Chapter 2: Understanding Learning and Knowledge Acquisition

3. Behavioral Theory of Learning

Prepared by: Mirasol P. Batungbakal

Behavioral Theory of Learning

Behaviorism is an approach to psychology that combines elements of philosophy,

methodology, and theory. It emerged in the early twentieth century as a reaction to "mentalistic"

psychology, which often had difficulty making predictions that could be tested using rigorous

experimental methods. The primary tenet of behaviorism, as expressed in the writings of John B.

Watson, B. F. Skinner, and others, is that psychology should concern itself with the observable

behavior of people and animals, not with unobservable events that take place in their minds.

Theory is a group of ideas meant to explain a certain topic, such as a single or collection

of facts, events, phenomena etc.

Learning is the act of acquiring new, or modifying and reinforcing,

existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing

different types of information.

Under this aspect the theories are based almost entirely on observable learning and

observable behavior.

History and Theorists of Behaviorism

Ivan Pavlov was a Russian Physiologist born on September 14, 1849 who won the Nobel Prize

in Physiology or Medicine in 1940.

Classical Conditioning is most likely to occur when the conditioned stimulus is

presented just before the unconditioned stimulus: a form of signal learning.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American Psychologist who born on March 20, 1904 who

introduced the theory of Operant Conditioning.

Operant Conditioning is a behavior followed by a reinforcing stimulus results in

an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.

Edward Thorndike was an American Psychologist who born on August 31, 1874.

Three Laws of Learning

Law of Effect is responses to a situation that are followed by satisfaction

are strengthened; responses that are followed by discomfort are weakened.

Law of Exercise is known as the stimulus-response connection.

Law of Readiness means a person can learn when physically and

mentally adjusted (ready) to receive stimuli.

John B. Watson was an American Psychologist who born on January 9, 1878. He conducted the

Little Albert experiment, a case study showing empirical evidence of classical conditioning in

humans.

Cognitive Theory of Learning

Cognitive is a psychological approach to understanding the mind which argues that mental

function can be understood as the 'internal' manipulation of symbols.

Cognitive psychology derived its name from the Latin cognoscere, referring to knowing

and information, thus cognitive psychology is an information-processing psychology derived in

part from earlier traditions of the investigation of thought and problem solving. Behaviorists

acknowledged the existence of thinking, but identified it as a behavior. Cognitivists argued that

the way people think impacts their behavior and therefore cannot be a behavior in and of it.

Cognitivists later argued that thinking is so essential to psychology that the study of thinking

should become its own field.

History and Theorists of Cognitive

Jean Piaget (9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss developmental

psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. He became

intrigued with the reasons children gave for their wrong answers on the questions that required

logical thinking. He believed that these incorrect answers revealed important differences between

the thinking of adults and children. Through his study of the field of education, Piaget focused on

two processes, which he named assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation describes how

humans perceive and adapt to new information. It is the process of fitting new information into

pre-existing cognitive schemas. Assimilation occurs when humans are faced with new or

unfamiliar information and refer to previously learned information in order to make sense of it.

Unlike it, accommodation is the process of taking new information in one's environment and

altering pre-existing schemas in order to fit in the new information.

Lev Vygotsky (November 17 1896 – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet Belarusian psychologist, the

founder of a theory of human cultural and biosocial development commonly referred to

as cultural-historical psychology, and leader of the Vygotsky Circle. Vygotsky also posited a

concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, often understood to refer to the way in which

the acquisition of new knowledge is dependent on previous learning, as well as the availability of

instruction.

Edward Tolman (April 14, 1886 – November 19, 1959) was an American psychologist. He was

most famous for his studies on behavioral psychology. A prominent learning theorist during the

heyday of behaviorism, yet his work had a distinctly cognitive flair. Tolman developed his

metallic view of learning by using adaptive versions of behaviorist research.