Understanding Learning in Psychology: Philosophical Foundations

1. למידה ענף בפסיכולוגיה העוסק בשאלה: How do we come to know things? על איזה סוג למידה נלמד? הגדרה ללמידה – רעיונות? שינוי מתמשךבמנגנוני ההתנהגות בסיטואציה מסויימת, שנגרם בעקבות התנסות חוזרת בסיטואציה זו, ובתנאי שאי אפשר להסביר את השינוי בהתנהגות ע"י נטיות ההתנהגות המולדת של האורגניזם, הבשלה, או מצב זמני.

2. ביצוע vs למידה Learning is inferred from behavior, but isn’t the same as behavior • אפשרויות אחרות: • נטיות מולדות – species specific reflexes • הבשלה (maturation) – דפוס מתפתח בהדרגה ללא תלות בנסיון • מצבים זמניים – מוטיבציה, עייפות, הביטואציה ומאידך - Latent learning (Tolman+Honzik 1930)

4. Philosophical Foundations of Learning Theory The roots of learning theory are in an area of philosophy called “epistemology”, a field concerned with how we acquire knowledge. Two philosophical traditions emerged from the writings of the ancient Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, that parallel the cognitive and behavioral traditions in learning theory. These traditions are nativism (Plato) and empiricism (Aristotle). Cognitive psychology reflects the nativist tradition. Behavioral psychology reflects the empiricist tradition.

5. Philosophical Foundations of Learning Theory Nativism says that our most basic ideas are inborn, ideas like space, time, motion, causality, and substance. Suppose you saw a motorcycle speed by... You had to learn what a motorcycle was but not what the changing image represented — motion. Nature tells us how to organize our experiences.

6. Philosophical Foundations of Learning Theory An early example of nativism in Cognitive Psychology was the Gestalt principles of perceptual organization, like the law of proximity: Objects that are close together will be perceived as a group, like: .. .. .. We naturally perceive the 6 dots as 3 groups of 2, not as 6 unrelated dots. It’s the same idea as the perception of motion. Information that comes to us through the senses is innately organized.

7. Philosophical Foundations of Learning Theory Empiricism says that all knowledge comes from experience. Beginning with Aristotle, empiricist philosophers have proposed theories to explain how experience gets translated into knowledge. The basic process proposed was association. An association is a connection between ideas. If two ideas (representations) are associated, when you think of one you will automatically think of the other. For example: שולחן ? ? ?

8. Philosophical Foundations of Learning Theory Why chair? Probably because we see tables and chairs together so often. This statement points to two key principles philosophers used to explain the formation of associations: Temporal Contiguity Two events that are experienced at the same time will tend to be associated. Frequency The more often we experience events that are contiguous, the more strongly we will associate them.

9. Philosophical Foundations of Learning Theory Research on classical (Pavlovian) conditioning has shown that the principles of temporal contiguity and frequency must be modified to explain associative learning. We’ll see later in the course. Still, the philosophers’ insights into how associations are formed continue to provide the conceptual framework for research in the behavioral tradition.

10. Philosophical Foundations of Learning Theory • דרווין – • טשטוש הגבול בין בני אדם לחיות • תהליכי למידה כלליים לכל האורגניזמים (פותרים אותה בעיה) • => חקר בעלי חיים (והשיטה המדעית)