l1

• Learning


  A change in behavior that is relatively permanent and results from experience
• Types of behavioral changes that indicate 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
• Definition of learning


  • A "change in behavior potentiality" (Kimble)
  • Distinction between learning and performance
  • "Change in mental representations or associations" (Ormrod, 2015)
• Things that are not considered learning

  • Reflexes
  • Instincts/species-specific behaviors
  • Innate
  • Maturation
  • Fatigue
  • Illness
  • Intoxication
• Aristotle's views


  • Disagreed with Plato's belief that everything is inborn
  • Knowledge acquired through experience
  • Ideas come to be connected or associated with each other via 4 laws of association
• Aristotle's 4 laws of association

  • Similarity
  • Contrast
  • Contiguity
  • Frequency
• Descartes' views


  • Disagreed with an assumption that human behavior was governed entirely by free will or "reason"
  • Proposed a dualistic model of human nature - body produces involuntary, reflexive behaviors, mind has free will and innate ideas
• British Empiricists' views


  • Almost all knowledge is a function of experience
  • Conscious mind is composed of a finite set of basic elements that are combined through the principles of association
• Thomas Hobbes' views


  • Sense impressions are the source of all knowledge
• John Locke's views


  • A newborn's mind is a tabula rasa (clean slate) upon which environmental experiences are written
• Immanuel Kant's views


  • What we consciously experience is influenced by both sensory experience and the faculties of the mind, which are innate
• John Stuart Mill's views


  • Complex ideas are not just combinations of simple ideas, but can form 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
  • Promoted by Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener
  • Emphasis on systematic observation and conscious experience
• Functionalism


  • Assumes that 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
• John B. Watson's views


  • Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science
  • Recognizes no dividing line between man and brute
  • Humans inherit only a few fundamental reflexes and 3 basic emotions (love, rage, fear) — everything else is learned
• Basic assumptions of Behaviorism


  • 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
• Five schools of Behaviorism

  • Watson's Methodological Behaviorism
  • Hull's Neobehaviorism
  • Tolman's Cognitive Behaviorism
  • Bandura's Social Learning Theory
  • Skinner's Radical Behaviorism
• Three of the following are examples of learning. The one that is not is: When asked to analyse the story, Cathy said it was a deconstruction of the atrocities committed during war and other crises.
• "Great musicians are born, not made" is an example of the nativist perspective on behavior, and "practice makes perfect" is an example of the empiricist perspective.
• Generalization is a reaction to similarities while discrimination is a reaction to differences.
• In the scenario where the time it takes for your research participant to make a check mark on the form after presentation of a red light stimulus (i.e., reaction time) decreases as the trials progress, you can infer that learning has happened.
• 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.
• The assumption that learning of more complex skills is limited to animals with a cerebral cortex is NOT a behaviorist assumption concerning learning.
• Definition of learning

  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.