreteness of stimulus items, the more likely are they to evoke sensory images that can function as mediators of associative learning and memory. The ability to learn new information is essential to daily life and thus a critical component of healthy aging. There is substantial research documenting aging-related decline in forming and retrieving episodic memories. The acquisition of associations is the basis for learning. This learning is seen in classical and operant conditioning. Edward Thorndike did research in this area and developed the law of effect, where associations between a stimulus and response are affected by the consequence of the response. For example, behaviors increase in strength and/or frequency when they have been followed by reward. This occurs because of an association between the behavior and a mental representation of the reward (such as food). Conversely, receiving a negative consequence lowers the frequency of the behavior due to the negative association. An example of this would be a rat in a cage with a bar lever. If pressing the lever results in a food pellet, the rat will learn to press the lever to receive food. If pressing the lever resulted in an electric shock on the floor of the cage, the rat would learn to avoid pressing the lever.