Transcript Insight Learning

How Does Cognitive Psychology
Explain Learning?
According to cognitive
psychology, some forms of
learning must be explained
as changes in mental
processes, rather than as
changes in behavior alone
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How Does Cognitive Psychology
Explain Learning?
• Insight Learning –
Problem solving occurs by means of a sudden
reorganization of perceptions.. suddenly perceiving
familiar objects in new forms or relationships
• Cognitive Maps –
A mental representation of physical space
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Wolfgang Köhler
and Insight Learning
• Example: chimp stacks crates to
reach food
• This is a form of cognitive
learning
• Behaviorism has no convincing
stimulus-response explanation
for Kohler’s demonstration.
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• Köhler observed the manner in which
chimpanzees solve problems, such as that
of retrieving bananas when positioned out
of reach.
• He found that they stacked wooden crates
to use as makeshift ladders, in order to
retrieve the food.
• Köhler concluded that the chimps had not
arrived at these methods through trialand-error (which Thorndike had claimed to
be the basis of all animal learning, through
his law of effect)
• Rather they had experienced an insight
(also known as an “aha experience”), in
which, having realized the answer, they
then proceeded to carry it out in a way
that was “purposeful.”
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Edward Tolman’s Cognitive Map
• Organisms learn the spatial
layout of their environments
by exploration, even if they
are not reinforced for
exploring
• (Evolutionary perspective:
Animals forging for food)
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Edward Tolman’s Cognitive Map
• Argued that is was a
cognitive map that
accounted for a rat
quickly selecting an
alternative route in a
maze when the preferred
path was blocked
• Challenged the work of
Pavlov, Watson, and
Skinner
• Claimed learning was
mental, not behavioral.
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Examples of Cognitive Maps
• Giving
directions
• Walking through
your house in
the dark
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Observational Learning: Bandura’s
Challenge to Behaviorism
• A form of cognitive learning
• We learn by watching others’
behavior and the consequences of
their behavior
• Albert Bandura: Proposed
that rewards can be effective
if we merely see someone
else get them
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Observational Learning
• Accounts for such things
as the rapid spread of
clothing fashions and
slang expressions
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Bandura’ Bobo Doll Experiment
1961
• 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.
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The Bobo Doll Experiment Video
Albert Bandura
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Children See, Children Do
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Recent Cognitive Psychologists Findings
Kamin
Rescorla
• Expanded on this concept and
demonstrated that a CS - R
• Has shown that the
connection only occurs if the
most critical feature of
CS contains unique
a CS is its value in
predicting when the US information about the UCS
will occur
– EX: Taste aversion- a
certain flavor/smell
could server as a
warning for illness
– When presents with multiple
possible CS, a subject will only
become conditioned to the one
that provided the best info
• EX: Flu=eat Taco Bell food or
smells become the CS
• CS is not the Taco Bell sign, the
colors blue, pink, and purple, bells,
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fountain drink stations, etc…
Summary
Reinforcement changes
not only the behavior
but also the
individual’s
expectations for
future rewards and
punishments in similar
situations .
Reinforcement changes
expectations and behavior
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Brain Mechanisms and Learning
Long-term Potentiation
• Biological process involving the strengthening of
synapses in groups of nerve cells; believed to be the
neural basis of learning
• Dopamine a “reward neurotransmitter” is released
in mammals w/ Operant Conditioning. Continuous
Reinforcement of behavior releases dopamine,
which brings pleasure and strengthens the neural
pathway associated with that behavior, making a
LASTING behavior
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Are There Two Learning Circuits??
• Simple ‘mindless’ learning, like learning to
ride a bike
• More complex learning that requires
conscious processing: concept formation,
insight learning, observational learning,
memory of specific events.
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End of Chapter 6
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