Learning and Behaviour

Learning and Behaviour

1. LEARNING - relatively permanent change resulting from experience

   • CLASSICAL CONDITIONING - reflexive/involuntary/inborn behaviours. Become produced in new situations (eg. Pavlovian response Bell: Food - Salivation, Bell - Salivation)
   • OPERANT CONDITIONING - goal directed/voluntary. Strengthening or weakening a behaviour as a result of consequences (eg. Lever press - food pellet, The effect: Likelihood of lever pressing increases.

2. BEHAVIOUR - any activity an organism does that can be observed or measured

   • 5 SCHOOLS highlight different conceptions of the link between environ/events, internal states and behaviour
     • Watson's Methodological Behavourism
       • Publicly observable behaviour (stimulus - response)
         • Mechanistic - behaviour is reflexive
     • Hull's Neobehaviourism
       • Operationalisation of unobserved constructs (e.g. gravity)
         • Mediation of intervening variables
           • physiological reactions (i.e. hunger)
         • Mechanistic
     • Tolman's Cognitive Behaviourism
       • Broader 'molar' level
         • Rats in a maze - goal directed, latent learning
         • Mentalistic
           • Cognitive maps
             • Animal cognition and comparative cognition
     • Bandura's Social Learning Theory
       • imitation/observational learning
         • RECIPROCAL DETERMINISM - observable behaviour, environmental events and internal events all interact
           • self-referent thoughts about abilities and accomplishments
             • Cognitive behavtiour therapy alter environment and internal processes
         • distinction between learning and performance
     • Skinner's Radical Behaviourism
       • rejects internal events to explain behaviour
         • influence of environment and observable behaviour
           • COUNTERCONTROL - deliberate manipulation of environ. to alter impact on our behaviour
         • thoughts and feelings are behaviours themselves

3. HISTORY

   • PLATO (Nativist/nature/heredity) - everything we know is inborn "residing in our soul"
   • ARISTOTLE (empiricist/nuture) - abilities and tendencies are mostly learned
     • Ideas are connected or associated with each other
       • LAW OF SIMILARITY - associate events that resemble each other
       • LAW OF FREQUENCY - the more often two events occur together, the stronger the association
       • LAW OF CONTRAST - we associate events that are opposite to each other
       • LAW OF CONTIGUITY - associate events that occur in close proximity
   • DESCARTES (Mind-body dualism) - some behaviours are reflexes automatically elicited from external stimulation, others are freely chosen and controlled by the mind.
     • reflexive behaviour is mechanistic and can be scientifically investigated
       • study of animal behaviour might provide info about reflexive human behaviour
   • STRUCTURALISM (The experimental study of human consciousness) - Wundt and Titchener
     • INTROSPECTION - subjects attempt to accurately describe his/her thoughts, emotions, and sensory experiences.
     • Can determine the structure of the mind by identifying the basic elements that compose it

4. BRITISH EMPIRICISTS - John Locke, newborn's mind is a "blank slate/tabula rasa"

   • Knowledge a function of experience
   • Mind composed of finite set of elements (eg. colours, smells, sounds,etc) which combine through association to form conscious experience

5. FUNCTIONALISM (mind evolved to help us adapt to the world around us) - William James

   • influenced by Darwin's theory of evolution and still emphasized the study of consciousness