Lecture 2. Perspectives on Learning: Behaviourism and Beyond Flashcards
You should be able to define: Classical conditioning, Radical behaviourism, operant conditioning, Mental schema, constuctivism (32 cards)
Psychology and education
- A long history of psychologists advising educators
- Late 19th to early 20th century, the Child study movement
–> Led by educators and education-oreintated psychologists eg. Thornrdike
–> The first Systematic study of child development
–> Child observations as ethology (naturalistic study of animal behaviour)
–> Influenced by Darwinian theory
The twofold significance of history
- Historical events, social change and technological advances impact on psychological knowledge and therefore advice to educators
- In the course of the 20th century, psychologists’ theories of learning differed across schools of thought eg. behaviourism, cognitive
What are the two rival philosophical traditions entering the 19th century
- Associationism
- Configurationism
Define Associationism
Learning in an associative process whereby stimulus- response bonds are established based on experience
- foundation of behaviourism in psychology
Define Configurationism
The mind is an integral system (‘molar configuration’) controlling the functioning of its parts; learning is the reogranisation of this system based on experience
- Foundation of Gestalt psychology and cognitve psychology
What does Behaviourism think Learning is
A causal process whereby a relatively lasting change in behaviour occurs as a result of experience
What does Gestalt psychology think Learning is
The reogranisation of behaviour as a result of an organism’s interaction with its enviroment, where the interaction brings about new forms of perception and motor coordination
What does Constructivism (cognitve) think Learning is
A mental process whereby a change in mental schemas occurs as a result of experience
Behaviourism
Behaviorism: a school of thought characterised by the view that psychology should be a systematic description of obseravble behaviour
–> dominated psychology up to the mid- 20th centyury
–> several perspectives that either complemented or disagreed with eachother
What are the main learning principles?
- The Law of effect: Learning by trial and Error (Thorndike)
- Classical conditioning: Learning by association (Pavlov)
- Operant conditioning - selection of behaviour by its consequences (Skinner)
Law of effect
- Learning by trial and error
- First Propsed by Thorndike in 1898 in the context of his S-R bond theory
- Thorndike’s ‘Cat in a box’ experiement
Classical conditioning
- Learning by association
- Demonstated in experiements by Ivan Pavlov, 1890s to early 1900s
–> The first systematic study of the basic laws of learning (hence ‘classical’)
Radical behaviourism: operant conditioning
- Philosophical standpoint that strongly rejects mentalism
- B.F Skinner
- Operant conditioning
–> builds upon Thorndike’s Law of Effect - Learning is due to the selection of a behaviour by its consequences
Who was Little Albert?
- Beck et al (2009) believe they’ve discovered who little Albert was and what happened to him afterwards
- Powell et al believe there’s a stronger evidence for identifying a different individual as Little Albert
Current status of Watson’s theory
- The experiment was historically influential but methodologically naive by today’s standards
- Current understanding of phobias has moved away from a single explaination
–> specific phobias are now attributed to an evoluntionary basis compounded with enviromental factors
‘Are theories of learning necessary? Skinner (1950)
No
- A theory explains observed facts by deferring the process to something we can’t observe (mind, brain)
- Learning is a causal process by which a relatively lasting change in behaviour occurs as a result of experience
- Explaining this process means accounting for observed changes in behaviour in terms of its antecedents and consequences
Positive reinforcement
- The likelihood of the behaviour increases beacuse something rewarding has happened as a consequence
–> Skinner (1948) ‘Superstition in pigeons’
Negative reinforcement
- The likelihood of behaviour increases because something unpleasent is removed or hasn’t happened as a consequence of it
- example: Patterson’s coercion model, originally developed by Patterson (1980s) in work with antisocial boys
Punishment
- The likelihood of the behaviour decreases due to the consequences
Punishment: Learned helpness theory of depression
- uncontrollable early life
adversity leads to ‘giving up’ when problems arise later on
- Developmed by Seligman (1960s) orginally based on animal experiemnts and behaviourist learning principles
- Abramson, Seligman and Teasdale (1978) reformulated it with attention to cognitive patterns in humans (eg, hopelesness, self blame)
What is the current status of behaviourism?
- Most psychologists reject behaviourism
- some practical insights remain valid eg. undertsanding gambling addiction, behaviour modification
- Neuroscience supports behaviourist learning principles regarding reward
What is vicarious reinforcement?
- learning through observation and imitation (modelling)
- associated with social learning theory
- proposed by Bandura to explain how children may acquire aggressive behavioural patterns (Bobo doll )
Current status of Vicarious reinforcement
- In the media, Bandura’s findings fuelled arguments against exposing children to television and video games violence
—> Japan and Western countries revealed that exposure is associated with aggressive behaviour, aggressive congition and aggressive across cultures, gender and age (Anderson et al 2010)
- Psychologists consider social learning as only one several underlying mechanisms
–> Bandura (1965) himself sought to explain the experiment’s results by reference also to cognitive factors underlying individual differences
What is Gestalt psychology ?
- Emerged in the early 20th century, Germany
- Investigated problem solving, perception, learning and thinking
- Gestalt= form, configuration, a unified whole
- learning is the reorganisation of behaviour as a result of an organism’s interaction with its enviroment, where the interaction brings about new forms of perception and motor coordination
- our brains learn to recognise the world around us, and quickly fill in the infomation to paint a whole picture
What did Kohler (1914) do?
- Kohler was highly critical of behaviourism
- He believed that physiological research provides tools for measuring covert responses (heart rate, blood pressure) towards describing a subject’s interaction with it’s environment
- Galvanic skin response: changes in the sweat gland activity, indicates the intensity of emotional arousal
