Components of Learning

• Change in behavior

• Results from experience

  • Doesn’t come from growth, like being able to reach a shelf when you get taller

  • Yes there was a change, but this was not an experience beyond normal biological progress

• Relatively permanent

Key Researchers

Albert Bandura

• Observational learning

• Learn through watching a model and imitating it

Ivan Pavlov

• Early researcher associated with learning

• Studied classical conditioning/associative learning

• His dogs and salivation experiment is very well known

• Also proved that biological functions (in this case, salivation) could be trained

Robert Rescorla

• Proved that cognition was taking place when an organism recognized association

• Certain things are more readily associated with one another

• There are certain biological predispositions or senses that are better suited for learning

Edward Tolman

• Latent learning

• An organism may learn something but not demonstrate the behavior that learning pertains to until there is a motivation

  • Rats that are allowed to wander a maze will continue to meander

  • Once food is placed at the end, they can ‘suddenly’ navigate it without many errors

  • They had learned it already, but had no need to display the learning yet

John B. Watson

• Large original contributor to behaviorism

  • Focus of research is on observable behavior

• The study of learning lends itself to this school of thought

John Garcia

• Also proposed biological predispositions that make some sense easier to learn

• Animals tend to create associations will illness and food very quickly, even if there is another reason contributing to the sickness

Learning Principles

• Insight learning

  • Sudden burst of cognition that reveals solution

• Emotional learning

  • How our feelings contribute to associations and how readily they’re recognized

• Superstitious behavior

  • Recognizing association where none actually exists

  • “Good luck” from a ritual or charm

• Learned helplessness

  • Repeated failure until the learner gives up and resigns to the punishments

• Learning is very complex and involves both behavioral and cognitive components