140 midterms PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING

• Learning


  A change in behavior
• Learning is indexed by a change in behavior
• The change in behavior need not occur immediately following the learning
• The change in behavior results from experience
• The behavioral change is relatively permanent/enduring
• Types of behavioral changes from learning

  • Performing a completely new behavior
  • Changing the frequency of existing behavior
  • Changing the speed of an existing behavior
  • Changing the intensity of an existing behavior
  • Changing the complexity of an existing behavior
  • Responding differently to a particular stimulus
• Learning


  A "change in behavior potentiality"
• Distinction between learning and performance

  Learning is a "change in mental representations or associations"
• Things that are not considered learning

  • Reflexes
  • Instincts/species-specific behaviors
  • Innate
  • Maturation
  • Fatigue
  • Illness
  • Intoxication
• Aristotle disagreed with Plato's belief that everything is inborn and that knowledge is acquired through experience
• Aristotle's 4 laws of association

  • Similarity
  • Contrast
  • Contiguity
  • Frequency
• Descartes proposed a dualistic model of human nature with the body producing involuntary, reflexive behaviors and the mind having free will and producing voluntary behaviors
• The British Empiricists believed almost all knowledge is a function of experience and the conscious mind is composed of a finite set of basic elements
• Hobbes believed sense impressions are the source of all knowledge
• Locke believed a newborn's mind is a tabula rasa (clean slate) upon which environmental experiences are written
• Kant believed what we consciously experience is influenced by both sensory experience and the faculties of the mind, which are innate
• Mill disagreed that complex ideas are nothing more than combinations of simple ideas and added the notion that some simple ideas combine into a new totality that may bear little resemblance to its parts
• Structuralism


  • Believed testing notions such as the mind consisting of various combinations of basic elements was important
  • Approach promoted by Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener
  • Emphasis on systematic observation and conscious experience
• Functionalism


  • Assumes the mind evolved to help us adapt to the world around us
  • Characteristics that are highly typical of a species must have some type of adaptive value
• Behaviorism


  • Developed as a reaction against structuralism and functionalism
  • Systematic approach to understand behavior of both human beings and animals
  • Science of behavior (observable and measurable aspects only)
  • Human behavior can be learned and therefore unlearned
• Watson's Methodological Behaviorism


  • Rejects the value of data gathered through introspection
  • Psychologists should study only those behaviours that can be directly observed
  • All behaviour is essentially reflexive
  • Learning involves the development of a simple connection between an environmental event and a specific behavior (S-R theory)
  • Humans inherit only a few fundamental reflexes and 3 basic emotions - everything else is learned
• Hull's Neobehaviorism


  • Might be useful for psychologists to infer existence of internal events that might mediate between the environment and behavior
  • Utilized intervening variables, in the form of hypothesised physiological processes, which were operationalised
• Tolman's Cognitive Behaviorism


  • More mentalistic
  • Analyse behaviour on a "molar"/broader level
  • Overall pattern of behaviour directed toward particular outcomes
• Bandura's Social Learning Theory


  • A cognitive-behavioral approach that strongly emphasises the importance of observational learning and cognitive variables in explaining human behavior
• Skinner's Radical Behaviorism


  • Rejected internal events as explanations for behaviour BUT does not completely reject the inclusion of internal events in a science of behaviour
• Behaviorist assumptions


  • Principles of learning should apply equally to different behaviours and to a variety of animal species (equipotentiality)
  • Learning processes can be studied most objectively when the focus of study is on stimuli and responses
  • Internal processes tend to be excluded or minimised in theoretical explanations
  • Learning involves a behaviour change
  • Organisms are born as blank slates
  • Learning is largely the result of environmental events
  • The most useful theories tend to be parsimonious ones
• The process of strengthening a conditioned response through repeated pairings of a neutral stimulus (NS) with a US is known as acquisition
• For Pavlov's dogs, salivation to the meat powder was the unconditioned response (UCR) and salivation to the light was the conditioned response
• Learning can be defined as a relatively permanent change in behavior resulting from practice
• When you discontinue the US in classical conditioning, what you are most likely to observe is extinction
• Pulling your hand back from a sharp object is the best example of an unconditioned response