Development and Cultural Context of the Learning Perspective.
Carl Piaf 2004
The Learning Perspective Development and Cultural Context. Note to Reviewer: In order to focus on just the development and cultural context of the learning perspective, this chapter will discuss the theories within the learning perspective with limited depth. The later chapter on the Framework of the Learning Perspective deals with the key concepts within the perspective in more depth.
The learning perspective is concerned with how humans and animals learn new behaviours. Early work concentrated on how non-human animals learn. We will look at this early work in this chapter. In order to understand fully how the Learning Perspective has developed, we must consider some of the prior history of psychology and science in general. Before the emergence of the perspective and its early originators, there were other ideas concerning how humans and animals learn. There were philosophical debates concerning thought and whether behaviours were innate (built-in) or acquired (learned), and there were various approaches used to study behaviour. The standing of humans as separate from animals was also of major interest.
Early History of Psychology and Science. Nativism and Empiricism René Descartes (1596-1650) The French philosopher, René Descartes, believed that some ideas are built-in or innate, that we are born with some prior knowledge. This so-called nativist view was balanced somewhat by the views of other philosophers. John Locke (1632-1704) John Locke claimed human behaviour was a tabula rasa at birth, meaning that human behaviour is a blank slate on which new behaviours are created and that experience is the only way in which behaviours can be formed. He believed that all experience is gained through the senses. This philosophy is called empricism. Locke also believed that the only way to understand human behaviour was through studying the stimuli that are perceived by the senses. This was in contrast with the views of Descartes who believed that some understanding of innate knowledge could be accessed through introspection. Wilhelm Wundt (1879) This viewpoint was taken by the founder of the first psychology laboratory in 1879. Wilhelm Wundt’s laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, used techniques of introspection to study human thought. There are two major aspects to Wundt’s approach:
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Introspection – after being presented with simple stimuli (such as a light or sound), individuals (subjects) were asked to reflect on their inner thoughts and feelings. These reflections were recorded. (Introspection literally means ‘looking inwards’.) Experimentation – Subjects were often presented with a number of stimuli that were different in some controlled way, e.g. a light may be presented for the interval or amount of time, with the same intensity, but of a varying wavelength or colour. Wundt used these changes to determine the effects of variation of the stimuli on subjects’ inner experience.
Introspection proved to have limited use. It could not be used for the reporting of very rapid thoughts. It was also found that even when individuals had been trained in the use of introspection, there was a great deal of variety in the reporting even after presentation of simple stimuli. This made it difficult to draw any generalisations.
Evolution – Darwinian Theory. Charles Darwin 1809-1882 The publication of the work of Charles Darwin, after significant resistance from religious and scientific organisations at the time, led to a rethink about the privileged position of humans within the animal kingdom. Prior to Darwin, humans had been elevated to a position apart from and superior to animals – we had, after all, been created in God’s image. However, Darwin’s theories alleged that humans had evolved from other animals and that there is not a separation between humans and other animals, but a continuity between us. As Darwin put it: “Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.” (Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1879) In order to support his views, Darwin offered evidence of continuity of body shape and function between different species. The similarity of the fish’s fin to the bird’s wing to the mammalian limb was an example of this. Psychologists and biologists then began to provide additional evidence for Darwin’s theories by investigating similarities in the behaviour of various animals. One of the dangers of this was experimenter bias. The researchers, with their political views and desire to support Darwin, were often biased and subjective in their interpretation of animal behaviour. They often anthropomorphised (made An Introduction to International Baccalaureate Psychology
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human-like) the behaviours of the animals they observed and they often over-extended their findings with animals to the psychology of other species, as well as humans. Despite the motivations at this time and the inevitable bias that arose, the overall direction of study was a very positive one for psychology as a science. It led to an increase in the use of objective scientific method, an increase in the understanding of animal behaviour and the development of many new techniques.
Major Researchers in the Learning Perspective. With the dissatisfaction with introspection as a method and the interest in animal behaviour, alternative approaches began to emerge.
Thorndike (1898) – Instrumental Conditioning and The Law of Effect. The learning perspective began its development in 1898 with the work of E.L.Thorndike (Thorndike, 1898). Thorndike investigated how cats and dogs solved various problems. Thorndike produced a number of puzzle boxes with complex combinations of levers and strings that needed to be manipulated to open the box. By repeatedly placing animal subjects within the box and timing their escape time, Thorndike measured the intelligence of the animals. He could then compare the intelligence of different animal species using his apparatus. There are drawbacks with using this approach to compare animal intelligence. The size and the physical make-up of the animals would have an effect, so it is difficult to consider escape time or rate of learning to escape as being a conclusive indicator of intelligence. Methodological Issues: Ecological Validity Many of the experiments performed within the learning perspective are performed in laboratory conditions. Animals are required to perform tasks that are unlike any tasks they would perform in their natural environments. They are said to lack ecological validity. This lack of ecological validity makes it difficult to extend the conclusions of some of the experiments to natural behaviour.
One important experiment, performed by Thorndike, involved comparing the escape time for animals that had observed other animals escaping from the box with those that had not observed other animals’ escapes. He wished to determine if the animals could learn through observation. Thorndike’s results
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were fairly conclusive and showed no difference in the rates of learning between those animals that had observed other animals escaping and those that had not. Thorndike’s results with observational learning led him to believe that the animals learned through a process of trial and error. The animals would try an approach, if it succeeded they would be more likely to perform the same action again. If it failed then they would be less likely to exhibit the same behaviour later. In Thorndike’s words:
"Of several responses made to the same situation those which are accompanied or closely followed by satisfaction to the animal will, other things being equal, be more firmly connected with the situation, so that, when it recurs, they will be more likely to recur... " This Thorndike called the Law of Effect. This type of learning is now called
instrumental or operant conditioning. Stimulus and Response Stimulus – Something that can be perceived by a sense organ, e.g. a light, a sound, a taste or smell, or the movement in a joint, muscle or rat’s whisker. Response – An action that is performed usually, but not necessarily, associated with a stimulus, e.g. the salivary gland secreting saliva, the contraction of a muscle.
Pavlov (1927) – Pavlovian and Classical Conditioning. Further developments within the learning perspective began to take shape in Russia with the work of the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov (Pavlov, 1927). Pavlov was a trained biologist and was originally interested in studying the digestive system of dogs (he had already been awarded the Nobel prize for his research). Through his experiments, he discovered that dogs could learn to associate the presence of one stimulus (e.g. food) with the presence of another stimulus (e.g. light) and once trained would salivate when presented with the latter stimulus alone (the light). This type of learning is called Pavlovian or classical conditioning. (We will look at this further in a later chapter.) Pavlov invented a detailed terminology for describing this process of association. His experiments, and those of his students, showed the conditions by which learned associations would disappear or become extinct. They also showed how these behaviours could be generalised to different stimuli than
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the original training stimulus (e.g. different intensities of light or different frequencies of sound). Interestingly, Pavlov began publishing his work on conditioning in 1901. However, much of his early work was written only in Russian. In 1904 some of his research was published in French. Later, in 1906, his work reached a British audience with the publication of papers in the medical journals the Lancet and the British Medical Journal. In 1909, Pavlov finally reached America, with the publication of a paper by Yerkes and Morgulis reviewing the work of Pavlov and his students – focusing on the work of Nicolai, Selionyi and Orbeli. Selionyi had performed some experiments on the perception of sound in dogs, whereas Orbeli had focused primarily on the perception of light in dogs. Another student, Nicolai, went on to introduce Pavlov’s techniques in Germany. Methodological Issues: Experimenter Effects The original method used by Pavlov required the experimenter to be present when the stimulus was presented to the animal. The effect of the experimenter’s presence could have an effect on the outcome of the experiment, with the dog sensing cues that the experimenter accidentally communicated. Selionyi refined Pavlov’s original technique somewhat, making it more accurate (the measurement was improved using machinery to record the flow of saliva). This allowed the experimenter to be absent when the stimulus was presented.
John B. Watson (1913) – Behaviourism John B. Watson was an outspoken researcher. His first major contribution to the Learning Perspective was his paper, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it (Watson, 1913). Watson’s standpoint, and that of the behaviourist, was that the study of psychology should have nothing to do with introspection or the mind and should, instead, focus on observable behaviour only. He believed that only those things that could be objectively studied were worthy or valid subjects of scientific investigation. In Watson’s own words: “The Behaviorist asks: Why don't we make what we can observe the real field of psychology? Let us limit ourselves to things that can be observed, and formulate laws concerning only the observed things. Now what can we observe? Well, we can observe behavior -- what the organism does or says.” (Watson, 1929) Four other things that are noteworthy in Watson’s work are:
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The idea of control – many of the behaviourists saw an understanding of learning as a tool to control and shape behaviour. Some of the work of another influential learning psychologist, Skinner, focuses predominantly on this possibility.
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The continuity between animals and man – here Watson represents the Darwinian view and justifies the use of animals in research.
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Objectivity – Watson believed that anything that was being studied needed to be measurable by many investigators. He felt that selfreporting (as in introspection) was too subjective a method.
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The existence of mind – As conscious thought was not objectively measurable, Watson first considered that it was not worthy of study. Later, he became more extreme and claimed that phenomena such as the mind did not even exist.
Watson also became famous for his often extreme remarks about being able to take a healthy infant and make it into whatever he chose by raising it in the proper environment. In this way he reverts back to the extreme standpoint of Locke (discussed earlier).
B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) – The Skinner Box, Operant Conditioning The early work of Thorndike was further extended by several other researchers around the world. But the work of B.F. Skinner became extremely influential. Skinner produced a large, significant and influential body of work and extended the initial ideas much further than other researchers. He was the first to use the term operant conditioning (in his response to Konorski and Miller). He further extended the research into instrumental conditioning (as it was called after Thorndike) with investigations into how the pattern of providing reward affects learning (these varying patterns are called reinforcement schedules). Skinner had a major impact on the study of conditioning with his now famous Skinner box, in which animal subjects had to press a lever in order to receive a reward. Skinner also had a major impact on the way in which techniques for modifying behaviour could be applied to society. In his book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), he made proposals about behaviour at the level of societies. Much of his influence has been felt in education, business and in mental institutions. The flip-side of this was that he received major criticism as his approach seemed to encourage the dehumanisation of people (the treatment of people as if they were not human or as objects). This led to much debate with the humanistic psychologists. An Introduction to International Baccalaureate Psychology
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We will look at the various results of Skinner’s work on operant conditioning in a later chapter. Cultural Issue – Language of Publication It is interesting to note how many texts neglect the important influences of earlier researchers than Skinner concerning research into forms of conditioning other than that proposed by Pavlov. In particular, the work of Konorski and Miller in Poland contributed much to the area and they rarely receive a mention. While Skinner’s work was published in English and mainly in American journals, Konorski and Miller published predominantly in French. In one noteworthy English paper, they record a critical analysis of one of Skinner’s influential papers that led to some reformulation and clarification by Skinner. It may be that the controversy surrounding this discussion (Skinner published a response in the same journal) elevated the status of Skinner’s earlier work. Often, critical debate such as this focuses the interest of the scientific research community. There are many other noteworthy examples (e.g. Freud’s body of work and the debate over it). Such debates and the way in which they affect the current fashions in scientific thought (many use the term zeitgeist, meaning “spirit of the times” to express this) have a great impact on how well publicised research becomes and also how well accepted. The effect of publication of psychological research in languages other than English is an important cultural factor that has changed the shape of the learning perspective and, indeed, all of modern day Psychology.
Cognitive and Biological Influences in Learning The more recent developments within the learning perspective have extended it into the cognitive and biological perspectives. In reality, the boundaries between the perspectives are blurred, with, for example, many investigations into learning looking at how the biology of the brain is changed during learning. We will consider these in the section on the Biological Perspective.
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Cognitive Influences. The strictly behaviourist view of learning was modified to include cognitive factors by Tolman and his co-workers. Tolman (1948) and Olton (1978,1979) – Cognitive Maps. In research published in 1948, Tolman discussed a number of experiments performed using rats. The experiments were carried out between 1937 and 1948 and showed that rats may be learning more about the geography of mazes they are trained in than the behaviourists would believe. Let’s look again at how behaviourists interpreted the learning of mazebehaviour in rats. Remember that behaviourists focused strictly on observable behaviour and that this included stimuli and responses. For a rat placed in a maze the stimuli were the signals coming from the muscles and joints of the rat, the smells around the rat, the sounds the rat could hear and the visible objects in the rat’s environment. The responses were signals sent from the rat’s brain to its muscles. Considering just classical conditioning and operant conditioning, a rat placed in a maze would wander around until it stumbled across some food. The food would act as a reward and reinforce the behaviour that led to the discovery of the food. The sequence of responses that led to the discovery of the food would, in Thorndike’s words, “be more firmly connected with the situation, so that, when it recurs, they will be more likely to recur”. In other words, once a rat had found food in a particular maze it would be more likely to repeat a path that had led to the discovery of food on a previous occasion. The research reviewed in Tolman’s paper added something more to the understanding of how rats ran mazes. The title of Tolman’s paper, “Cognitive maps in rats and men”, summarises this. The research showed that rats did not just learn a sequence of stimulusresponse associations, but also seemed to build a map of the maze that could be used when the maze was changed in some way. Blodgett, in 1929, showed that even when a rat had not been rewarded with food when running a maze, a form of latent learning seemed to occur. This latent learning (learning that has occurred but does not show itself) altered how well the rats ran the maze when food was present. The most important thing about Tolman’s paper was that it conclusively showed that some behaviour could not be explained without discussing cognitive factors.
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Köhler (1925)– Insight Learning. While much work had concluded that learning occurred through a process of trial and error, e.g. the rats in a maze learned where the food was by randomly wandering through the maze, Wolfgang Köhler argued something different. Köhler criticised the work of Thorndike: “... I must make a further objection to Thomdike's experiments. They were designed as intelligence tests of the same type as our own (insight or not?), and ought therefore, to have conformed to the same general conditions, and, above all, to have been arranged so as to be completely visible to the animals. For if essential portions of the experimental apparatus cannot be seen by the animals, how can they use their intelligence faculties in tackling the situation?” Köhler, 1925 The Mentality of Apes. In other words, Köhler considered that Thorndike’s experiments were unsolvable even for an extremely intelligent animal. Köhler observed chimpanzees in conditions where they could see the entire problem. Instead of hiding the mechanism of a puzzle as Thorndike did, Köhler placed the chimpanzees in an enclosed area with food that was out of their reach. In order to reach the food, the chimpanzees were required to stack objects, use sticks to reach it, or even put objects together to make longer tools. The chimpanzees discovered solutions in a way that was very different from that of Thorndike’s animal subjects. Köhler called this insight learning. There are three main points concerning insight learning that make it different from other forms of learning: •
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The solution is available and transferable to other situations – while a dog can learn to salivate in response to a tone and then generalise this behaviour to similar tones, chimpanzees seem to be able to transfer complex behaviours from one situation to another. The solution is not discovered by trial and error – the chimpanzees in Köhler’s experiments merely looked at the environment and then completed the task correctly. The solution is found suddenly – the chimpanzees seemed to be performing some sort of mental trial and error to find the solution, so the suddenness of the solution discovery was mainly because the experimenters could not see this internal process.
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Premack and Premack – Learning of complex concepts in animals. The ability of chimpanzees to transfer complex behaviours from one situation to another was further investigated by David Premack (Premack, 1976; Premack and Premack, 1983). Using tokens to represent complex concepts, such as same and different, he trained chimpanzees to use these tokens correctly. If the chimpanzee was presented with two different objects and placed the different token between them then it would receive a reward. No reward was given for use of the wrong token. After a number of trials, the chimpanzee was able to use the tokens correctly with new objects, showing that the chimpanzee had some understanding of the concepts same and different. This was a further illustration that non-human animals are capable of complex forms of learning. Biological Influences. Seligman, M.P. (1970)- Preparedness. Seligman added an extra factor to the understanding of learning. He introduced and extended the idea of preparedness. His original idea of preparedness was that: “The relative preparedness of an organism for learning about a situation is defined by the amount of input (e.g. number of trials, pairings, bits of information, etc.) which must occur before that output (responses, acts, repertoire, etc.), which is construed as evidence of acquisition, reliably occurs.” (Seligman, 1970) An animal can be prepared - and therefore learn a task more rapidly, be nonprepared, or be contraprepared – and therefore find it more difficult to learn a task. In 1971, Seligman extended his idea of preparedness to include ideas about human phobias and evolutionary preparedness. He proposed that learning of different behaviours would be different depending on the evolutionary history of the animal. In the case of humans, the natural dangers that existed when humans evolved should be easier to make associations about. If you think about the most common types of phobias, most of them are animal phobias (potentially poisonous or threatening animals), fear of heights or fear of the dark. All these are dangers that would have existed when humans evolved. Even though far more people die in road traffic accidents than from being bitten by snakes, a fear of snakes is more common than a fear of traffic. For
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Seligman, this is because evolution has prepared us to learn a fear of snakes long before roads or traffic existed! Normally, associations that have been learned that do not continue to be reinforced or experienced fade away. This process is called extinction. One challenge to Seligman’s theory is that fears of animals and heights are amongst the easiest to treat (Mathews, 1978). Whereas one would expect them to be difficult to remove as they are so important to survival.
Summary In summary, the learning perspective is focused on how humans and animals learn behaviours. The early philosophical debates over whether behaviour was learned through experience(Empiricism) or innate (Nativism) set the scene for later research. The work of the behaviourists, through research into animal behaviour, concentrated on simple forms of learning: classical (Pavlovian) conditioning and instrumental (operant) conditioning. Other research looked at more complex cognitive learning involving cognitive maps and insight learning. Other influences considered the biological factors that may influence how easily learning occurs. To think about. 1. Define Nativism and Empricism. Which philosophers are most readily associated with these terms? 2. Does the work of the behaviourists support Darwin? 3. How did the work of Wilhelm Wundt differ from that of the behaviourists? 4. What is noteworthy about Watson’s ideas? Do you agree with him? 5. Can you think of a task that shows that you perform insight learning? How does this task fulfill the three requirements for insight learning? 6. What types of fears or phobias do your classmates or friends have? Do your findings support Seligman’s ideas? 7. Draw a timeline of the learning perspective as a poster to show how the perspective developed. Sample Essay Questions. 1. Describe and evaluate the historical and cultural conditions that gave rise to the learning perspective. 2. Assess the extent to which learning can be explained by alternatives to traditional behaviourist approaches. 3. Assess the extent to which cognitive, biological and environmental factors contribute to explanations of behaviour within the learning perspective. An Introduction to International Baccalaureate Psychology
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Sample Essay Answer. Assess the extent to which learning can be explained by alternatives to traditional behaviourist approaches. Introduction referring to the terms in the question.
The traditional behaviourist approaches include classical and operant conditioning. Due to the limitations of these approaches in explaining more complex forms of learning, alternative explanations have developed extending our understanding of acquired behaviours. Among these alternatives are insight learning, cognitive maps and theories concerning innate preparedness. These explanations include cognitive and biological aspects of learning and are not restricted to stimulus-response type descriptions.
Insight learning
Insight learning was first studied by Kohler. Unlike behaviours explainable by traditional behaviourist approaches, the behaviour observed by Kohler in his chimpanzees had these critical aspects: Solutions to problems were discovered suddenly, the solutions that were found were available, and the solutions were transferable to other similar situations.
Insight learning differs from trial and error.
The critical aspects of the chimpanzees behaviours conflicted with the trial and error explanations of the traditional behaviourists. It appears that the chimpanzees perform a type of mental trial and error, manipulating a mental representation of the problem in order to discover a solution. The suddenness of the solution discovery seemed to be due to the fact that the researchers did not have access to the chimpanzees thoughts.
Tolman
The ideas about mental representations being important to learning were earlier studied by Tolman. In Tolman’s investigations rats were placed in mazes and had to find food. In traditional behaviorist terms, the food would act as a reward for the correct sequence of right and left turns performed by the rat. However, Tolman considered that the rats constructed a cognitive map of the mazes and used this to navigate.
Olton
Later work by Olton confirmed Tolman’s research. Experiments with a multipronged maze with identical passages with food at each end were used. Humans would probably investigate each arm in turn and find the food. Rats, however, wander down each arm, but, importantly, they never return to the same arm. In order to do this the rats must make a mental map of the maze. The rats remember which arms they have already visited.
Premack and Premack
Work on primates by Premack and Premack has extended the understanding of the use of mental representations in primates. The primates trained by Premack and Premack learned the use of plastic chips to represent words and could use these plastic chips to represent near-human linguistic concepts. For example, concepts such as ‘different’ could be presented by the chimps when they were shown the tokens for ‘apple’ and ‘orange’.
Summary regarding cognition and learning, introduce biological factors.
The previous studies contrast with the traditional behaviourist approaches in that they developed the idea of cognition being involved in learning. Some other research has shed light on the role that innate biological factors have on the learning process.
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Seligman and phobias.
Seligman mentioned that some learning is easier (prepared) than other learning (unprepared) and some learning is very difficult to ever achieve (contraprepared). The extent to which learning is one sort or another is partially determined by biological factors. It is as if there is an evolutionary memory that is used. It would make sense to associate being sick with things that have been eaten and drunk, so there is a mechanism that controls this. It is also sensible that if there are dangerous predators information should be quickly gathered to learn about them. One area in which this occurs is in phobias. Animal phobias are far more likely to be learned than other phobias.
Summary of biological.
Early traditional behaviourist approaches considered that all animals had similar methods of learning with no allowance for preparedness for different types of learning. The incorporation of biological factors into an understanding of learning is a great step forward even if now it seems pretty expected.
Balanced conclusion.
While learning theories have evolved to include cognitive and biological factors there are still some strict behaviouristic views present in the psychological and educational establishments. In order to fully understand and to apply these theories usefully all these factors must be taken into account. Learning theories now go some way toward explaining behaviours, but the acquisition of the plethora of behaviours that humans and animals exhibit still is not fully understood. Continued research and evolution of these ideas is required.
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