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Cognitive Learning
A challenge to Pavlov and Skinner
Cognitive Learning
• Learning does not always change
behavior, but always produces
changes in mental activity.
• We do not need to be conditioned,
punished, reinforced to learn.
Cognitive Learning
• Involves:
• Mental processes that cannot be
directly observed.
• Thinking
• Information processes
• Problem solving
• Mental imaging
Wolfgang Kohler and
Insight Learning
• Sultan the chimp
• Learned to solve complex problems
by combining simpler behaviors they
previously learned separately
• Boxes – got bananas
• Sticks – got bananas
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• Kohler then moved the bananas
farther away, beyond the reach of
the sticks or boxes alone
• After time and frustration, Sultan
suddenly stacked the boxes and
climbed them with the stick.
• SUCCESS!
Insight Learning
• Sultan did not gradually happen upon the
reinforced response through an overt
process of trial and error. NO LAW OF
EFFECT
• Kohler believed that Sultan had solved the
problem on the basis of INSIGHT
• Insight - the sudden flash of inspiration
that reveals the solution to a problem.
Latent Learning (Edward
Tolman, 1930)
• Three groups of food-deprived rats
learned to run a complicated maze
over a series of once-a-day trials
Tolman study
• Group A = received a food reward when
they got to the end of the maze each day.
• Group B = did not receive any food reward
• Group C = did not get any reward for their
first 10 trials in the maze, but they were
rewarded from the 11th trial onward.
Tolman study: Results
• Group C showed increased improvement
on subsequent trials. Their Performance
was better than Group A.
• Rats in Group C had been learning the
maze all along, just as much as the rats in
group A, BUT they had no motivation to
demonstrate this learning until a reward
was introduced.
Tolman: Latent Learning
•
Learning that occurs but is not
apparent until the learner has an
incentive to demonstrate it.
• Findings suggest the following:
1. Learning can take place in the absence of
reinforcement.
2. Cognitive processes play a role in
conditioning.
Cognitive Map
• The rats (in Tolman’s experiment)
seemed to develop a cognitive map= a
mental representation of the maze
that allowed them to find their way
to the goal box.
• A mental representation of physical
space.
Biological connection
• Hippocampus may be involved in
“drawing” the cognitive map in the
brain.
Importance of Tolman’s
research
• Laid a foundation for the view that
humans and other animals create
mental representation of the world
around them
• There is more to learning than
associating a response w/ a
consequence.
Importance of Tolman’s
research
• Challenged the prevailing behavioral
views of Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner.