1. Chapter 2: Understanding Learning and Knowledge Acquisition
3. Behavioral Theory of Learning
Prepared by: Mirasol P. Batungbakal
Behavioral Theory of Learning
Behaviorism is an approach to psychology that combines elements of philosophy,
methodology, and theory. It emerged in the early twentieth century as a reaction to "mentalistic"
psychology, which often had difficulty making predictions that could be tested using rigorous
experimental methods. The primary tenet of behaviorism, as expressed in the writings of John B.
Watson, B. F. Skinner, and others, is that psychology should concern itself with the observable
behavior of people and animals, not with unobservable events that take place in their minds.
Theory is a group of ideas meant to explain a certain topic, such as a single or collection
of facts, events, phenomena etc.
Learning is the act of acquiring new, or modifying and reinforcing,
existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing
different types of information.
Under this aspect the theories are based almost entirely on observable learning and
observable behavior.
History and Theorists of Behaviorism
Ivan Pavlov was a Russian Physiologist born on September 14, 1849 who won the Nobel Prize
in Physiology or Medicine in 1940.
 Classical Conditioning is most likely to occur when the conditioned stimulus is
presented just before the unconditioned stimulus: a form of signal learning.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American Psychologist who born on March 20, 1904 who
introduced the theory of Operant Conditioning.
 Operant Conditioning is a behavior followed by a reinforcing stimulus results in
an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
Edward Thorndike was an American Psychologist who born on August 31, 1874.
Three Laws of Learning
 Law of Effect is responses to a situation that are followed by satisfaction
are strengthened; responses that are followed by discomfort are weakened.

2.  Law of Exercise is known as the stimulus-response connection.
 Law of Readiness means a person can learn when physically and
mentally adjusted (ready) to receive stimuli.
John B. Watson was an American Psychologist who born on January 9, 1878. He conducted the
Little Albert experiment, a case study showing empirical evidence of classical conditioning in
humans.
Cognitive Theory of Learning
Cognitive is a psychological approach to understanding the mind which argues that mental
function can be understood as the 'internal' manipulation of symbols.
Cognitive psychology derived its name from the Latin cognoscere, referring to knowing
and information, thus cognitive psychology is an information-processing psychology derived in
part from earlier traditions of the investigation of thought and problem solving. Behaviorists
acknowledged the existence of thinking, but identified it as a behavior. Cognitivists argued that
the way people think impacts their behavior and therefore cannot be a behavior in and of it.
Cognitivists later argued that thinking is so essential to psychology that the study of thinking
should become its own field.
History and Theorists of Cognitive
Jean Piaget (9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss developmental
psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. He became
intrigued with the reasons children gave for their wrong answers on the questions that required
logical thinking. He believed that these incorrect answers revealed important differences between
the thinking of adults and children. Through his study of the field of education, Piaget focused on
two processes, which he named assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation describes how
humans perceive and adapt to new information. It is the process of fitting new information into
pre-existing cognitive schemas. Assimilation occurs when humans are faced with new or
unfamiliar information and refer to previously learned information in order to make sense of it.
Unlike it, accommodation is the process of taking new information in one's environment and
altering pre-existing schemas in order to fit in the new information.
Lev Vygotsky (November 17 1896 – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet Belarusian psychologist, the
founder of a theory of human cultural and biosocial development commonly referred to
as cultural-historical psychology, and leader of the Vygotsky Circle. Vygotsky also posited a
concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, often understood to refer to the way in which
the acquisition of new knowledge is dependent on previous learning, as well as the availability of
instruction.

3. Edward Tolman (April 14, 1886 – November 19, 1959) was an American psychologist. He was
most famous for his studies on behavioral psychology. A prominent learning theorist during the
heyday of behaviorism, yet his work had a distinctly cognitive flair. Tolman developed his
metallic view of learning by using adaptive versions of behaviorist research.