Lesson 3

Learning

Learning

To gain knowledge, comprehension, or mastery through experience or study.

It is also the relatively permanent change in behavior or in behavioral potentiality that results from experience and cannot be attributed to temporary body state such as those induced by illness.

Classical and Operant Conditioning and Social Learning

Different kinds of learning

Theory

Unsubstantiated hypothesis or speculation concerning reality that is not yet definitely known to be so.

It is also the set of conventions created by the theorists, which can be either useful or not.

Has the capacity to generate research by suggesting ideas or resistance as it may be referred to as the heuristic influence of the theory.

Formal and Empirical Aspect of theory

Aspects of Theory

Formal Aspect

Includes the words and symbols the theory contains

Empirical aspects

Consists of the physical events that the theory is attempting to explain.

Idiographic

Study of the learning process of a single experimental subject under a wide variety of circumstances.

Nomothetic techniques

Study of the learning process using groups of experimental subjects and their average performance.

Epistemology

A branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature of knowledge and its origin.

Plato

Knowledge is inherited and innate (nativism)

Aristotle

Knowledge is derived from sensory experiences. (Empiricism)

Rene Descartes

Predecessor of stimulus-response psychology through his idea of reflex actions. He believed in innate ideas.

Thomas Hobbes

Maintained that sense impressions are the source of all knowledge. He believed that behavior is controlled by “appetites” and “aversion”

John Locke

“Tabula rasa” meaning that there is nothing in the mind that is not first in the sense

Primary equalities

Characteristics of the physical world powerful enough to cause accurate mental representations. (Physical objects)

Second qualities

Characteristics of the physical world too weak to cause accurate mental representation. (psychological experience.

George Berkeley

We can only experience secondary qualities. Nothing exists unless it is perceived.

David Hume

“We can be sure of nothing” The mind was no more than a stream of ideas, memories, imaginings, and feelings.

Immanuel Kant

Mind is the source of knowledge through experiences that are divided into 12 innate mental faculties.

John Stuart Miller

Complex ideas are nothing more than a combination of simple ideas.

Thomas Reid

Hypothesized 27 faculties of the mind, which were thought to be innate, later called the faculty of psychology.

Franz Joseph Gall

Assumed that faculties of the mind were housed in specific location of the brain

Charles Darwin

Biological evolution, starting that we are related to “lower” animals.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Demonstrated that higher mental processes and memory could be studied experimentally.

Voluntarism, Structuralism, Functionalism, and Behaviorism,

Psychology’s Early Schools

Maximilian Wundt

Founded Voluntarism

Voluntarism

To study consciousness as it was immediately experienced and study products of consciousness such as cultural achievements.

Edward Titchener

Founded Structuralism

Structuralism

Studied human consciousness through introspection.

William James

Founded Functionalism

Functionalism

Consciousness cannot be deduced into elements rather functions as a unity whose purpose is to allow organisms to adjust to their environment.

John Watson

Founded Behaviorism

Behaviorism

Consciousness should not be studied for it is unreliable. This is what we can see and therefore behavior is what we study.