Learning occurs when experience (including practice) causes a relatively permanent change in an individuals knowledge or behavior.
What do cognitive psychologists focus their studies on?
Cognitive psychologists focus on changes in knowledge and believe learning is an internal mental activity that can not be observed directly. (thinking, remembering, problem solving)
Behavioral Learning Theories
The outcome of learning is change in behavior and emphasizes the effects of external events on the individual.
Aristotle's Theory
We remember things together (1) when they are similar, (2) when they contrast, and (3) when they are contiguous.
Contiguity
Whenever two or more events occur together often enough, they will become associated.
Stimulus
Event that activates behavior
Response
Observable reaction to a stimulus
Classical Conditioning
focuses on the learning of involuntary emotional or physiological responses
Respondents
Automatic responses to stimuli
Ivan Pavlov
1920's Russian physiologist who was trying to determine how long it took a dog to secrete digestive juices after it had be fed, but his experiment changed when he noticed that the dogs began to salivate when the researchers would get up to feed them. He learned that he could cause the dogs to salivate when introducing different stimuli when presenting the food or eventually without presenting food. ie. the bell ringing without food
Neutral Stimulus
stimulus not connected to a response
Unconditioned Stimulus
stimulus that automatically produces an emotional or physiological response
Unconditioned Response
naturally occurring emotional or physiological response
Conditioned Stimulus
stimulus evokes a response after conditioning
Conditioned Response
learned response to a previously neutral stimulus
Operants
deliberate actions
Operant Conditioning
learning in which voluntary behavior is strengthened or weakened by consequences or rewards