William Kaye Estes

William Kaye Estes
William Kaye Estes
Born	June 17, 1919 Minneapolis, Minnesota
Died	August 17, 2011
Nationality	United States
Fields	psychology mathematics
Alma mater	University of Minnesota
Doctoral advisor	B. F. Skinner
Known for	stimulus sampling theory

William Kaye Estes (June 17, 1919 – August 17, 2011) was an American psychologist. As an undergraduate, he was a student of Richard M. Elliott at the University of Minnesota. As a graduate student he stayed at the University of Minnesota, and worked under B. F. Skinner with whom he developed the Conditioned Suppression paradigm (Estes & Skinner, 1941). After he received his doctorate, he joined Skinner on the faculty at Indiana University. After Estes got out of the U. S. Army at the end of World War II, he established his reputation as one of the originators of mathematical learning theory. Estes went from Indiana University to Stanford University, to Rockefeller University in New York, and finally to Harvard University. After retiring from Harvard, he returned to Bloomington, Indiana, where he remained active in academics to become professor emeritus at his original academic home department. One of William Estes's most famous contributions to learning theory was stimulus-sampling theory, which conceives of learning as establishing associations to hypothetical stimulus elements that are randomly drawn from a pool of elements that characterize a particular learning situation. This theory predicted probability matching, which has been found in a wide range of tasks for many different organisms. Estes has had a major influence on theories of learning and memory, both in his own theorizing and in the theories of his many students and collaborators.

References

• Bower, G H (1994), "A turning point in mathematical learning theory.", Psychological Review 101 (2): 290–300, 1994 Apr, doi:10.1037/0033-295X.101.2.290, PMID 8022959 

• Estes, William K. (1989), Lindzey, Gardner, ed., A History of Psychology in Autobiography, Stanford University Press, pp. 94–125, ISBN 0804714924 

• Estes, W. K., Skinner, B. F.; Skinner, B. F. (1941), "Some quantitative properties of anxiety", Journal of Experimental Psychology 29 (5): 390–400, doi:10.1037/h0062283