psyc 620

Running head: LEARNING AND COGNITION 1

LEARNING AND COGNITION 9

Learning and Cognition

Lana Eliot

Psychology 620

Professor Jackson

November 30, 2017

Learning and cognition are two words which are seen to be similar since both need each other for the processes to work. Learning is acquiring knowledge from one’s experience, from what is taught or through studying while cognition one acquires knowledge and understanding thorough senses, experience and from one’s thoughts. So basically, these two relate in that cognition process requires learning and for learning to take place cognition must be involved. All learning happens through interactions with one’s surrounding and it’s a dynamic process with regards to an organism’s life span.

Operant conditioning

Operant conditioning is a mode of learning through which reinforcers stimulus are involved following one’s action. It focuses on the cause of action and consequences afterwards, in attempt of understanding behavior. Operant conditioning can be used to modify behavioral patterns of children, adults as well as pets. It is based on the fact that when a response is followed by a good state of affairs, learning is fortified (Martin & Pear, 2015). It involves use of both positive and negative reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement is used to increase a desirable behavior of people. It includes praising someone, treats and giving out prices. For instance, when you give a child a reward for having good grades in the examination, he or she will always work hard to have even better grades next time so that he or she can have the reward. For this to work, one should give a reward which the person likes. If you give a reward which the person you’re giving to does not like, then it will have no impact to him or her. Negative reinforcement involves undermining undesirable behaviors by removing an unpleasant reinforcer. This can be done by introducing some form of paying fines in places where you’ve gone wrong or when not doing as expected.

Another way is by use of positive and negative punishment. Punishment is usually used in cases where an increase in undesirable behaviors tends to decreases behavior. Positive punishment involves putting consequences in place in order to weaken the undesirable behavior. An example of a positive punishment is by grounding a child for misbehaving. This will alter the child’s behavior in that he or she will not misbehave due to fear of being grounded. Negative punishment involves removal of favorable outcomes after an occurrence of undesirable behavior (Mason, 2017). In adult situation, if a person is employed and doesn’t satisfy his employer’s demands on a particular day, the employer may decide not to pay the person payment for that particular day. This will make other employees work to well to avoid not being paid and will also have an impact on the one not paid.

Punishment as a method of decreasing undesirable behavior has some challenges: it may increase fear as one may live in fear of going to places where he or she was once punished e.g. schools, when punishment is not present the suppressed behavior might be repeated, while reinforcement tells what needs to be done punishment only tells you what to do it doesn’t necessarily tell you to do desirable deeds and it can also make a person adopt to aggressiveness as a way of tackling with punishment.

Classical conditioning

Classical conditioning is a way of learning where a new behavior is learnt through linkage of two stimuli; environmental stimulus and natural occurring stimulus. It is based on natural responses performed by animals including humans. Examples of classical conditioning include involuntary responses like increase or decrease of heart rate, nausea, salivation, constrictions amongst others. It has three stages including before conditioning, during conditioning and after conditioning (McLeod, 2014).

Before conditioning

In this stage an unconditioned stimulus is introduced in an environment, producing a natural response which is not taught nor learnt. Another stimulus known as neutral stimulus is also introduced and doesn’t produce a response since it is not paired with the unconditioned stimulus.

During conditioning

Learning takes place when the unconditioned stimulus is linked with the neutral stimulus. The unconditioned stimulus and the neutral stimulus should be associated several times for response to be produced. The neutral stimulus becomes the conditioned stimulus.

After conditioning

After the association of unconditioned stimulus with the conditioned stimulus, conditioned response is formed.

In human beings, a conditioned response can be formed in many cases. For instance, when a person bums into a snake one’s heart rate increases automatically. The increase in heart rate is a conditioned response. A response that occurs involuntary.

Behaviorism

Behaviorism is a theory looks into the observable behaviors acquired from the surroundings without those involving the mind. It is based on the assumption that behavior is shaped by the environment either through reinforcement or punishment. There are three types of behaviorism including methodological behaviorism, logical behaviorism and psychological behaviorism.

Methodological behaviorism

Is a theory concerned with the scientific conduct of both human and animal’s psychology by looking into their actions in order to understand why they behave the way they do? It shows that psychology should associate with the organism’s behavior rather than the organism’s mental state. Owing to methodological behaviorism approach, mental states like animal’s beliefs are private entities, which cannot help much in the understanding of behavior.

Analytical or Logical behaviorism

This concept attempts to transform sentences using psychological terms into sentences without these psychological terms replacing them with terms referring to a body behavior. It claims that not all sentence that uses psychological terms infer to mental states, but rather we can use those sentences to refer to objects, materials or events. So, every mental sentence can be translated into a behavior.

Psychological behaviorism

Psychological behaviorism concept attempts to explain human and animal behavior in relation to external stimuli, reinforcements, responses and learning histories in that person’s observable behavior can be able to explain his or her psychology. A person’s psychology includes emotions, personality and learning. It explains that a person’s personality can easily be able to predict the kind of behavior this person will exhibit. With the concern of education, psychological behaviorism postulates that children undergo cumulative learning before the other complex repertoires are built. Learning of languages help in learning of other things of higher intelligence. Psychological behaviorism relates emotional words as either rewards or punishment of behaviors which can be encouraging one towards a desirable behavior or be an undermine to undesirable behaviors. Hence emotional words are a means of forming an emotional response.

Social learning theory

Social learning theory explains that people learn new behaviors from each other through imitation, observation and modeling.

Observational learning

Many children learn their behaviors through observing their models (individuals who are observed). this helps children in creating a behavior in them. It could their parents, siblings, characters from the television and/or the people of the community surrounding them (McLeod, 2016). How their models behave translates to how the child will be likely to behave. They learn how to do what their models do through observation, afterwards they respond by imitating what they observed. The children imitate the observed behavior whether the behavior is appropriate or not.

The children will tend to imitate behaviors of people who looks like them, but later they’ll imitate behaviors of their own gender. The continuity of the children imitation of certain behavior will depend on their model. Whether their models will punish or reinforce the behavior. If a child is rewarded for imitating his or her model’s behavior, he or she is likely to continue with the behavior. If the child is punished for a behavior he or she imitated, it is likely that the child will stop imitating the behavior. Reinforcement can be internal or external. External reinforcement is when a child seeks approval from his or her parents while internal reinforcement is the feeling the child feels on approval of what he or she desires. Whether negative or positive reinforcement will always lead to a modification of one’s character. However, reinforcement may not have impact on the child if the reinforcement; especially a positive one does not match its desires.

A child also learns by observing the consequences that happen to others before imitating them. For instance, if he or she observes his or her older sibling punished from doing a certain behavior, he or she will be likely to take caution and not to repeat the same but if the sibling is rewarded out of behaving well the behavior is likely to be repeated by the child.

Observational learning has three models including Live model which involves watching a person performing a behavior, verbal instruction model that involves describing a behavior by word of mouth and symbolic model where a character whether real or fiction demonstrates a behavior through sources like television, movies and many others (Akers & Jensen, 2011). Observational learning may lead to identification. Identification entails adoption of observed behaviors, attitudes and beliefs of the person (model) one is identifying with.

Principles of social learning

The following are some of the principles of social learning that explains why and how things are conducted in such a manner.

Attention

This principle explains that people learn when their focus is on the task they are performing. If they see something being different they tend to shift their attention to that thing making social places important in improving these perceptions.

Retention

Most of the time people tend keep memories which in turn helps them in learning. The memory is recalled especially when one needs some information in order to solve a similar situation. The previously acquired information learnt becomes helpful in solving future similar situations.

Reproduction

People reproduce the learnt information in terms of skills, knowledge or behavior which later improves their responses.

Motivation

When people see others being rewarded or punished for something they have done, this motivates them to do something so as to be rewarded or not to do something in order to avoid punishment.

People have different behaviors depending on their mode of learning. For instance, some people’s behaviors are from observable behaviors during their childhood period from their model including family, friends and even TV characters while others are from other modes of learning for example classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Their behavioral patterns differ depending on the extent of their reinforcements and punishments. According to behaviorism, people’s behavior is acquired from their surroundings, hence we can be able to predict peoples character through analyzing their environments.

References

Akers, R.L, and Jensen, G.F. (Eds.). (2011). Social Learning Theory and the Explanation of Crime (vol.1). Transaction Publishers.

Baum, W.M. (2017). Understanding behaviorism: Behavior, culture, and evolution. John Willey and Sons.

Martin, G, and Pear, J.J. (2015). Behavior modification: What it is and how to do it. Psychology Press

Mason, S.A. (2017). Behaviorist Theory. Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders, 1-3.

McLeod, S.A. (2016). Bandura-social learning theory. Retrieved from www.simplypsychological.org/bandura.html

McLeod, S.A. (2014). Classical conditioning. Retrieved from www.simplypsychological.org/classical-conditioning.html

Seligman, M.E., and Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Positive psychology: An introduction. In Flow and the foundations of positive psychology. Springer Netherlands.

Vurbic, D., and Bouton, M.E. (2014). The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of operant and classical conditioning.

9