John A. McGeoch (1897-1942) was the single most seminal figure in defining the research area known as verbal learning. Trained in the Chicago functionalist tradition by Harvey A. Carr, McGeoch received the Ph.D. in 1926 with a dissertation titled "A Study in the Psychology of Testimony." His professional career was notable for its meteoric advancement, its geographic mobility, and its massive research energy. After rising through the academic ranks at Washington University in St. Louis, he became professor at the University of Arkansas in 1928, at the age of 31. Two years later he went as chairman of the Psychology Department to the University of Missouri, a position he subsequently filled at Wesleyan University and at the University of Iowa (Pratt, 1943; Wolfle, 1943).

McGeoch's major work was The Psychology of Human Learning: An Introduction (1942). It was not intended as such: He had been at work...