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LEARNING

Submitted to:
Prof. Ma. Corazon Cabigao Constantino
PSYC1013 Th 10:30am-1:30pm

Submitted by:
Apiladas, Jessa Marie
Bestal, Vanesa
Billones, Joanne
Camangian, Mae-Ann
Cortez, Shayna
Dela Cruz, Carlo
BSA I-1, GROUP 2

What is “learning”? In ordinary language, this term is applied to many different cases—the development of new skills, the acquisition of new knowledge, and more. Although most people think of learning as “studying”, a lot of situations nonetheless take place outside a classroom. Psychologists define it more broadly as the process of acquiring new and relatively enduring information or behaviors. It is a relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience. Notice that this definition excludes temporary changes caused by motivation, fatigue, maturation, disease, injury, or drugs. Each of these can alter our behavior, but none qualifies as learning.
Merely repeating a response will not necessarily produce learning. You could close your eyes and swing a tennis racket hundreds of times without learning anything about tennis.
Merely repeating a response will not necessarily produce learning. You could close your eyes and swing a tennis racket hundreds of times without learning anything about tennis.
For one to learn something, one must experience it first, whether directly from the person’s own experience or indirectly through the experiences of others. Learning must also be able to produce some kind of change in the person’s behaviour, whether covertly (thoughts, ideas, attitudes, emotions) or overtly (responses and skills).
Types of Learning
Learning is traditionally divided into three categories: associative, nonassociative, and cognitive. More than one type of learning can operate simultaneously in the same situation. A new technique, Computer-Assisted Learning, is another type of learning applied with technology.
Nonassociative learning
Nonassociative learning involves changes in the magnitude of responses to a single stimulus rather than the formation of connections between stimuli. Two important types of nonassociative learning are habituation and sensitization.
Habituation reduces our reactions to repeated experiences that have already been evaluated and found to be unchanging and harmless. We habituate to things that we should, ideally, still be noticing. A major concern about exposing children to violent media is the possibility that their emotional responses to violent images will habituate, leading to higher tolerance for violent behaviour.

A) It is likely that the first time this dog’s owner attempted to dress it up the dog was a bit upset. After repeated experiences of being dressed up, however, the dog probably has habituated, which means that it has learned that no harm results from the process. Now it remains calm.

B) Following an earthquake, this little boy is likely to be extra jumpy for a while in response to other stimuli, like loud noises, due to sensitization.

A) It is likely that the first time this dog’s owner attempted to dress it up the dog was a bit upset. After repeated experiences of being dressed up, however, the dog probably has habituated, which means that it has learned that no harm results from the process. Now it remains calm.

B) Following an earthquake, this little boy is likely to be extra jumpy for a while in response to other stimuli, like loud noises, due to sensitization.
In contrast to habituation, sensitization increases our reactions to a wide range of stimuli following exposure to one strong stimulus. Following an earthquake, people often experience exaggerated responses to movement, light, or noise. If you are awakened by a loud crash, even if you figure out it’s just your roommate coming home late at night, it might be harder to get back to sleep due to your suddenly increased state of arousal. Every little sound now seems magnified.
In general, habituation occurs in response to milder stimuli, whereas sensitization occurs in response to stronger stimuli. Habituation ensures that we do not waste precious resources monitoring low-priority stimuli. Sensitization is particularly useful in dangerous situations. After detecting one harmful stimulus, raising our overall level of responsiveness should improve reaction time should other dangers arise.
Associative learning
Associative learning occurs when we form associations, or connections, among stimuli and/or behaviors. It emphasizes the establishment and strengthening between the stimulus and the response and emphasizes the role of reinforcement in the learning process. In other words, if A happens, then B is likely to follow. Psychologists who study learning describe two types of associative learning: classical conditioning and operant conditioning.
Classical Conditioning
Classical conditioning is a kind of learning in which a neutral stimulus acquires the ability to produce a response that was originally produced by a different stimulus. In classical conditioning, we form associations between pairs of stimuli that occur sequentially in time.
Classical conditioning was pioneered by Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist. Normally, when food is placed in the mouth of an animal, the salivary glands automatically start releasing saliva to help with chewing and digestion. This is normal reflex- an unlearned involuntary response that is not under personal control or choice – one of many that occur in both animals and humans. The food causes a particular reaction, the salivation. But Pavlov noticed that the dogs salivated before the food was in their mouths: the mere sight of food made them drool. In fact, they even drooled at the sound of the experimenter’s footsteps. This aroused Pavlov’s curiosity that led him to devise an experiment to the concept of classical conditioning.
Elements of Classical Conditioning * Stimulus: any object, event, or experience that causes a response * Response: reaction of an organism * Unconditioned Stimulus (US): any stimulus that has the ability to elicit a response without previous training. * Conditioned Stimulus (CS): the stimulus which initially does not elicit the response under the study but becomes to do so by being paired with the unconditioned stimulus. * Unconditioned Response (UR): the original response to an unconditioned stimulus. * Conditioned Response (CR): a learned response to a conditioned stimulus.
Operant Conditioning
Operant conditioning is the type of learning in which the likelihood of a behavior is increased or decreased by the use of reinforcement or punishment. It is the learning of voluntary behavior through the effects of pleasant and unpleasant consequences to responses. In operant conditioning (or instrumental learning) we associate responses with their consequences. The basic principle is simple: Acts that are reinforced tend to be repeated.
In operant conditioning, the learner actively “operates on” the environment. Thus, operant conditioning refers mainly to learning voluntary responses. For example, pushing buttons on a TV remote control is a learned operant response. Pushing a particular button is reinforced by gaining the result you desire, such as changing channels or muting an obnoxious commercial.
Consequences
One key principle of operant conditioning is that consequences are contingent on behavior. Consequences have to be immediate, or clearly linked to the behavior.
Reinforcement is a consequence that occurs after a behavior and increases the chance that the behavior will occur again. For example, one of the main reasons you study hard for exams is to get good grades (reinforcement). The consequence of getting a good grade increases the chances that you’ll study hard for future exams. There are two kinds of reinforcements—positive and negative—that increase the occurrence of behaviors.
Positive reinforcement refers to the presentation of a stimulus that increases the probability that a behavior will occur again. A positive reinforcer is a stimulus that increases the likelihood that a response will occur again. For example, if you ask a friend for money and get it, the money is a positive reinforcer that will increase the chances of your asking again.
Negative reinforcement refers to an aversive (unpleasant) stimulus whose removal increases the likelihood that the preceding response will occur again. If you have a headache and take an aspirin to get rid of it, your response of taking an aspirin is an example of negative reinforcement. The negative reinforcer (aspirin) removes the likelihood of having headache, and you become inclined to take it whenever you have a headache.
Punishment is a consequence that occurs after a behavior and decreases the chance that the behavior will occur again. For example, parents may withdraw their kids’ TV privileges or impose a curfew on them after picking up a fight at school. The punishment aims to eliminate the kids’ aggressive behavior.
Positive punishment (punishment by application) is the punishment of a response by the addition or experiencing of an unpleasant stimulus. One example is spanking a child who engaged in a prohibited behavior.
Negative punishment (punishment by removal) is the punishment of a response by the removal of a pleasurable stimulus, like removing a child’s freedom to play outside after misbehaving. Stimulus | Reinforcement:Increases behavior | Punishment:Decreases behavior | Presentation of Stimulus (+) | Positive Reinforcement:Ex. Telling more jokes after people laugh at your first joke | Positive Punishment:Ex. A speeder gets a traffic ticket and drives away more slowly. | Removal of Stimulus (-) | Negative Reinforcement:Ex. Learning to rub a sore muscle to relieve pain | Negative Punishment:Ex. Parents taking away your phone after you get failing grades. |

Reinforcers and punishers may be distinguished whether primary or secondary. Primary reinforcers, such as food, water, and caresses, are naturally satisfying. Primary punishers, such as pain and freezing temperatures, are naturally unpleasant.
Secondary reinforcers, such as money, fast cars, and good grades, are satisfying because they’ve become associated with primary reinforcers. Secondary punishers, such as failing grades and social disapproval, are unpleasant because they’ve become associated with primary punishers. Secondary reinforcers and punishers are also called conditioned reinforcers and punishers because they arise through classical conditioning.
To distinguish between primary and secondary reinforcers, people can ask: “Would a newborn baby find this stimulus satisfying?” If the answer is yes, the reinforcer is primary. If the answer is no, it’s secondary. The same idea can be applied to punishers by asking whether a baby would find the stimulus unpleasant.
Schedules of Reinforcement
A reinforcement schedule is the pattern in which reinforcement is given over time. Reinforcement schedules can be continuous or partial (intermittent). Continuous reinforcement means that every occurrence of the operant response results in delivery of the reinforcer. In continuous reinforcement, someone provides reinforcement every time a particular response occurs. Suppose a dog, pushes the remote under her chair. If the owner finds this amusing and pats him every time he does it, he is providing continuous reinforcement for his behavior. On the other hand, partial reinforcement refers to a situation in which responding is reinforced only some of the time. In partial or intermittent reinforcement, someone provides reinforcement on only some of the occasions on which the response occurs.
Partial Reinforcement Schedules
There are four main types of partial schedules, which fall into two categories: ratio or interval. In a ratio schedule, reinforcement happens after a certain number of responses. In an interval schedule, reinforcement happens after a particular time interval.
In a fixed-ratio schedule, reinforcement happens after a set number of responses, such as when a car salesman earns a bonus after every three cars he sells. In a variable-ratio schedule, reinforcement happens after a particular average number of responses. For example, a person trying to win a game by getting heads on a coin toss gets heads every two times, on average, that she tosses a penny. Sometimes she may toss a penny just once and get heads, but other times she may have to toss the penny two, three, four, or more times before getting heads.
A. Workers in a garment factory are usually paid a certain amount for each item of clothing completed, so they’re rewarded on a fixed-ratio schedule of reinforcement.

B. Slot machines pay out on a certain percentage of tries. But these machines pay out at random. People feeding coins to a machine are rewarded on a variable-ratio reinforcement schedule.

C. The behavior of checking the mailbox isn’t rewarded until the mail has actually been delivered. The first check of the mailbox after this delivery will be rewarded (actually getting some mail). This is a fixed-interval schedule of reinforcement.

D. When a wolf prowls through a meadow, all rodents retreat into hiding; so, if the wolf returns soon, he’ll find no prey. Eventually, the rodents will come back, and then another hunting trip by the wolf will pay off—he’ll find his dinner. Therefore, a return visit by the wolf will be rewarded only after some time has passed—this is an interval schedule. The rodents may sometimes return a little sooner, or a little later—and so this is a variable interval schedule.
A. Workers in a garment factory are usually paid a certain amount for each item of clothing completed, so they’re rewarded on a fixed-ratio schedule of reinforcement.

B. Slot machines pay out on a certain percentage of tries. But these machines pay out at random. People feeding coins to a machine are rewarded on a variable-ratio reinforcement schedule.

C. The behavior of checking the mailbox isn’t rewarded until the mail has actually been delivered. The first check of the mailbox after this delivery will be rewarded (actually getting some mail). This is a fixed-interval schedule of reinforcement.

D. When a wolf prowls through a meadow, all rodents retreat into hiding; so, if the wolf returns soon, he’ll find no prey. Eventually, the rodents will come back, and then another hunting trip by the wolf will pay off—he’ll find his dinner. Therefore, a return visit by the wolf will be rewarded only after some time has passed—this is an interval schedule. The rodents may sometimes return a little sooner, or a little later—and so this is a variable interval schedule.
In a fixed-interval schedule, reinforcement happens after a set amount of time, such as when an attorney at a law firm gets a bonus once a year. In a variable-interval schedule, reinforcement happens after a particular average amount of time. For example, a boss who wants to keep her employees working productively might walk by their workstations and check on them periodically, usually about once a day, but sometimes twice a day or some-times every other day. If an employee is slacking off, she reprimands him. Since the employees know there is a variable interval between their boss’s appearances, they must stay on task to avoid a reprimand.
B
B
D
D
C
C
A
A Other Conditioning Concepts
Generalization: In operant conditioning, generalization means that an animal or person emits the same response to similar stimuli. In classical conditioning, generalization is the tendency for a stimulus similar to the original conditioned stimulus to elicit a response similar to the conditioned response.
Discrimination: In operant conditioning, discrimination means that a response is emitted in the presence of a stimulus that is reinforced and not in the presence of unreinforced stimuli. In classical conditioning, discrimination is the tendency for some stimuli but not others to elicit a conditioned response.
Extinction: In operant conditioning, extinction refers to the reduction in an operant response when it is no longer followed by the reinforcer. In classical conditioning, extinction refers to the reduction in a response when the conditioned stimulus is no longer followed by the unconditioned stimulus.
Spontaneous Recovery: In operant conditioning, spontaneous recovery refers to a temporary recovery in the rate of responding. In classical conditioning, spontaneous recovery refers to the temporary occurrence of the conditioned response in the presence of the conditioned stimulus.
Classical Conditioning vs. Operant Conditioning Classical Conditioning | Operant Conditioning | Known as “Pavlovian” | Known as “Skinnerian” | Developed in Russia | Developed in U.S. | Also called “Respondent Conditioning” | Also called “Instrumental Conditioning” | Responses are involuntary and reflexive, elicited by a stimulus. | Responses are voluntary, emitted by the organism. | End result is the creation of a new response to a stimulus that did not normally produce that response. | End result is an increase in the rate of an already occurring response. | Antecedent stimuli are important in forming an association. | Consequences are important in forming an association. | CS must occur immediately before the UCS. | Reinforcement should be immediate. | An expectancy develops for UCS to follow CS. | An expectancy develops for reinforcement to follow a correct response. | CR decreases when CS is repeatedly presented alone. | Responding decreases when reinforcement stops. | Natural predispositions constrain what stimuli and responses can easily be associated. | Organisms best learn behaviors similar to their natural behaviors; unnatural behaviors instinctively drift back toward natural ones. |

Cognitive Learning
Cognitive learning, which involves mental processes such as attention and memory, says that learning can occur through observation or imitation and such learning may not involve any external rewards or require a person to perform any observable behaviors.
A form of cognitive learning, observational learning, is learning through watching. Insight Learning (also Discovery Learning) is another form of cognitive learning. It is a kind of learning in which solution to a problem comes suddenly as one discerns the pattern or interrelationship of one aspect of the situation with another. This is based on insight and understanding from previous knowledge.

Theorists on Learning Ivan Petrovich Pavlov | | Born | 26 September 1849
Ryazan, Russia | Died | 27 February 1936 (aged 86)
Leningrad, Soviet Union | Residence | Russian Empire, Soviet Union | Nationality | Russian, Soviet | Fields | Physiologist, physician | Institutions | Military Medical Academy | Alma mater | Saint Petersburg University | Known for | Classical conditioning | Notable awards | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1904) |
Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist whose research on the physiology of digestion led to the development of the first experimental model of learning, Classical Conditioning. Pavlov was born on September 14, 1849, at Ryazan, Russia. Because he was born into a large family, poverty was always an issue. His father, Peter Dmitrievich Pavlov, was the village priest and young Ivan tended to the church property. Pavlov inherited many of his father's characteristics including a strong will to succeed.
The oldest sibling, Ivan Pavlov was also among the healthiest. He began school at the Ryazan Ecclesiastical High School. Pavlov and his brothers eventually entered the Ryazan Ecclesiastical Seminary. At the Seminary, he planned to pursue a career in theology. However, after being introduced to the works of Charles Darwin and Ivan Sechenov, Pavlov decided to transfer to the University of St. Petersburg to gain knowledge about natural science. There, Pavlov gained great respect for a professor of physiology, Cyon. Due to Cyon's enthusiasm for physiology, he decided to become a physiologist during his third year. At that point, Pavlov started work as an assistant in a laboratory in which he earned 50 rubles a month.
Eventually, Pavlov's research on the physiology of digestion would earn him the Nobel Prize. As a skilled surgeon, he was able to implant small stomach pouches in dogs to measure the secretion of gastric juices produced when the dogs began to eat. With the help of his assistants, he was able to condition the dogs to salivate at the click of a metronome. As his work progressed, Pavlov established the basis for conditioned reflexes and the field of classical conditioning.
Contribution: Classical Conditioning
Explanation:
Classical Conditioning
Classical conditioning was pioneered by Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist (a person who studies the workings of the body). Studying the digestive system in his dogs, Pavlov had built a device that would accurately measure the amount of saliva produced by the dogs when they were fed a measured amount of food.
Procedure:
Pavlov’s Explanation
After Pavlov observed that food made his dogs salivate, he began his classic experiments. To begin, he rang a bell. At first, the bell was a neutral stimulus (the dogs did not respond to it). Immediately after Pavlov rang the bell, he placed meat powder on the dog’s tongue, which caused reflex salivation. This sequence was repeated many times: bell, meat powder, salivation; bell, meat powder, salivation. Eventually (as conditioning took place), the dogs began to salivate when they heard the bell. By association, the bell, which before had no effect, began to evoke the same response that food did. This was shown by sometimes ringing the bell alone. Then the dog salivated, even though no food had been placed in its mouth.
Conclusion:
A neutral stimulus that originally has no effect to an individual can be able to elicit responses that can be brought about by other stimuli through classical conditioning, thus, reflexes can be learned.
Application:
Pavlov believed that animals and people evolved the capacity for classical conditioning because it had an adaptive value. Adaptive value refers to the usefulness of certain abilities or traits that have evolved in animals and humans and tend to increase their chances of survival, such as finding food, acquiring mates, and avoiding pain and injury.
Conditioned Taste Aversion refers to associating a particular sensory cue (smell, taste, sound, or sight) with getting sick and thereafter avoiding that particular sensory cue in the future. For example, if you have eaten something and gotten sick after taking a thrill ride, you may avoid the smell or taste of that particular food. Similarly, people who get sick from drinking too much of a particular alcoholic drink avoid that drink for a long period of time. Taste-aversion learning may also warn us away from eating poisonous plants that cause illness or even death, such as eating certain varieties of mushrooms. All these examples of taste-aversion learning show the adaptive value of classical conditioning, which is to keep us away from potentially unpleasant or dangerous situations, such as taking thrill rides, overdrinking, or eating poisonous plants.
Conditioned Emotional Response refers to feeling some positive or negative emotion, such as happiness, fear, or anxiety, when experiencing a stimulus that initially accompanied a pleasant or painful event. Conditioned emotional responses can have survival value, such as learning to fear and avoid stimuli that signal dangerous situations, like the sound of a rattlesnake or wail of a siren. Conditioned emotional responses can also signal pleasant situations. For example, many couples have a special song that becomes emotionally associated with their relationship. When this song is heard by one in the absence of the other, it can elicit strong emotional and romantic feelings. Thus, different kinds of stimuli can be classically conditioned to elicit strong conditioned emotional responses. * psychology.about.com/od/classicalconditioning/a/pavlovs-dogs.htm * Plotnik, Rod and Haig Kouyoumdjian. Introduction to Psychology, Ninth Edition. California, USA: Wadsworth. 2011. Hermann Ebbinghaus | | Born | January 24, 1850
Barmen, Germany | Died | February 26, 1909 (age 59)
Halle, Germany | Citizenship | German | Fields | Psychology | Institutions | University of Berlin, University of Breslau, University of Halle | Known for | Research on memory, laying the groundwork for intelligence testing |
Herman Ebbinghaus was a known German psychologist. He was the pioneer in the experimental study of memory and the forgetting curve. Born on January 24th, 1850, in Barmen, Germany he was the son of a rich merchant. He acquired his early education from town gymnasium and then attended University of Bon in 1867 at the age of 17. He wasn’t able continue pursuing philosophy as a proper degree because Franco-Prussian war broke out. He served in the Prussian army during this war.
After serving for a brief time span in the army, he completed his thesis on “Philosophy of The Unconscious”. He acquired his doctorate at the age of 23 on August 16th, 1873. After the completion of his PhD he started tutoring students in England and France to earn his living. In 1886, he established and opened an experimental psychology laboratory at the University of Berlin for purposes of psychological research and study. In the years following, Ebbinghaus co-founded the Zeitschrift fur Psychology und Physiologie der Sinnersorgane (Journal of Psychology and Physiology of the Sense Organs), a literary establishment often credited with the international advancement of psychological study.
Ebbinghaus was also the pioneer of sentence completion exercises. It was developed by to gauge the mental abilities of schoolchildren in sentence structuring. He also discovered optical illusion which occurs due to the relative size perception. This concept is used in conducting studies on cognitive psychology. Ebbinghaus was an accomplished psychologist who laid firm foundations for intelligence testing through his ground breaking researches on memory. In 1909, Ebbinghaus succumbed to pneumonia, dying in Breslau at the age of 59 on February 26th, 1909.
Contribution: Memory and Forgetting Curve
Explanation:
Hermann Ebbinghaus began to study human memory, the study of higher psychological processes through introspective self-observation approaches dominated the field. Precise scientific study was essentially limited to tests of physiological processes such as reaction time and sensory perception Ebbinghaus’s systematic and careful approach to the study of memory changed this paradigm by demonstrating that higher cognitive processes could also be studied scientifically. The methodology he developed for doing this brought the study of memory out of philosophy and into the realm of empirical science. Some of his innovations, such as the use of the nonsense syllable, are still valuable tools in 21st century learning and memory research. Like his peers who used introspective methodology, Ebbinghaus used his own experiences as a source of data. However, his approach to self-study was carefully controlled; the conditions of data collection followed procedures that were commonly used in research in the so-called “hard” sciences.
Procedure:
To test his own memory, he first created 2300 nonsense syllables, each consisting of two consonants separated by a vowel (e.g. nog, baf). These syllables were necessary for a controlled experiment because they were presumably free of any previously learned associations. He learned lists of these syllables until he had reached a pre-established criterion (perfect recall), and then recorded how many he was able to retain after specific time intervals. He also noted how many trials were necessary for relearning after the syllables had been forgotten. His first set of trials took place over the course of one year (1879-1880) and he replicated the experiments three years later. Ebbinghaus’s methodological innovations would have been enough to secure a place for him in the history of psychology, but his research also made several important contributions to scientific knowledge base.

Conclusion:
Memory can be affected by the type of material to be learned. Individuals tend memorize familiar and meaningful materials (words, events, objects, etc.) easier than unfamiliar and meaningless ones. Because forgetting occurs right after learning and slows down overtime, repetition is a key to memorization.
Application:
* Using the curve to predict memory efficiency and promote memory techniques. * Ebbinghaus’ empirical findings have important consequences for the development of pedagogical practice and also provide a theoretical basis to guide the study of individual differences in human intelligence.

* http://www.famouspsychologists.org/hermann-ebbinghaus/ * www.intelltheory.com/ebbinghaus.shtml_3/ Edward L. Thorndike | | Born | Edward Lee Thorndike
August 31, 1874
Williamsburg, Massachusetts, U.S. | Died | August 9, 1949 (aged 74)
Montrose, New York | Nationality | American | Education | Roxbury Latin, Wesleyan, Harvard, Columbia | Known for | Father of modern educational psychology, Law of Effect | Title | Psychologist, Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University | Edward Lee Thorndike was a son of a Methodist minister in Lowell, Massachusetts. He became an American pioneer in comparative psychology and was a typical late 19th century American scientist. He grew up in an age when scientific psychology was establishing its place in academic institutions and attracting college graduates, Thorndike being one of them. He became interested in the field of psychology after reading William Jame's "Principles of Psychology" and after graduating from Weslyan University enrolled at Harvard in order to study under James. His research interest was with children, but his initial study of "mind reading" led to their unavailability for future study. So, he developed projects that examined learning in animals to satisfy requirements for his courses and degree. He completed a study of maze learning in chicks, but for personal reasons, Thorndike did not complete his education at Harvard. Cattell invited him to go to Columbia University where he continued his animal research. He switched from chicks to cats and dogs, and made good use out of his own designed "puzzled boxes." In 1898, he was awarded the doctorate for his thesis, "Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of the Associative Processes in Animals", in which he concluded that an experimental approach is the only way to understand learning and established his famous "Law of Effect".
Upon graduation, Thorndike returned to his initial interest, Educational Psychology. In 1899, after a year of unhappy, initial employment at the College for Women of Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, he became an instructor in psychology at Teachers College at Columbia University, where he remained for the rest of his career, studying human learning, education, and mental testing.
Edward L. Throndike's pioneer investigations in the fields of human and animal learning are among the most influential in the history of Psychology. In 1912, he was recognized for his accomplishments and elected president of the American Psychological Association. In 1934, the American Association for the Advancement of Science elected Thorndike as the only social scientist to head this professional organization. Thorndike retired in 1939, but worked actively until his death ten years later.
Contribution: Instrumental Conditioning, Law of Effect and the Puzzle Box
Explanation:
Thorndike formulated the laws of learning, namely: law of readiness, law of exercise, and law of effect. Law of readiness means that an organism must be ready or prepared to learn; otherwise learning can be difficult. Law of exercise is exemplified by the statement “CORRECT practice makes perfect”. This principle states that we learn by doing and we forget by not doing. The law of effect, probably the most important and well-known, states that the consequences of a response can either strengthen or weaken the neural connection between the two. Learning is strengthened each time a response is followed by a satisfying state of affairs. The law of effect, also connectionism, is the association between sense impressions and impulse to action. He believed that there is a neural bond between the stimulus (S) and response (R). Thorndike pioneered the study of instrumental conditioning in which learning is aided and is through trial-and-error.
Procedure:
Thorndike’s puzzle box
Thorndike’s puzzle box
Thorndike’s method was to set up a problem for an animal to solve. In his best-known trial-and-error experiment, he placed a hungry cat inside a box with a latched door. The cat could open the door—and escape from the box—only by performing some simple action such as pulling a loop of wire or pressing a lever and once outside the box, the cat was rewarded with a small portion of food. Then the cat was placed back into the box for another trial so that the procedure could be repeated over and over until the task of escaping the box was mastered.
On the first trial, the cats had no notion of how to escape—and so they meowed loudly and clawed and bit at their surroundings. This continued for several minutes until finally, purely by accident, the animal hit upon the correct response. Subsequent trials brought gradual improvement, and the animal took less and less time to produce the response that unlocked the door. By the time the training sessions were completed, the cats’ behavior was almost unrecognizable from what it had been at the start. When placed in the box, they immediately approached the wire loop or the lever, yanked it or pressed it with business-like dispatch, and hurried through the open door to enjoy the well-deserved reward.
Thorndike explains that, with repeated trials, the cat spends more time around the latch, which increases the chances of finding and hitting the latch and more quickly escaping to get the fish. To explain why a cat’s random trial-and-error behaviors gradually turned into efficient, goal-directed behaviors, Thorndike formulated the law of effect. Cats solved the problem not by a flash of insight but by a gradual process of trial and error. Nevertheless, here was a clear example of learning. Its characteristic feature was that the animal’s actions were critical (instrumental) in producing a certain outcome. It displayed contingency between a preceding stimulus, a pattern of behavior (or response) and a subsequent state of the environment (the effect or outcome). In this respect, instrumental learning is fundamentally different from classical conditioning, in which the animal’s response plays no role in determining the outcome.
Conclusion:
We learn by trial and error, or by rewards and punishment. These elements motivate us to perform certain actions that form behavior. Also, problems cannot be solved in an instant but with the gradual process of trial-and-error until the correct solution comes.
Application:
Thorndike’s findings were significant because they suggested that the law of effect was a basic law of learning and provided an objective procedure to study it. Thorndike emphasized on studying the consequences of goal-directed behavior. * www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/thorndike.htm * Plotnik, Rod and Haig Kouyoumdjian. Introduction to Psychology, Ninth Edition. California, USA: Wadsworth. 2011. B. F. Skinner | | Born | Burrhus Frederic Skinner
March 20, 1904
Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, | Died | August 18, 1990 (aged 86)
Cambridge, Massachusetts | Nationality | American | Fields | Psychology, linguistics, philosophy | Institutions | University of Minnesota
Indiana University
Harvard University | Known for | Operant conditioning | Awards | National Medal of Science (1968) |
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born and raised in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. He had one brother who was 2 years younger than he, who died at the age of 16 from a cerebral aneurism. Skinner enjoyed working with his hands, many of his childhood days were spent building things such as rollerscooters, steerable wagons and sleds. And, he invented things. For example, he and a friend gathered elderberries to sell them door to door. He constructed a flotation system which separated ripe from green berries. And, he even worked on the idea of a perpetual motion machine. Skinner went through all twelve grades in one school building, graduating with only eight other students.
He developed an interest art and literature through drawing in the younger grades and later reading Shakespeare. He earned his BA in English and hoped to be a writer. However, this profession did not work out, and at the age of 24, he applied and was accepted to the psychology graduate program at Harvard. Here he happened to meet William Crozier in the physiology department. Young Skinner was taken by Crozier, an ardent advocate for animal studies and behavioral measures, and began to tailor his studies according to Crozier's highly functional, behaviorist framework. Working across disciplines, he integrated methods and theories from psychology and physiology and developed new ways of recording and analyzing data. Skinner also published books on self-therapy (Beyond Freedom and Dignity on 1971, and Enjoying Old Age on 1983). He died on August 18, 1990.
Contribution: Operant Conditioning and the Skinner Box
Explanation:
Operant Conditioning
Skinner believed that we do have such a thing as a “mind”, but that it is simply more productive to study observable behavior rather than internal mental events. Skinner believed that the best way to understand behavior is to look at the causes of an action and its consequences. He called this approach operant conditioning. Skinner's theory of operant conditioning was based on the work of Thorndike. The heart of operant conditioning is the effect of consequences on behavior. Thinking back to the section on classical conditioning, learning a reflex really depends on what comes before the response- the unconditioned stimulus and what will become the conditioned stimulus. These two stimuli are the antecedent stimuli. But in operant conditioning, learning depends on what happens after the response-the consequence. In a way, operant conditioning could be summed up as this: “If I do this, what’s in for me?”
Procedure:
Skinner Box Experiment
One of his ground-breaking inventions was the operant conditioning chamber, which is also called Skinner box. The Skinner box consisted of a lever, a food tray and a rat which can feed itself by pressing the lever. Each time a rat was put into that box it would run and sniff around for the food eventually identifying the correct spot, pressing the lever and getting the food pellet. After the first successful attempt, the rat got used to the box and hit many successful attempts resulting in getting food as a reward until it satiated its hunger. BF Skinner formulated the principle of reinforcement through this experiment. Skinner’s studies indicated and confirmed his belief that human free will is not a phenomenal reality but an indicator of results produced by the actions performed.

Conclusion: It is through reinforcement that learning occurs. Behavior can be changed through reinforcement or punishment. If reinforced, the behavior will most likely occur and continue, but if punished, the chances that the behavior will occur again decreases.
Application:
The therapy technique of behavior modification resulted from Skinner’s theories on reinforcement and behaviorism that can be applied using these points: * State goals (aims for the study) - That is, clarify exactly what changes are to be brought about. * Monitor behavior (log conditions) - Keep track of behavior so that one can see whether the desired effects are occurring. * Reinforce desired behavior (give reward for proper behavior) * Reduce incentives to perform undesirable behavior

* Plotnik, Rod and Haig Kouyoumdjian. Introduction to Psychology, Ninth Edition. California, USA: Wadsworth. 2011. John B. Watson | | Born | John Broadus Watson
January 9, 1878
Travelers Rest, South Carolina | Died | January 9, 1878(aged 80)
New York City, New York | Nationality | American | Fields | Psychology | Known for | Founding Behaviorism | Spouse: | Mary Ickes WatsonRosalie Rayner |
John Broadus Watson was born to a poor family in Greenville, South Carolina; his mother was very religious while his father did not follow the same rules of living as his mother. He drank, had extra-marital affairs, and left in 1891. John rebelled and turned to violence but was able to turn his life back around with the help of his teacher, Gordon Moore, at Furman University. With Moore's help, he was able to succeed and moved on to the University of Chicago. He became interest in the field of comparative psychology and studying animals. Eventually John married Mary Ickes from the University of Chicago. Together they had two children, Mary and John.
In 1903 he received his doctorate and became an associate professor of psychology, and later on the director of the psychological laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. Watson's career in academic psychology was cut short by an affair with one of his research assistants, Rosalie Rayner, and subsequent divorce from Mary Ickes. Watson married Rayner soon after the divorce, and the much publicized scandal led administrative officials at Hopkins to ask for Watson's resignation. They had two more children, James and William. John focused much of his study of behaviorism on his children. After Rosalie's death, his already poor relationships with his children grew worse and he became a recluse. After leaving Johns Hopkins University, Watson went into the advertising business. He wanted to use his scientific theories of behaviorism and the emotions of fear, rage, and love to improve the effects of advertising on the "animal" or what we know as consumers. He lived on a farm in Connecticut until his death in 1958.
Contribution: Behaviorism, “Little Albert” Experiment
Procedure:
One of Watson’s most famous experiments was the Little Albert experiment, which explored classical conditioning using a nine month-old baby boy.
In the experiment, Watson together with his assistant Rosalie Rayner demonstrated that Little Albert could be conditioned to fear something, like a white rat, when no such fear existed initially. Watson combined a loud noise with the appearance of the rat, in order to create fear in the baby. The experiment was highly controversial and would likely be considered unethical by today's research standards.
After only seven pairings of the noise with the rat, every time the baby saw the rat, he started to cry. In conditioning terms, the loud noise was the UCS, the fear of the noise UCR, the white rat became the CS, and the fear of the rat (the phobia) was the CR. The learning of phobias is a very good example of a certain type of classical conditioning, the conditioned emotional response. Conditioned emotional responses are some of the easiest forms of classical conditioning to accomplish and our lives are full of them.
Conclusion:
The Little Albert experiment proved that fear could be influenced by classical conditioning. Fear is learned when we associate a frightening experience with an object that was not initially fearful.
It’s easy to think of fears people might have that are conditioned or learned: a child’s fear of a dentist’s chair, a puppy’s fear of a rolled newspaper, or the fear of dogs that is often shown by a person who has been attacked by a dog in the past.
Application:
Behaviorism remains a popular approach for animal training. Some mental health professionals use behaviorist principles to condition away phobias and fears. In addition, advertisers frequently use behaviorist conditioning to encourage consumers to purchase products.

* www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/watson.htm * Plotnik, Rod and Haig Kouyoumdjian. Introduction to Psychology, Ninth Edition. California, USA: Wadsworth. 2011. Edward Chace Tolman | | Born | April 14, 1886West Newton,Massachusetts | Died | November 19, 1959
Berkeley, California | Nationality | American | Fields | Psychologist | Known for | Cognitive PsychologyPurposive Behaviorism |
Edward Chance Tolman was an American psychologist who made significant contributions to the studies of learning and motivation. Considered a cognitive behaviorist today, he developed his own behaviorism when the likes of Watson were dominating the field. Tolman was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1886. He remained there as he grew up and was educated in the Newton Public Schools. He lived in a family of "upper middle" socioeconomic status and had a father who was the president of a manufacturing company. His brother, Richard, was five years older than he was and both he and Richard were expected to go into the family business.
He and his brother decided to seek academic careers, against their family's wishes. Both went on to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Richard pursued a career in academics, ultimately becoming a world-renowned theoretical chemist and physicist, and Edward initially sought a bachelor's degree in electrochemistry. Tolman changed the course of his career during his senior year after reading the works of William James. He decided to become a philosopher. After graduation in 1911, he attended summer school and took a course in philosophy and psychology. He concluded that he wasn't quite smart enough for philosophy and that psychology was more to his liking.
That coming fall, Tolman enrolled at the Harvard Graduate School as a philosophy and psychology graduate student. At that time, the disciplines were a combined department. A course in ethics, taught by Ralph Barton Perry, as well as readings of McDougall, eventually led to his interest in motivation. After his first year as a graduate student, he went to Giessen in Germany to study for his PhD examination in German (at that time all PhD examinations were conducted in French, German, or Russian). It was in Germany where he was introduced to Gestalt psychology.
Upon returning to Harvard from Germany, Tolman studied in the laboratory researching nonsense syllable learning. His PhD dissertation was a study of retroactive inhibition. He received his doctorate in 1915. He later returned to Giessen to learn more about Gestalt psychology during the fall of 1923. Tolman became an instructor at Northwestern University and taught for three years after receiving his doctoral degree. He described himself as being self-conscious, inarticulate, and fearful of his classes. His pacifist views led him to lose his job when, during World War I, he was called to the Dean for anti-war statements reported in a pacifist student publication. Tolman went on to become an instructor at the University of California in Berkeley in the fall of 1918 where he remained for the rest of his life.
Contribution: Purposive Behaviorism, Cognitive Learning
Explanation:
Purposive behaviorism is a branch of psychology that was introduced by Edward C. Tolman. It combines the objective study of behavior while also considering the purpose or goal of behavior. Tolman thought that learning developed from knowledge about the environment and how the organism relates to its environment. Tolman’s goal was to identify the complex cognitive mechanisms and purposes that guided behavior. The main difference between behaviorism and Tolman's purposive behaviorism is that behavior is goal oriented. Tolman argues that learning that involves mental processes such as attention and memory, which may or may not involve external rewards, not solely based on rewards.
Procedure:
Tolman, one of the early cognitive psychologists, introduced this idea when doing an experiment involving rats and mazes. In Tolman's experiment, a rat was placed in a cross shaped maze and allowed to explore it. After this initial exploration, the rat was placed at one arm of the cross and food was placed at the next arm to the immediate right. The rat was conditioned to this layout and learned to turn right at the intersection in order to get to the food. When placed at different arms of the cross maze however, the rat still went in the correct direction to obtain the food because of the initial cognitive map it had created of the maze. Rather than just deciding to turn right at the intersection no matter what, the rat was able to determine the correct way to the food no matter where in the maze it was placed.
Tolman wondered what the rat had learned when he quickly discovered how to go through the maze to get to the food. Tolman believed that the rat had developed a cognitive map of his maze, with knowledge of where the food was located. With this research, he believed this experiment supported his notion that this learning was not rooted in stimulus-response connections but in the nervous system of sets which are to function like cognitive maps. Also, Tolman assumed that these cognitive maps vary from a narrow strip of variety to a broader, comprehensive variety. Tolman showed in his study that the rats exhibited a capability of latent learning. The results showed that the rats used problem solving because of the absence of reinforcement, which could not have been resolved by S-R representations.
Conclusion:
Learning involves mental processes and is not solely based on rewards or punishment. It may not be instantly exhibited but is stored. Cognitive maps are important because they help us remember location and direction.
Application:
Both in animals and humans, cognitive map is likely to show where they go and the routes used. Asking people to sketch a map of a location is a way to find out what its salient features are for them. A cognitive map can show what is important, and by omission, reveal what is less important. This procedure could be used by city planners or landscape architects who want to know more about how a space is seen or used.
Cognitive maps can provide insight into the worlds of those with sensory deficits and physical handicaps. The maps of blind people make more use of sound and touch cues than do those of sighted people. People in wheelchairs emphasize physical barriers in their maps, obstacles that are missing from the maps of those able to move more freely. * http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/behaviorism/Tolman.html * http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/tolman.htm * Del Rosario, Maria Theresa, et al. General Psychology. Malabon City, Metro Manila: Mutya Publishing House. 2012. Wolfgang Köhler | | Born | January 22, 1887Reval (now Tallinn), Governorate of Estonia, Russian Empire | Died | June 11, 1967Enfield, New Hampshire | Nationality | German | Fields | Psychologist | Known for | Gestalt psychologyInsight Learning |
Wolfgang Kohler was one of the founders of Gestalt psychology along with Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka. He is also famous for his description of insight learning which he tested on animals, particularly chimpanzees.
Kohler was born on January 21, 1887 in Revel, Estonia. His family moved to Germany and settled in Wolfenbuttell when he was six years old. Between 1905 and 1907, he attended the universities of Tubingen, Bonn, and Berlin. In 1909, Kohler received his Ph.D. under Carl Stumpf. During the same year, he began to work at the Psychological Institute in Frankfort-am-Main where he met Wertheimer and Koffka. He was appointed director of the Anthropoid Research Station on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Remaining on the island during W.W.I, Kohler began to study problem solving and general intelligence of a group of African chimpanzees. In 1917, he published The Mentality of Apes which summarized the results of his insight studies. Upon his return to Germany, Kohler took the position as director of the Psychological Institute at the University of Berlin. During 1925-1926, he served as a visiting professor at Clark University in the United States.
In 1934-1935, Kohler gave the William James Memorial lecture at Harvard. He immigrated to the United States in 1935 because of Nazi interference with his work. From 1935 to 1955, he was a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College. Kohler was appointed president of the American Psychological Association in 1959. In 1958, he became a research professor at Dartmouth University until his death on June 11, 1967, in Enfield, NH.
Contribution: Insight Learning
Explanation:
Insight Learning is a kind of learning in which solution to a problem comes suddenly as one discerns the pattern or interrelationship of one aspect of the situation with another.
Procedure:
Kohler attempted to prove that animals arrive at a solution through insight rather than trial and error. His first experiments with dogs and cats involved food being placed on the other side of a barrier. The dogs and cats went right towards the food instead of moving away from the goal to circumvent the barrier like chimps that were presented with this situation. Kohler's experiments consisted of placing chimps in an enclosed area and presenting them with a reward that was out of reach, such as bananas. Kohler used four chimps in his experiments, Chica, Grande, Konsul, and Sultan. In one experiment, Kohler placed bananas outside Sultan's cage and two bamboo sticks inside his cage. Neither stick was long enough to reach the bananas so the only way to reach the bananas was to put the sticks together. Kohler demonstrated to Sultan the solution by putting his fingers into the end of one of the sticks. However, this did not help Sultan solve the problem. After some contemplation, Sultan put the two sticks together and created a stick long enough to reach the bananas outside his cage.
Another study involved bananas suspended from the roof. The chimps first tried to knock them down by using a stick. Then, the chimps learned to stack boxes on top of one another to climb up to the bananas.
Conclusion:
Through this experiment we have found out that insight-learning is based on the animal perceiving the solution, it is not dependent on rewards and once you have solved a problem it is easier to solve a similar one.
Application:
Complex problems require higher learning and solutions are reached only by application of insight. All new ideas and concepts, inventions and discoveries are the result of insightful learning. Teaching and learning of mathematics and science demand higher intellectual exercises.
Learning by conditioning is common to all animals and human beings and useful for early education. But learning by insight is suitable only for intelligent creatures both human and animals and useful for higher learning. It is a kind of learning done by observation, by perceiving the relationship and understanding the situation.

* http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/kohler.htm * http://principlesoflearning.wordpress.com/dissertation/chapter-3-literature-review-2/the-cognitive-perspective/insight-learning-wolfgang-kohler-1925/ * Plotnik, Rod and Haig Kouyoumdjian. Introduction to Psychology, Ninth Edition. California, USA: Wadsworth. 2011. Robert M. Gagné | | Born | Robert Mills GagnéAugust 21, 1916 | Died | April 28, 2002 | Nationality | American | Fields | Psychologist | Known for | Conditions of LearningEducational Psychology |
Robert Gagné is an education psychologist best known for his "Conditions of Learning" which identified the mental conditions of learning and was published in 1965. He was born in North Andover, Maine in 1916 and died in 2002. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology from Brown University in 1940. He went on to work as a professor for Connecticut College, Penn State University and Florida State University. He also served as Director of the U.S. Air Force Perceptual and Motor Skill Laboratory where he began developing the principles of his learning theory. Gagné pioneered the science of instruction during World War II. He went on to develop a series of studies and works that simplified and explained what he and others believed to be 'good instruction.' Gagné was also involved in applying concepts of instructional theory to the design of computer-based training and multimedia-based learning.
He is considered to be a major contributor to the systematic approach of instructional design. Gagne’s learning theory is summarized as The Gagne Assumption and consists of five types of learning (each requires a different type of instruction) and nine events of instruction. He also identified a hierarchy of eight conditions to learning.
Contribution: Conditions of Learning
Explanation:
Gagné's work is sometimes summarized as the Gagné assumption. The assumption is that different types of learning exist, and that different instructional conditions are most likely to bring about these different types of learning.
9 Events of Instruction

Categories of Learning

Categories of Learning

Hierarchy of Eight Conditions to Learning 1. Signal learning: the learner makes a general response to a signal 2. Stimulus-response learning: the learner makes a precise response to a signal 3. Chaining: the connection of a set of individual stimulus & responses in a sequence. 4. Verbal association: the learner makes associations using verbal connections 5. Discrimination learning: the learner makes different responses to different stimuli that are somewhat alike 6. Concept learning: the learner develops the ability to make a generalized response based on a class of stimuli 7. Rule learning: a rule is a chain of concepts linked to a demonstrated behavior 8. Problem solving: the learner discovers a combination of previously learned rules and applies them to solve a novel situation

Hierarchy of Eight Conditions to Learning 9. Signal learning: the learner makes a general response to a signal 10. Stimulus-response learning: the learner makes a precise response to a signal 11. Chaining: the connection of a set of individual stimulus & responses in a sequence. 12. Verbal association: the learner makes associations using verbal connections 13. Discrimination learning: the learner makes different responses to different stimuli that are somewhat alike 14. Concept learning: the learner develops the ability to make a generalized response based on a class of stimuli 15. Rule learning: a rule is a chain of concepts linked to a demonstrated behavior 16. Problem solving: the learner discovers a combination of previously learned rules and applies them to solve a novel situation

Conclusion:
Learning is sequential and builds on prior knowledge. It is a process with different levels and stages that requires different approaches. As seen in Gagne’s framework, there is no such thing as a single type of learning because it occurs in different aspects of behavior.
Application:
While Gagne's theory covers all aspects of learning, the focus of the theory is on intellectual skills. The theory has been applied to the design of instruction in all domains. In its original formulation, special attention was given to military training settings. Gagne addresses the role of instructional technology in learning.
Gagne's instructional theory is widely used in the design of instruction by instructional designers in many settings, and its continuing influence in the field of educational technology can be seen cited in prominent journals in the field.

* http://www2.rgu.ac.uk/celt/pgcerttlt/how/how4a.htm Albert Bandura | | Born | December 4, 1925
Mundare, Alberta | Nationality | Canadian/American | Fields | Psychology, Philosophy of Action | Institutions | Stanford University | Alma mater | University of British Columbia
University of Iowa | Known for | Social Cognitive TheoryObservational Learning
Bobo doll experiment | Influenced | Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology |
Albert Bandura was born on December 4, 1925 in Alberta, Canada. His parents were Polish wheat farmers. He went to a small high school with only 20 students and 2 teachers. In 1949 Bandura received his B.A. from the University of British Columbia. Bandura then went on to the University of Iowa where he obtained his doctorate in 1952. Upon graduation Bandura did a clinical internship at the Wichita Kansas Guidance Center. The following year, in 1953, Bandura accepted a teaching position at Stanford where he continues to teach today. While at the University of Iowa Bandura's interests in learning and behaviorism began to grow.
Bandura has done a great deal of work on social learning throughout his career and is famous for his "Social Learning Theory" which he has recently renamed, "Social Cognitive Theory". Bandura is seen by many as a cognitive psychologist because of his focus on motivational factors and self-regulatory mechanisms that contribute to a person's behavior, rather than just environmental factors. This focus on cognition is what differentiates social cognitive theory from Skinner's purely behavioristic viewpoint.
Albert Bandura focuses on the acquisition of behaviors. He believes that people acquire behaviors through the observation of others, and then imitate what they have observed. Several studies involving television commercials and videos containing violent scenes have supported this theory of modeling.
In 1986 Bandura wrote Social Foundations of Thought and Action which provides a framework of his social cognitive theory. In addition he has written many articles and a total of nine books on various topics in psychology. Bandura has made important contributions to the field of psychology, as seen in the many honors. In 1998 he received the Thorndike Award for Distinguished Contributions of Psychology to Education from the American Psychological Association.
Contribution: Social Cognitive Theory
Explanation:
Social Cognitive Theory
Social cognitive theory is a view of learning that emphasizes the ability to learn by observing a model or receiving instructions, without firsthand experience by the learner. Bandura has conducted many studies involving observational learning, or modeling. The modeling process includes four steps: * Attention- In order for an individual to learn anything, he or she must pay attention to the features of the modeled behavior. Many factors contribute to the amount of attention one pays to the modeled activities, such as the characteristics of both the observer and the person being observed and competing stimuli. * Memory (Retention) - If an individual is to be influenced by observing behaviors he or she needs to remember the activities that were modeled at one time or another. Imagery and language aid in this process of retaining information. Humans store the behaviors they observe in the form of mental images or verbal descriptions, and are then able to recall the image or description later to reproduce the activity with their own behavior. * Imitation (Reproduction)- Reproduction involves converting symbolic representations into appropriate actions. Behavioral reproduction is accomplished by organizing one's own responses in accordance with the modeled pattern. A person's ability to reproduce a behavior improves with practice. * Motivation- To imitate a behavior, the person must have some motivating factor behind it, such as incentives that a person envisions. These imagined incentives act as reinforcers. Negative reinforcers discourage the continuation of the modeled activity
The Bobo Doll Experiment
Procedure:
In one part of the room, preschool children were involved in their own art projects. In another part of the room, an adult got up and, for the next 10 minutes, kicked, hit, and yelled (“Hit him! Kick him!”) at a large, inflated Bobo doll. Some children watched the model’s aggressive behaviors, while other children did not. Each child was later subjected to a frustrating situation and then placed in a room with toys, including the Bobo doll. Without the child’s knowledge, researchers observed the child’s behaviors.
Children who had observed the model’s aggressive attacks on the Bobo doll also kicked, hit, and yelled (“Hit him! Kick him!”) at the doll. Through observational learning alone, these children learned the model’s aggressive behaviors and were now performing them. In comparison, children who hadn’t observed the model’s behaviors didn’t hit or kick the Bobo doll after they had been mildly frustrated.
Result:
Bandura found that the children exposed to the aggressive model were more likely to act in physically aggressive ways than those who were not exposed to the aggressive model. The results concerning gender differences strongly supported Bandura's prediction that children are more influenced by same-sex models.
Bandura also found that the children exposed to the aggressive model were more likely to act in verbally aggressive ways than those who were not exposed to the aggressive model. In addition, the results indicated that the boys and girls who observed the non-aggressive model exhibited far less non-imitative mallet aggression than in the control group, which had no model.
The evidence strongly supports that males have a tendency to be more aggressive than females. When all instances of aggression are tallied, males exhibited 270 aggressive instances compared to 128 aggressive instances exhibited by females.
Conclusion:
Individuals, particularly children, learn social behavior such as aggression through watching the behavior of another person and adapting the behavior as their own. It is also found that individuals chose who or which types of models they are likely to imitate, which are usually the same-sex.

Application:
Bandura's research on observational learning raises an important question: If children were likely to imitate aggressive actions viewed on a film clip in a lab setting, doesn't it also stand to reason that they will imitate the violence they observe in popular films, television programs, and video games? The debate over this topic has raged on for years, with parents, educators, politicians, and movie and video game makers weighing in with their opinions on the effects of media violence on child behavior. Bandura’s observational theory suggests that the media has an impact on viewers, whether on violence or positive behavior.

* http://psychology.about.com/od/developmentalpsychology/a/sociallearning.htm * Plotnik, Rod and Haig Kouyoumdjian. Introduction to Psychology, Ninth Edition. California, USA: Wadsworth. 2011. Benjamin Samuel Bloom | | Born | February 21, 1913
Lansford, Pennsylvania | Died | September 13, 1999 (aged 86)
Chicago | Nationality | American | Education | Ph.D. in Education | Occupation | Educational psychologist | Known for | Bloom’s Taxonomy |
Benjamin S. Bloom was born on 21 February 1913 in Lansford, Pennsylvania, and died on 13 September 1999. He received a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1935 and a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Chicago in March 1942. He became a staff member of the Board of Examinations at the University of Chicago in 1940 and served in that capacity until 1943, at which time he became university examiner, a position he held until 1959. In this position, he developed tests to determine if undergraduates had mastered material necessary for them to receive their bachelor’s degrees.
His initial appointment as an instructor in the Department of Education at the University of Chicago began in 1944 and he was eventually appointed Charles H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in 1970. He served as educational adviser to the governments of Israel, India and numerous other nations. In 1948, he and a group of colleagues with the American Psychological Association began discussions that led to the taxonomy of educational goals, a system of classification that frequently is called “Bloom’s Taxonomy.”
His 1956 book on the subject, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain, deals with knowledge and the development of intellectual skills. Bloom set forth a hierarchy of learning, beginning with factual knowledge and leading through comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The second book in the series, for which he was a co-author, Taxonomy of Education Objections, Volume II: The Affective Domain, was published in 1964. It helped educators understand the importance of attitudes in the development of learning. Also in 1964, Bloom published Stability and Change in Human Characteristics. That work, based on a number of longitudinal studies, led to an upsurge of interest in early childhood education, including the creation of the Head Start program.
Bloom showed that many physical and mental characteristics of adults can be predicted through testing done while they are still children. For example, he demonstrated that 50 percent of the variations in intelligence at age 17 can be estimated at age 4. He also found that early experiences in the home have a great impact on later learning. Bloom summarized his work in a 1980 book titled All Our Children Learning, which showed from evidence, gathered in the United States and abroad that virtually all children can learn at a high level when appropriate practices are undertaken in the home and school. In the later years of his career, Bloom turned his attention to talented youngsters and led a research team that produced the book Developing Talent in Young People, published in 1985.
Contribution: Bloom’s Taxonomy (Taxonomy of Learning)
Explanation:
Benjamin Bloom headed a group of cognitive psychologists at the University of Chicago that developed a taxonomic hierarchy of cognitive-driven behavior deemed important to learning and to measurable capability. (For example, one can measure an objective that begins with the verb "describe", unlike one that begins with the verb "understand".) Bloom’s taxonomy provides a structure in which to categorize instructional objectives and instructional assessment.
Conclusion:
Bloom’s taxonomy is an effective tool for determining which process in learning must be emphasized by instructors or teachers. It eliminates bias and one-dimensional teaching, thus, more complex types of learning is given higher merit.
Application:
Bloom designed the taxonomy in order to help teachers and instructional designers to classify instructional objectives and goals. The taxonomy relies on the idea that not all learning objectives and outcomes have equal merit. In the absence of a classification system (a taxonomy), teachers and instructional designers may choose, for example, to emphasize memorization of facts (which makes for easier testing) rather than emphasizing other (and likely more important) learned capabilities.
Bloom’s taxonomy in theory helps teachers better prepare objectives and, from there, derive appropriate measures of learned capability and higher order thinking skills. Curriculum-design, usually a state (governmental) practice, did not reflect the intent of such taxonomy until the late 1990s.

* http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html Neal E. Miller | | Born | August 3, 1909
Milwaukee, Wisconsin | Died | March 23, 2002 (aged 92)
Hamden, Connecticut | Nationality | American | Alma mater | University of Washington
Stanford University
Yale University | Known for | Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis and Biofeedback |
Neal E. Miller was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on August 3, 1909. He received a B.S. degree from the University of Washington (1931), an M.S. from Stanford University (1932), and a Ph.D. degree in Psychology from Yale University (1935). Miller was a social science research fellow at the Institute of Psychoanalysis, Vienna for one year (1935-1936) before returning to Yale as a faculty member in 1936. He first worked in research in psychology, and later as a researcher in the University's Institute of Human Relations.
During World War II, Miller served as an officer in charge of research in the Army Air Corps' Psychological Research Unit #1 in Nashville, Tennessee. After that he was director of the Psychological Research Project at the headquarters of the Flying Training Command in Randolph Field, Texas. In 1950, Miller returned to Yale to become a professor of psychology and in 1952 he was appointed the James Rowland Angell Professor of Psychology. He spent a total of 30 years at Yale (1936-1966). In 1966, Miller transferred to Rockefeller University, where he spent an additional 15 years of service. He became Professor Emeritus at Rockefeller in 1981 and Research Affiliate at Yale in 1985. He was President of the American Psychological Association from 1960-61, and received the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1959 and the APA Citation for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology in 1991. He also received the National Medal of Science. Miller was also president of the Society for Neurosciences, the Biofeedback Society of America and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine.
Contribution: Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis and Biofeedback
Explanation
Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis:
Frustration–aggression hypothesis is a theory of aggression proposed by John Dollard, Neal E. Miller et al. in 1939. The theory says that aggression is the result of blocking, or frustrating, a person's efforts to attain a goal. It attempts to explain why people scapegoat (blame a single person or group for the wrongdoings of many). It attempts to give an explanation as to the cause of violence. The theory says that frustration causes aggression, but when the source of the frustration cannot be challenged, the aggression gets displaced onto an innocent target.
There are many examples of this. If a man is disrespected and humiliated at his work, but cannot respond to this for fear of losing his job, he may go home and take his anger and frustration out on his family. This theory is also used to explain riots and revolutions. Both are caused by poorer and more deprived sections of society who may express their bottled up frustration and anger through violence.
Biofeedback:
Neal Miller, a psychologist and neuroscientist who worked and studied at Yale University, is generally considered to be the father of modern-day biofeedback. In the 1950s, he came across the basic principles of biofeedback when doing animal experimentation conditioning the behavior of rats. His team found that by stimulating the pleasure centers of the rats' brains with electricity, it was possible to train rats to control phenomena ranging from their heart rates to their brainwaves. Until that point, it was believed that bodily processes like heart rate were under the control of the autonomic nervous system and not responsive to conscious effort. Miller proposed psychotherapy for aggression, frustration, or anxiety, in which people would learn more adaptive behaviors and unlearn maladaptive behaviors. Teaching relaxation techniques, coping skills, or effective discrimination of cues would be part of such therapy. “In 1961, when Neal Miller first suggested that the autonomic nervous system could be as susceptible to training as the voluntary nervous system, that people might learn to control their heart rate and bowel contractions just as they learned to walk or play tennis, his audiences were aghast. He was a respected researcher, director of a laboratory at Yale, but this was a kind of scientific heresy. Everyone 'knew' that the autonomic nervous system was precisely that: automatic, beyond our control.” - James S. Gordon, founder of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington.
Nonetheless, Miller was eventually able to prove his point, and biofeedback became gradually accepted in scientific circles as an effective therapy.
Conclusion:
Biofeedback is an effective treatment that involves manipulating involuntary processes and is particularly effective at treating conditions brought on by severe stress. Relaxation and mental techniques in biofeedback are used to alleviate pains and stress.
Application:
Miller was instrumental in the development of biofeedback. He discovered that even the autonomic nervous system could be susceptible to classical conditioning. His findings regarding voluntary control of autonomic systems were later disproven due to an inability to replicate his results.
Biofeedback is a technique that trains people to improve their health by controlling certain bodily processes that normally happen involuntarily, such as heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, and skin temperature. Electrodes attached to the skin measure these processes and display them on a monitor. With help from a biofeedback therapist, you can learn to change your heart rate or blood pressure, for example. At first you use the monitor to see your progress, but eventually you will be able to achieve success without the monitor or electrodes. Biofeedback is an effective therapy for many conditions, but it is primarily used to treat high blood pressure, tension headache, migraine headache, chronic pain, and urinary incontinence. * http://nealmiller.org/?page_id=82 * http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Neal_E._Miller Edwin Ray Guthrie | | Born | 9 January 1886
Lincoln, Nebraska | Died | 23 April 1959 (aged 73) | Known for | Law of Contiguity | Influences | Edward Thorndike |
Edwin Ray Guthrie was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. After graduating from high school, he attended the University of Nebraska where he obtained his bachelor’s degree in mathematics. He remained there and received his master’s degree in philosophy. Guthrie then taught mathematics at several high schools, while he worked on his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. After receiving his doctorate, he was hired as an instructor in the department of philosophy at the University of Washington. After five years, he moved to the psychology department where he remained for the remainder of his career. Dr. Guthrie was 33 years old when he made the transition from philosophy to psychology. He was the winner of the second gold medal awarded by the American Psychology Association for outstanding lifetime contributions. During World War II, he worked with the overseas branch as both a chief consultant and psychologist. He later became Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Washington. The Psychology Department at the University is in a building named Guthrie Hall. Dr. Guthrie made contributions in the philosophy of science, abnormal psychology, social psychology, educational psychology and learning theory. He is remembered best for his theory of learning based on association.
Contribution: Law of Contiguity
Explanation:
Guthrie's law of contiguity states that a combination of stimuli which has accompanied a movement will on its recurrence tend to be followed by that movement. He said that all learning is based on a stimulus-response association. Movements are small stimulus- response combinations. These movements make up an act. A learned behavior is a series of movements. It takes time for the movements to develop into an act. He believed that learning is incremental. Some behavior involves repetition of movements and what is learned are movements, not behaviors.

Guthrie stated that each movement produces stimuli and the stimuli then become conditioned. Every motion serves as a stimulus to many sense organs in muscles, tendons and joints. Stimuli which are acting at the time of a response become conditioners of that response. Movement-produced stimuli have become conditioners of the succession of movements. The movements form a series often referred to as a habit. Our movements are often classified as forms of conditioning or association. Some behavior involves the repetition of movements, so that conditioning can occur long after the original stimulus.
Guthrie rejected the law of frequency. He believed in one-trial learning. One-trial learning states that a stimulus pattern gains its full associative strength on the occasion of its first pairing with a response. He did not believe that learning is dependent on reinforcement. He defined reinforcement as anything that alters the stimulus situation for the learner. He rejected reinforcement because it occurs after the association between the stimulus and the response has occurred. He believed that learning is the process of establishing new stimuli as cues for some specified response.
Guthrie believed that the recency principle plays an integral role in the learning process. This principle states that which was done last in the presence of a set of stimuli will be that which is done when the stimulus combination occurs again. The stimulus-response connections tend to grow weaker with elapsed time.
Guthrie stated that forgetting is due to interference because the stimuli become associated with new responses. He believed that you can use sidetracking to change previous conditioning. This involves discovering the initial cues for the habit and associating other behavior with those cues. Sidetracking causes the internal associations to break up. It is easier to sidetrack than to break a habit. Breaking up a habit involves finding the cues that initiate the action and practicing another response to such cues.
Guthrie's law of contiguity states that a combination of stimuli which has accompanied a movement will on its recurrence tend to be followed by that movement. He said that all learning is based on a stimulus-response association. Guthrie rejected the law of frequency. He believed in one-trial learning. One-trial learning states that a stimulus pattern gains its full associative strength on the occasion of its first pairing with a response. He did not believe that learning is dependent on reinforcement. He defined reinforcement as anything that alters the stimulus situation for the learner. He rejected reinforcement because it occurs after the association between the stimulus and the response has occurred. He believed that learning is the process of establishing new stimuli as cues for some specified response.
Conclusion:
Learning is based on a stimulus-response action, that is, when a stimulus is presented, a response is likely to occur. This stimulus determines what we are to do, and these actions become behavior. That is why in order to break a habit which is a learned behavior, the simplest actions involved must be addressed first before the behavior is eliminated.
Application: Contiguity theory is intended to be a general theory of learning, although most of the research supporting the theory was done with animals. The theory applies to personality disorders and breaking habits.

* http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/guthrie.htm Clark Leonard Hull | | Born | May 24, 1884
Akron, New York, United States | Died | May 10, 1952 (aged 67)
New Haven, Connecticut, United States | Nationality | American | Fields | Psychology | Institutions | University of Wisconsin
Yale University | Alma mater | University of Michigan | Known for | Laws of Motivation |
Clark Hull grew up handicapped and contracted polio at the age of 24, yet he became one of the great contributors to psychology. His family was not well off so his education had to be stopped at times. Clark earned extra money through teaching. Originally Clark aspired to be a great engineer, but that was before he fell in love with the field of Psychology. By the age of 29 he graduated from Michigan University.
When Hull was 34 when he received his Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Wisconsin in 1918. Soon after graduation he became a member of the faculty at the University of Wisconsin, where he served for 10 years. Although one of his first experiments was an analytical study of the effects of tobacco on behavioral efficiency, his lifelong emphasis was on the development of objective methods for psychological studies designed to determine the inderlying principles of behavior.
Hull devoted the next 10 years to the study of hypnosis and suggestibility, and in 1933 he published Hypnosis and Suggestibility, while employed as a research professor at Yale University. This is where he developed his major contribution, an elaborate theory of behavior based on Pavlov's laws of conditioning. Pavlov provoked Hull to become greatly interested in the problem of conditioned reflexes and learning. In 1943 Hull published, Principles of Behavior, which presented a number of constructs in a detailed Theory of Behavior. He soon he became the most cited psychologist.

Contribution: Scientific Laws of Motivation and Behavior
Explanation:
Motivation and Reinforcement
Hull believed that human behavior is a result of the constant interaction between the organism and its environment. The environment provides the stimuli and the organism responds, all of which is observable. Yet there is a component that is not observable, the change or adaptation that the organism needs to make in order to survive within its environment. Hull explains, "when survival is in jeopardy, the organism is in a state of need (when the biological requirements for survival are not being met) so the organism behaves in a fashion to reduce that need". Simply, the organism behaves in such a way that reinforces the optimal biological conditions that are required for survival.
Hull viewed drive as a stimulus, arising from a tissue need, which in turn stimulates behavior. The strength of the drive is determined upon the length of the deprivation, or the intensity or strength of the resulting behavior. He believed the drive to be non-specific, which means that the drive does not direct behavior rather it functions to energize it. In addition this drive reduction is the reinforcement. Hull recognized that organisms were motivated by other forces, secondary reinforcements. This means that previously neutral stimuli may assume drive characteristics because they are capable of eliciting responses that are similar to those aroused by the original need state or primary drive. So learning must be taking place within the organism.
Hull based his theory around the concept of homeostasis, the idea that the body actively works to maintain a certain state of balance or equilibrium. For example, your body regulates its temperature in order to ensure that you do not become too hot or too cold. Hull believed that behavior was one of the ways that an organism maintains this balance. Based on this idea, Hull suggested that all motivation arises as a result of these biological needs. In his theory, Hull used the term drive to refer to the state of tension or arousal caused by biological or physiological needs. Thirst, hunger and the need for warmth are all examples of drives. A drive creates an unpleasant state; a tension that needs to be reduced.
Drive Reduction Theory
Hull's learning theory focuses mainly on the principle of reinforcement; when the drive is followed by a reduction of the need, the probability increases that in future similar situations the same stimulus will create the same prior response. If you have achieved homeostasis your motivation is 0, since you have no drives to reduce. If you are hungry, then your drive is increased to 1. If you are really hungry, your drive becomes 2. If you are thirsty your drive to satisfy the hunger and thirst becomes 3. As drives accumulate your overall motivation increases.
Reinforcement can be defined in terms of reduction of a primary need. Just as Hull believed that there were secondary drives, he also felt that there were secondary reinforcements. If the intensity of the stimulus is reduced as the result of a secondary or learned drive, it will act as a secondary reinforcement. The way to strengthen the S-R response is to increase the number of reinforcements, habit strength. He also stated that the link between the S-R relationship could be anything that might affect how an organism responds: learning, fatigue, disease, injury, motivation, etc.
Conclusion:
When an individual’s drive is satisfied, he is motivated to repeat the action that satisfied him. The key to motivation is identifying first the needs of an individual and promoting an environment or a behavior that satisfies them.
Application:
Although Hull was a great contributor to psychology, his theory was criticized for the lack of generalizability due to the way he defined his variables in such precise quantitative terms. But his theory is effective in explaining the biological drives and natural inclination of humans, and how these are satisfied by primary reinforcements. * http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesal/p/clark-hull.htm * http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/hull.htm