Cognitive learning Flashcards
What are cognitive processes?
It refers to mental processes such as thinking, knowing, problem solving, remembering , and forming mental representations.
What is cognitive learning?
It is the study of the mental processes that underlie the whole learning process
What are the three instances of cognitive learning?
- place learning
- latent learning
- insight learning
Who brought about the concept of place learning?
Edward C. Tolman (1886-1959)
What does place learning involve?
It combines the advantages of stimulus-response theories and cognitive theories
What was Tolman’s experiment about?
It was to demonstrate how people learn about places.
He placed rats in a maze and observed how the rats came out reach food .
What is a cognitive map?
A mental representation of a spatial arrangement such as a maze
What latent learning?
Learning that occurs without apparent reinforcement and is not demonstrated until the organism is motivated to do so.
How did Tolman and Honzik demonstrate latent learning?
One group of Rats were placed in mazes to run and were rewarded with food
Another group were placed in the maze and run unrewarded
Group two were observed to be very slow.
Later rewards were introduced to group 2
They run faster immediately and even became faster than group one.
What is latent learning/
Learning that occurs in the absence of an obvious reward(hidden learning)
Who brought about insight learning?
German gestalt , Wolfgang Kohler(1887-1967)
What is insight learning (discovery learning)?
It is a form of cognitive learning that involves sudden recognition of previously unseen relationships
What animal did Kohler use for his experiment?
a chimpanzee called Sultan
What is insight?
The sudden realization of the relationship between two elements in a problem situation, which makes the solution apparent.
What did the critics say about Kohler’s theory/
The critics argued that insight learning results only after a “mental trial-and-error”
