Chapter 1

Introduction

Introduction to Learning and Behaviour

Powell, Russell A., Honey, P. Lynne & Symbaluk, Diane G.
2013 - Fourth Edition
Wadsworth
 • Principles of behavior discussed here could help
• Improve study habits
• Understand eating disorder
• Overcome fear
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

• Improve relationships and

• Be a more effective parent
• Behavior is any activity of an organism that can
be observed or somehow measured.
• Learning is a relatively permanent change in
behavior that results from some type of
experience.
• At its most basic level, classical conditioning
(also known as Pavlovian or respondent
conditioning) is the process by which certain
inborn behaviors come to be produced in new
situations.
• The behaviors involved are often what the
average person regards as reflexive or
 • Classical conditioning underlies many of our
emotional responses and contributes to the
development of our likes and dislikes. It can even
lead to the development of debilitating fears and
powerful feelings of sexual attraction.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

• Operant conditioning involves the strengthening

or weakening of a behavior as a result of its
consequences.
• The behaviors involved are often those that the
average person usually regards as goal-directed
or “voluntary.
• Many of the behaviors that concern us each day
are motivated by such consequences: we hit the
remote button to turn on a favorite television
show, compliment a loved one because it produces
a smile, and study diligently to obtain a passing
grade. The consequences can be either
immediate, as in the first two examples, or
delayed, as in the last example.
• Observational learning, the act of observing
someone else’s behavior facilitates the
 • Alternative Epistemologies:
• One of the most engaging issues within the
theory of learning (knowledge) is the question
of how concepts and knowledge arise, and what
is the relation between experience and the
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

organization of the mind.

• Two opposing positions on this matter are
empiricism and rationalism.
• These have been constant combatants within
the intellectual arena for centuries and strong
forms of them are still recognizable today in
“scientific” psychology.
 • Empiricism is the view that experience is the
only source of knowledge.
• Special emphasis is given to sensory experience
although some knowledge is derived from
intellectual reflections regarding relations
among experiences.
• Our ideas are derived from sense impressions,
either as direct copies of sensory impressions
(so called simple ideas) or combinations of
EMPIRICISM

several simple or complex ideas.

• The sensory impression of an object (say, an
orange) is decomposable into sensory qualities
– sensations corresponding to its color, smell,
size, texture, taste, and so on. These sensory
qualities become connected (associated) in the
mind because they occur closely together in
time or in space as we interact with the object.
• The idea of an orange is complex, but reducible
to inter-associations among simple, more
primitive ideas.
 • Empiricism has the following features :
• Sensationalism – the hypothesis that all
knowledge is derived through sensory
experience
• Reductionism – the thesis that all complex
ideas are built up out of a basic stock of
simple ideas, and that complex ideas are in
turn reducible to these simple ideas
• Associationism – the thesis that ideas or
EMPIRICISM

mental elements are connected through the

operation of association of experiences that
occur closely together in time (contiguity)
• Mechanism – the thesis that the mind is like
a machine built from simple elements with
no mysterious components.
• Empiricism involves two basic learning
mechanisms :
• Internal representations of simple ideas
(memory images) which originate by simply
copying their corresponding sense
 • The memory that event A was followed
immediately by event B is recorded in memory
as an association from idea a to idea b.
• This is in effect copying into memory the fact of
the co-occurrence of mental contents a and b.
• Such associations, can record temporal or
causal sequence of events such as striking a
match – lighting the match – heat – fire.
• Activating or reviving these associative
EMPIRICISM

sequences from memory is the presumed

method by which the mind moves in thought
from one idea to another.
• This method accounts for the order of
succession in a chain of ideas during idle
thinking or goal-directed thinking.
• To illustrate goal-directed thinking, suppose
that the final event in a chain becomes a goal (I
want to eat ice cream). Then thinking of that
goal will call to mind an immediate precursor of
it from the past (buy some at the shop), and
 • Thus, a goal-directed chain of ideas may unwind
backward from effect to cause until it arrives at
some action that can be performed now to
initiate the thought-out sequence.
• Associative chains that reflect causal sequences
can be used in two basic ways :
• They may run forwards from a to b to c to
predict, anticipate, or expect future events
from the present event or action, and
EMPIRICISM

• They may run backwards from c to b to a to

explain why event c happened or to plan how
to bring c about.
• Predicting, explaining and planning are
fundamental skills by which we deal with the
world, and the associative theory suggests ways
to do these things.
• Empiricists included in their theory of mind the
notion of “reflection,” whereby the mind
supposedly can call up from memory several
ideas, compare them, and arrive at some
 • The idea of reflection was needed to explain
how we gain knowledge by abstraction,
inference, and deduction.
• By abstracting the common, critical properties
out from the varying, accidental, nonessential
properties, we form a general concept of a type
of thing from experience together with a set of
its widely varying examples.
• In deduction, we bring into conscious reflection
EMPIRICISM

a logical consequence of other things we know.

Thus, if we know that Bill is taller than John,
and John is taller than Peter, then upon
reflection the mind can deduce (and store in
memory) that Bill is taller than Peter.
• According to the empiricist doctrine, reflection
is the only mechanism the mind has available to
free itself from a totally passive recorder of
sequences of sensory impressions.
• Empiricism and associationism as explanations
of mental phenomena were greatly elaborated
by such philosophers as :
 • One development of particular interest
concerned the laws of association formation.
• Assuming contiguity of experienced events to
be the necessary and sufficient condition for
association formation, the empiricists proposed
that the degree of association (or amount of
memory) would vary directly with the vividness
of the experience, its frequency, its duration
and its recency (closeness in time) to the
EMPIRICISM

retention test.
• Such conjectures have generated much
experimental research on learning and memory,
and every learning theory deals with these
factors in one way or another.
• The first experiments on human memory, by the
German scientist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885)
explicitly set out to test certain proposals of
associationist doctrine.
• The first experimental monograph on animal
learning by Edward Thorndike (1898) was titled
“Animal Intelligence : An experimental study of
 • Theories have become more precise, and much
more detailed information has been
accumulated .
• Also, the important roles of motivation, reward
and punishment in learning and performance
have received greater systematic treatment
than was accorded them in the classical
associationist tradition.
• The behaviouristic revolution, led by John
EMPIRICISM

Watson , substituted observable stimuli and

responses for the mentalistic ideas and images
of earlier times. But the associationistic cast of
the “acquisition mechanism” (or learning
device) remained.
• It is thus fair to say that empiricism and
associationism formed the mold into which
contemporary learning theory has flowed and
jelled – perhaps even solidified.
• Unfortunately, there appeared to be several
flaws in the assumptions of classical
associationism, considered either as an
 • Rationalism is the general philosophical
position that reason is the prime source of
knowledge, that reason rather than sense data,
authority, revealations, or intuition is the only
valid basis for knowledge, belief and action.
• In their writings, rationalist philosophers such
as Descartes, Leibniz and Kant confront
empiricism at almost every turn.
RATIONALISM

• Rationalist have an entirely different

perspective on the role of “sense data” in our
construction of reality.
• For the empiricist our ideas are passive copies
of sense data; for the rationalist, sense data are
unstructured, undifferentiated chaos and only
provide raw material to an interpretive
mechanism that considers these raw data as
clues regarding their probable source and
meaning.
• The raw data can be interpreted only according
to certain forms – more precisely, according to
certain classes of innate perceptual
 • One example of an interpretive assumption is
that events always appear to us embedded in a
temporal spatial framework : Physical events
(and even most things we call mental events)
occur at a particular time and at a particular
place – or, at least, we can not prevent ourselves
from interpreting them in that way.
• Kant and Descartes thought that our knowledge
of space was simply the projection onto the
RATIONALISM

world of the “self-evident truths” of Euclidean

geometry with which we were born.
• Kant rejected Bishop Berkeley’s earlier
empiricistic attempt to derive the perception of
depth (of objects in three dimensions) and of
the perceptual constancies from empirical
correlations between sensations on the two-
dimensional retina and the sense of touch – for
example reaching the hand to the object in
view.
• Recent evidence appears to favor the “innate”
hypothesis of depth perception. That is,
 • Perceptual Organization :
• A general criticism rationalists have leveled
against classical empiricism is that the
empiricist theory of perception provides an
inadequate account of the unitariness of
percepts and the role relations play in creating
perceptual unities.
• The rationalists claim that relations among
RATIONALISM

elementary sense points are just as primary and

psychologically vivid as the sense points
themselves; we do not hear a series of tones but
a coherent melody; we do not see a particular
brightness but the ratio of reflectances between
a spot and its surround; we do not see
successive stills of an object’s changing
locations but its “continuous motion” through
visual space.
• The color of an object “adheres” or sticks to its
surface as an inalienable property of a unity:
we do not sense “redness” and “apple” but
rather the unity of a “red apple.”
 • Kant argued instead that causality was just as
basic or perceptually primitive an experience as
temporal succession.
• Rationalists felt that the mind was preset to
“project” causality into our interpretations of
successive events in the world.
• Modern experiments by Michotte (1954) and
others suggest that people are strongly biased
RATIONALISM

to ascribe causality to perceptual events related

in tightly specified ways.
 • Mental Organization:
• Rationalism has been somewhat successful in
its attack upon the doctrine of associationism.
For one thing, it is clear that “associations”
between ideas carry with them information
regarding the type of relations involved.
• For example, in our mind a restaurant is
associated with eating, a glutton with eating, a
RATIONALISM

fork with eating and a steak with eating. But

the unadorned “associative link” of the classical
doctrine does not explain our knowing that the
relation between the first pair of ideas is that of
location to action, the second pair of actor to
action, the third pair of instrument to action
and the fourth pair of object to act.
• The mind requires a representation of
knowledge wherein inter-associated ideas are
labeled according to their type of relation: for
example, that animal is labeled as a
superordinate of bird, that canary is a
subordinate of bird, that wings or feathers are
 • The associationist theory of mind has been
further criticized because it fails to explain how
the mind imposes a structure onto incoming
(sensory) perceptual data.
• That is, the theory provides no restrictions or
constraints on what could be associated with
what; there were no inherent principles for
determining the “belongingness” of items of
experience, no restrictions regarding “well-
RATIONALISM

formedness” of input structures.

• The rationalists argued that “raw experience”
together with associative learning principles
are not sufficient to prevent the accumulation
of a disorganized mass of accidental vagaries
that collapse in a booming, buzzing chaos of
overwhelming particulars.
• Rather, certain “constraints” must be imposed
(as innate forms or principles) in interpreting
events; only hypotheses of particular forms are
acceptable by the human mind.
 • Language Acquisition : A Rationalist’s Example
• Nowhere is this hypothesis of innate constraints
advanced more vigorously than in certain
modern accounts of how children acquire their
first language.
• Linguists such as Chomsky (1972), Lenneberg
(1967), and McNeill (1970) argue that
empiricist assumptions are inadequate in
RATIONALISM

principle to account for the learning of the

linguistic competence shown by every native
speaker. The language learner must learn a
fantastically complex and abstract set of rules
for transforming strings of speech sounds into
meanings and vice versa.
• Modern analyses of linguistic competence
illustrate just how abstract are the grammatical
rules that children exemplify in their dealings
with language – in judging whether utterances
are grammatical, whether they are
unambiguous, and whether two sentences mean
the same thing.
 • The problem is compounded by the fact that
recordings of adult utterances to preverbal
children reveal many halts, slips, grammatical
mistakes, fragmentary utterances, hems-and-
haws (vague answers), changing of sentences in
mid-utterances, and utter nonsense.
• In short from a grammatical point of view, the
speech input to preverbal children is noisy slop.
RATIONALISM

• Moreover, the parent-as-trainer tends to react

to a child’s utterance according to its intention,
use, truth or falsity rather than its
approximation to good grammar.
• The paradox is how our linguistic competence,
which seems to be governed by this abstract set
of grammatical rules, could ever be learned
from such chaotic linguistic inputs.
• In rejecting empiricist accounts, Chomsky
(1972) argues that the child must begin life
innately endowed with a small set of linguistic
universals as regards both some basic concepts
and some basic principles.
 • Here, then, we have specific examples of
rationalism and their persuasive force. As Kant
(1781) wrote: “Although all our knowledge
begins with experience, it by no means follows
that it all originates from experience.”
• For real knowledge it is necessary to
presuppose a certain framework of thought
relationships over and above the raw sense
data.
RATIONALISM

• You may ask, How did the mind come to acquire

these innate structures that one is led to
attribute to it?
• One can answer, “natural selection” – on the
premise that the mind is the way it is because it
helps the individual adapt to the way the world
truly is (less fortunate innate endowments
having been eliminated during biological
evolution); or one can answer at a deeper level
that the exact processes by which the innate
organization of the human organism evolved
are still a total mystery.
 Plato (428-348)
• everything we know is inborn (“residing in our
soul”)
• learning is simply a process of inner reflection to
uncover the knowledge that already exists within
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

• knowledge is not inborn but instead is acquired
through experience.
• ideas come to be connected or associated with each
other via four laws of association –
• similarity (appearance or functional)
• Contrast (appearance or function)
• Contiguity (proximity in time and/or space)
• Frequency – Aristotle hinted – supplement to law of
contiguity - later philosophers expanded

• early example of the classic debate of nativism vs.

empiricism, or nature vs. nurture.
• Philosophy – knowledge can be gained only through
sensory experience rather than through heredity or by
pure reasoning.
 Rene Descartes (1596-1650) a French
Philosopher
• Mind-body dualism
• Body functions like a machine and produces
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

involuntary, reflexive behaviors in response to

external stimulation
• Mind that has free will and produces behavior that
is voluntary
• Only humans possess such a self-directing mind,
while the behavior of nonhuman animal is entirely
reflexive
• His view promoted study of at least reflexive
behavior and animal behavior

The British Empiricists e.g., John Locke (1632-

1704)
• Newborn’s mind is a blank slate (in Latin, tabula
rasa)
• Conscious mind is composed of finite set of basic
elements (specific colors, sounds, smells, etc.) that
 • Structuralism
• Empiricist conclusions were based on logical
reasoning and subjective examination of their own
conscious experience
• Experimental study of human consciousness
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

• German Philosopher Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

used scientific method to investigate
consciousness.
• Strongly supported by an American Edward
Titchener (1867-1927)
• Structuralism holds that it is possible to determine
the structure of the mind by identifying the basic
elements that compose it.
• Method of introspection
• Emphasis on systematic observation helped
establish psychology as a scientific discipline
 • Theory of evolution
• Charles Darwin – On the Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection
• How species, including humans, change across
generations in response to environmental pressure
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

• According to principle of natural selection,

individuals or species that are capable of adapting
to environmental pressures are more likely to
survive and reproduce rather than that can not
adapt.
• Three main components of principle of natural
selection are : variation (between and within
species), inheritance, and competition.
• Adaptation as physical characteristics (e.g., trunk
of an elephant) - adaptations can also be behaviors,
e.g., reflex action of hand withdrawal with touched
with fire
• A particularly important evolutionary adaptation is
the ability to learn which evolved because it
conferred significant survival advantages to those
who had this ability - nature-nurture debate is too
simplistic.
 • Functionalism :
• William James (1842-1910)
• Functionalism holds that the mind evolved to help
us adapt to the world around us
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

• Focus of psychology should be the study of those

adaptive processes – study of adaptive mind (e.g.
significance of learning)
• Characteristics that are highly typical of a species,
such as the characteristic of consciousness in
humans, must have some type of adaptive value.
• Used introspection as method, but also used study
of animal behavior
• Humans evolved in the same manner as other
animals
• Much of what we learn from studying animals
might therefore be of direct relevance to humans
• E. B. Thorndike and John B. Watson were students
of Functionalist Psychologists
 • Many people believe that behaviorism is
some monolithic entity, with Watson’s
views being the same views held by other
behaviorists.
• In fact, there are several schools of
behaviorism, each based on a somewhat
different set of assumptions about how
BEHAVIOURISM

best to study environmental influences

on behavior.
• We describe five of these schools,
beginning with Watson’s original brand
of behaviorism, which is sometimes
referred to as methodological
behaviorism.
• Be aware that the names of the different
schools presented here are not at all
standardized.
 • And the term methodological
behaviorism is sometimes applied to any
approach that rejects the value of data
gathered through introspection,
including many cognitive approaches to
psychology.
• This inconsistency in terminology has
BEHAVIOURISM

arisen not only from the adoption of

different labels by different writers, but
also from subtle distinctions between the
different schools of behaviorism that are
still being debated among behaviorists
and philosophers.
 • John B. Watson
• Background of Structuralism –
Psychoanalysis – Theory of Evolution –
Functionalism – Ethology
• Watson wanted to make psychology a purely
“objective science” based solely on the study
of directly observable behavior and the
JOHN B. WATSON

environmental events that surround it.

• All reference to internal processes, such as
thoughts and feelings that could not be
objectively measured by an outside observer,
were to be stricken from analysis.
• By objectifying psychology in this manner,
Watson hoped that psychology could then
join the ranks of the natural sciences –
biology, physics, chemistry etc.
• Thus, as originally defined by Watson,
behaviorism is a natural science approach to
psychology that focuses on the study of
 • Behavioral psychology also adheres to
the Law of Parsimony, which holds that
simpler explanations for a phenomenon
are generally preferable to more complex
explanations.
• One version of this law – Morgan’s Canon
(principle) - whenever possible, one
JOHN B. WATSON

should interpret an animal’s behavior in

terms of lower, more primitive processes
(e.g., reflex or habit) rather than higher,
more mentalistic processes (e.g.,
decision or imagination).
• Watson essentially took this one step
further by arguing that psychologists
should avoid interpreting even human
behavior in terms of mentalistic
processes.
 • Watson believed that psychologists
should study only publicly observable
behavior. All reference to internal events
– that is, events that can only be
subjectively perceived (such as our inner
thoughts and feelings) or that are
assumed to exist on an unconscious
JOHN B. WATSON

level) were to be stricken from scientific

analysis. Internal Events
Conscious thoughts
Environmental Observable
and feelings
Events Behavior
Unconscious drives
and motives

Environmental Observable
Event Behavior

Stimulus Response
 • Watson’s theory of learning is therefore
regarded as a type of S-R theory, in which
learning is believed to involve the
establishment of a connection between a
specific stimulus (S) and a specific
response (R). Complex behavior is
presumed to involve extremely long
JOHN B. WATSON

chains of Environmental
these S-R connections.
Observable
Events Behavior

S R R R R R

• Drawing from Pavlov’s work on classical

conditioning, he came to believe that all
behavior, both animal and human, is
 • Following extensive observations of
human infants, he came to the
conclusion that humans inherit only a
few fundamental reflexes along with
three basic emotions (love, rage, and
fear). Everything else, he believed, is
learned.
JOHN B. WATSON

• “give me a dozen healthy infants, well-

formed, and my own specified world to bring
them up and I will guarantee to take any one
at random and train him to become any type
of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer,
artist, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar-
man and thief, regardless of his talents,
penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations,
and race of his ancestors.
• I am going beyond my facts, but so have the
advocates of the contrary and they have been
doing it for many thousands of years” -
 • Watson and Transfer : Positive transfer
and Negative transfer – Transfer in
everyday life
• Watson’s environmentalism – nature vs.
nurture
• Watson – Higher learning
JOHN B. WATSON

• Watson - Practical Applications of

Watson’s Behaviorism
• Watson – Attitudes and Emotions
• Watson – Behaviour Modification
• An Appraisal of Watson’s Behaviorism
 • Importance of Learning : Deliberate Practice
and Expert Performance
• Watson’s emphasis on the importance of
nurture over nature in determining human
behavior is often viewed with a great deal of
EXPERT PERFORMANCE

skepticism, especially the cases of

exceptional ability, such as Einstein, or
Mozart.
• But consider the following:
• Expert performers in almost all fields of
endeavour, ranging from music to athletics to
chess, require a minimum of 10 years of
intensive training before achieving a high
level of performance.
• The superlative abilities shown by experts are
almost always specific to their field of
endeavour and otherwise they are no better
than average person.
• Almost all of the remarkable feats displayed
 • Some of the talent may be trained at crucial
periods in childhood by systematic training.
• Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer have
argued that the most critical factor in
determining expert performance is not innate
ability but deliberate practice.
EXPERT PERFORMANCE

• Deliberate practice is practice that is not

inherently enjoyable and does not involve
mere repetition; it instead involves intense
concentration and considerable effort with a
view toward improving one’s performance.
• More than any other variable, the
accumulated amount of deliberate practice in
an activity is strongly predictive of an
individual’s level of performance.
• An early start allows one to begin
accumulating the huge number of practice
hours needed to outperform others. Those
who begin at a later age are simply unable to
catch up.
 • Note that deliberate practice does not include
time spent receiving instruction, giving
performances, or playing for enjoyment. The
students also devoted about 3.5 hours a day to
rest and recreation and obtained more than
average amounts of sleep.
EXPERT PERFORMANCE

• Research has shown that effective college

students are more likely to describe themselves as
utilizing a balanced approach to studying,
involving regular study sessions with frequent
breaks, than a driven approach, involving minimal
breaks and studying to the point of exhaustion.
• Of course, Ericsson et al (1993) do not completely
discount the role of heredity in expert
performance. Heredity might well affect the extent
to which one becomes interested in an endeavor,
as well as one’s ability to endure the years of hard
work needed to become an elite performer.
• Although many of us might not have the desire,
time, or resources to become elite athletes,
 • Hull’s neobehaviorism challenged
Watson’s rejection of unobservable
events as scientifically unsound.
• He noted that both physicist and
chemists make inferences about events
that have never been directly observed
(e.g., gravity) but that can nevertheless
be operationalized (e.g. effects of
CLARK HULL

gravity).
• Hull believed that it might likewise be
useful for psychologists to infer the
existence of internal
Internal Events events that might
mediate Intervening
(draw Variables
connection) between
environment and behavior.
Environmental Internal physiological Observable
Events processes, such as Behavior
hunger and fatigue
 Conscious Thoughts
Environmental and Feelings Observable
Event Unconscious Drives and Behavior
Motives
CLARK HULL

Conscious Thoughts
Environmental and Feelings Observable
Event Unconscious Drives and Behavior
Motives

Internal Physiological
Environmental Processes such as Observable
Event Hunger, Fatigue Behavior

Internal Events
(Intervening Variables)
 • Intervening variable not a return to
mentalism - opposed introspection - concept
of hunger in some measurable way (number
of hours of food deprivation) - S→R theory.
• He viewed behavior in a mechanistic fashion.
Some modern-day cognitive approaches, view
humans as analogous to computers that
process bits of information from the
CLARK HULL

environment to produce output. In fact, some

versions of cognitive psychology can even be
considered an outgrowth of Hull’s
neobehaviorism.
• Interestingly, people seem less critical of the
cognitive information-processing approach to
psychology, which draws an analogy between
humans and computers, than they are of the
traditional behavioral approach, which draws
an analogy between humans and animals
such as rats.
• Hull was most influential psychologist in
 • Tolman’s Cognitive Behaviorism
• Hull’s theory is often categorized as a
“molecular” theory because it viewed
behavior as consisting of a long chain of
specific responses connected to specific
stimuli.
• Tolman considered “molar” approach
more useful. For example, he felt that we
TOLMAN

can understand a rat’s behavior in a

maze more accurately as a goal-directed
attempt to obtain food than as a long
chain of discrete stimulus-response
connections that, in machine-like
fashion, lead to food.
• This molar approach to learning is
similar to Gestalt approach to
perception from which Tolman drew his
inspiration.
 • Although Tolman disagreed with much of
Hull’s theorizing, he did agree that
intervening variables may be useful in a
theory of learning – in fact it was Tolman
who first suggested this.
• However, Tolman’s intervening variables
were considerably more mentalistic. They
were not simply drives and habits but
“expectations” and “hypotheses.”
TOLMAN

• Thus, Tolman’s cognitive behaviorism

(also called purposive behaviorism)
utilizes intervening variables, usually in
the form of hypothesized cognitive
processes, to help explain behavior.
• Tolman’s most famous intervening
variable is the cognitive map, which is a
mental representation of one’s spatial
surroundings. Evidence for this concept
 • Tolman and Honzik (1930) experiment
was conducted in an attempt to disprove
Hull’s notion that behavior must be
rewarded for learning to take place; that
is, in the absence of some type of reward,
nothing can be learned.
• To test this notion, Tolman and Honzik
trained three groups of rats on a complex
maze task.
TOLMAN

• The rats in a continuous-reward group

always found food when they reached the
goal box, but the rats in the two other
groups found no food when they reached
the goal box (they were simply removed
from the maze and then fed several hours
later).
• Training proceeded at the rate of one
trial per day for 10 consecutive days. As
TOLMAN
 • Following this initial phase of training,
on day 11 of the study the rats in one of
the non-rewarded groups also began
receiving food when they reached the
goal box.
• According to Hull, the rats in that group
should only then have started to learn
their way through the maze, which would
have been demonstrated by a gradual
TOLMAN

improvement in their performance.

• What Tolman and Honzik found instead
was a dramatic improvement in the rats’
performance on the very next trial.
• In fact, on day 12 of the study, the newly
rewarded group slightly outperformed
the group that had been receiving a
reward from the outset.
TOLMAN
 • Tolman interpreted these results as
indicating that the initially nonrewarded rats
had in fact learned the maze during the first
10 trials of the experiment, and that they had
learned it at least as well as the group that
had been receiving food.
• He would later interpret these findings as
indicating the development of a “cognitive
map” (Tolman, 1948), which only became
TOLMAN

apparent when the rats finally began to

receive food.
• Thus, this experiment is regarded as a classic
demonstration of latent learning, in which
learning occurs despite the absence of any
observable demonstration of learning and
only becomes apparent under a different set
of conditions.
• The experiment also demonstrates the
distinction between learning and
 Internal Events
Intervening Variables
Internal cognitive
Environmental Observable
processes, such as
Events Behavior
expectations and
hypotheses

• This experiment also demonstrates distinction

between learning and performance, because
learning was apparently taking place even when
TOLMAN

the subjects showed no evidence of such learning

in their performance at that time.
• Tolman, like Watson and Hull believed that
introspective reports of thoughts and feelings are
so unreliable as to be of little scientific value.
• He maintained that his own theoretical inferences
about cognitive processes were based entirely on
direct observations of behavior and were thus
objectively based.
 • Much of the Tolman’s research was
directly aimed at refuting Hull’s theory
of learning.
• Hull was able, in increasingly complex
ways, to modify his theory sufficiently to
account for many of Tolman’s findings.
• As a result, during Tolman’s life, his
cognitive approach never achieved the
TOLMAN

same popularity as Hull’s neobehavioral

approach.
• With the advent of the cognitive
revolution in psychology, however, many
of Tolman’s research methods and
concepts have been adopted by modern
researchers.
• Cognitive behaviorism is now a
flourishing field of study, and the study of
cognitive processes in nonhuman
 Conscious Thoughts
Environmental and Feelings Observable
Event Unconscious Drives and Behavior
Motives

Internal Physiological
Environmental Processes such as Observable
Event Hunger, Fatigue Behavior
TOLMAN

Internal Events
(Intervening Variables)

Internal Cognitive
Environmental Processes such as Observable
Event Expectations and Behavior
Hypotheses
Internal Events
(Intervening Variables)
 • Bandura’s Social Learning Theory
• The term first used by followers of Hull
who were attempting to apply Hullian
concepts to human social behavior,
particularly to the process of imitation.
• Bandura was must interested in
imitation, which he referred to as
observational learning.
BANDURA

• His most famous investigations concern

the influence of observational learning
on aggressive behavior.
• Bandura influenced by Hullian
psychology
• Interpreted learning process were more
like that of Tolman - molar approach and
emphasized on distinction between
learning and performance.
 • Bandura’s approach differs from that of
Tolman, however, in that these internal
events are viewed as more than just
theoretically useful; they are viewed as
actual events occurring within us that
strongly influence our behavior.
• Additionally, these internal events
include self-referent thoughts about our
abilities and accomplishments, a
BANDURA

distinctly human form of cognition that

Bandura believes has significant impact
on our behavior.
• Bandura does not dismiss the value of
introspectively observed, subjective
experience in explaining behavior.
• Thus, social learning theory is a
cognitive-behavioral approach that
strongly emphasizes the importance of
 • Social learning theory has a distinct view
of determinism – the notion that each
behavior has a cause.
Internal Events
(Person Variables)

Thoughts
Feelings
BANDURA

Environmental Observable
Event Behavior
• Environmental events, observable
behavior and “person variables”
including thoughts and feelings are seen
as having a reciprocal influence on each
other.
• Social learning theory - stimulated
research in observational learning and
 • Social learning theory
• stimulated research in observational
learning and
• development of cognitive-behavior therapy,
in which psychological disorders are
treated by altering both environmental
variables and cognitive processes.
• animal cognition has also become
BANDURA

important
• Bandura (1997) has more recently referred
to this approach as “Social-Cognitive”
theory so as to emphasize the importance
of cognitive variables.
 • Skinner’s Radical Behaviorism
• Skinner’s radical behaviorism
emphasizes the influence of the
environment on overt behavior, rejects
the use of internal events to explain
behavior, and views thoughts and
feelings as behaviors that themselves
B. F. SKINNER

need to be explained.
• Unlike Watson’s methodological
behaviorism, radical behaviorism does
not completely reject the inclusion of
internal events in a science of behavior;
it merely rejects the use of these events
as explanations for behavior.
• Skinner viewed internal events, such as
sensing, thinking, and feeling, as
“covert” or private behaviors that are
subject to the same laws of learning as
 • For example, whereas a social learning
theorist might say that a student studies
because she expects that studying will
result in a high marks, Skinner would say
that both the act of studying and any
thoughts about achieving a high mark by
studying are the result of some
experience, such as a history of doing
B. F. SKINNER

well on exams when the student did

study.
• Skinner agreed with Watson’s concern
that, since we do not have direct access
to the internal events of others, we must
rely on their verbal reports of such
events. Our assessments of internal
thoughts and feelings thus are often
unreliable.
• Skinner further noted that such
 • More specifically, young children need to
be taught by their caretakers to describe
their internal experiences. Because these
caretakers (usually parents) cannot
directly observe internal events in their
children, they must infer their
occurrence from the children’s
observable behaviors, e.g. learning to
B. F. SKINNER

label pain as hurt.

• Skinner was uninterested in using a
person’s description of an internal
emotional state as an explanation for
behavior; he was, however, quite
interested in how people come to label
their internal experiences.
• A second problem with using internal
events to explain behavior is that it is
often difficult to determine the actual
 • After all, people often take action in
emergency quite quickly, without
reflecting upon how they feel.

Internal Events
Environmental Events Feelings of Observable Behavior
Emergency situation concern Provide Help

Internal Events
B. F. SKINNER

Environmental Events Observable Behavior Feelings of

Emergency situation Provide Help concern

Observable Behavior
Provide Help
Environmental Events
Emergency situation

Internal Events
Feelings of
concern
 • A third difficulty with using internal
events to explain behavior is that we do
not have any means of directly changing
these internal events. Our only means of
changing both internal events and
external behavior is to change some
aspect of the environment. For example,
relaxation. Therefore, if changing the
B. F. SKINNER

environment is the only manner in which

behavior can be influenced, then why not
emphasize the environment as the
ultimate cause of behavior ?
• A fourth problem with using internal
events to explain behavior is that (as with
explanations based on instincts) such
explanations are sometimes only pseudo
explanations. For example, if I say that I
“feel like going to the movies.” This my
“feeling” statement is much more a
 • Skinner’s view about reciprocal
determinism
Internal Events
(Private Behavior)

Thoughts, Feelings
B. F. SKINNER

Environmental
Event

Observable
Behavior
 • For reasons such as these, Skinner
rejected internal events as explanations
for behavior; instead he focused on the
environment – in particular, the
environmental consequences of our
behavior – as the ultimate cause of both
observable behavior and internal events.
•
B. F. SKINNER

But neither did he believe that we are

helpless pawns of our environment. He
assumed that once we understand the
manner in which the environment affects
us, we can change the environment so
that it will exert a more beneficial
influence on our behavior. Skinner
referred to this process as
countercontrol, which is the deliberate
manipulation of environmental events to
alter their impact on our behavior.
 • Skinner believed that only reflexive
behaviors – those that can be classically
conditioned, such as salivating in
response to food – are automatically
elicited by the stimuli that precede them.
Such behaviors need to be distinguished
from operant behaviors – behaviors that
are controlled by their consequences –
B. F. SKINNER

which have a more flexible, less

predictable quality to them.
• Skinner repeatedly acknowledged that
behavior was fundamentally the result of
the interaction between genes and the
environment. Moreover, far from being
dismayed by research indicating the
genetic limitations on operant
conditioning, Skinner was quite
fascinated by it and even initiated some
early research along these lines.
 • In other words, operant conditioning is
sort of a mini-evolution in which
behaviors that are adaptive (that lead to
favorable consequences) increase in
frequency while behaviors that are
nonadaptive (that do not lead to
favorable consequences) decrease in
frequency.
B. F. SKINNER

• Skinner was careful to distinguish

between the philosophical aspect of his
approach and the experimental science
that grew out of that approach.
• The term radical behaviorism refers to
the philosophical aspect of Skinner’s
approach, consisting of the set of
assumptions, upon which his behavioral
science is based.
 • The science that grew out of radical
behaviorism, but is now more commonly
referred to as behavior analysis. Behavior
analysts, following the lead of Skinner,
have especially concentrated on
researching the various principles of
operant conditioning.
•
B. F. SKINNER

Skinner’s work directly led to the

establishment of applied behavior
analysis, a technology of behavior in
which basic principles of behavior are
applied to real-world issues. These
applications range from helping people
with clinical disorders (such as phobias
and schizophrenia), to children with
developmental disabilities, to improving
educational practices, to implementing
programs that encourage communities to
stop polluting and conserve energy.
 • Skinner was never physically punished as
a child, he was taught through
reprimands and warnings “ to fear God,
the police, and what people will think”.
He believed that punishment is an
ineffective means for managing behavior,
often creating more problems than it
solves.
B. F. SKINNER

• Skinner had loved building and inventing

such as sling shots, bows, arrows, blow
guns, water pistols. This inventiveness
helped him later build Skinner Box.
 • Skinner graduated from a small liberal arts
college. He was encouraged by Robert
Frost (poet) to be a writer. He completed a
few stories and poems but eventually gave
up. Years later, he wrote a novel Walden
Two – an “objective” novel about a utopian
community founded on behavioral
principles.
B. F. SKINNER

• Skinner built an Air Crib (baby tender) to

ease the burden of raising his youngest
daughter, Deborah. It had controlled
environment in terms of lighting, space,
temperature and woven plastic sheet felt
like linen. Rumor about his daughter going
mad. Actually she was normal and spent no
more time in crib than outside.
• Beyond Freedom and Dignity : in this book
Skinner rejected the concept of free will
and argued that we must instead
 • During World War II, he also had an
opportunity to apply the principles of
conditioning to national defense. While
contemplating the widespread
destructiveness of bombing attacks, it
occurred to him that it might be possible
to train pigeons to guide missiles toward
specific targets.
B. F. SKINNER

• Skinner’s idea about “teaching machine” and

programmed instruction was well received,
however he lamented that it was never
utilized to its full potential. In recent times,
computers are ideally suited for programmed
instruction.
• Enjoy Old Age : a book offering advice on
self-management for the elderly. Throughout
his later years, Skinner remained
intellectually active, carefully engineering
his environment to compensate for the
effects of aging.
 • Dear Dr. Dee, I have very strong feelings
for my new girlfriend, but I can’t tell if
these are feelings of infatuation or love. My
friends tell me I am in love, but my parents
tell me I am infatuated. How can I tell the
difference – So Confused
• Skinner (1989) suggested that the more
subtle an emotional state (and, presumably
B. F. SKINNER

the more subtle the differences between

emotional states), the more value there is
in analyzing that emotion in terms of the
circumstances that surround it. In what
circumstance, for example, are we most
likely to use the term infatuation ? If you
wish to determine whether you are in
“love” or “merely infatuated” you might do
well to ponder the rewards offered by that
relationship.