This document discusses cognitive approaches to learning, which focus on mental processes rather than just stimuli and responses. It describes two types of learning that result without reinforcement: latent learning and observational learning. Latent learning involves acquiring knowledge without demonstrating it until incentives are provided, as seen in Tolman's maze experiment with rats. Observational learning involves watching and imitating others, as Bandura showed children mimicking an adult's behavior with a Bobo doll. Cognitive learning theory suggests people develop expectations of reinforcement rather than just associating stimuli with responses.

1. COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO
LEARNING
COGNITIVE

2. COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO
LEARNING
• Early behaviourists believed that learning
involves the relatively automatic
formation of bonds between stimuli and
responses.
• For example in classical conditioning the
CS elicits the CR; Tone salivation.

3. COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO
LEARNING CONT..
• In operant conditioning a discriminative
stimulus leads to an emitted response; light
comes on a hungry rat presses the
lever to obtain food.
• This behaviourists orientation came to be
known as S-R (Stimulus – response)
psychology.

4. COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO
LEARNING CONT..
• Behaviourists opposed explanations of
learning that went beyond observable stimuli
and responses.
• Although, they did not deny that people had
thoughts and feelings but argued that
behaviour could be explained without
referring to such mentalistic concepts
(Skinner, 1953, 1990).

5. COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO
LEARNING CONT..
• But, through early psychology research,
some learning theorists argued that in
between stimulus(S) and response (R)
there was something else, the organism (O)
mental representation of the world.
• This came to be known as the S-O-R or
cognitive model of learning.
• The cognitive perspective represents an
important force in learning theory.

6. COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO
LEARNING CONT..
• Although, psychologists working from the
cognitive learning perspective do not deny the
importance of classical and operant
conditioning, they have developed
approaches that focus on the unseen mental
processes that occur during learning rather
than concentrating solely on the external
stimuli, responses and reinforcements.

7. COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO
LEARNING CONT..
• Cognitive learning theory- suggests that it is not
enough to say that people make responses
because there is an assumed link between a
stimulus and a response - a link that is the result
of a past history of reinforcement for a response.
• Instead, according to this point of view, people
and even lower animals, develop an expectation
that they will receive a reinforcer after making a
response.

8. COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO
LEARNING CONT..
• Therefore, there are two types of learning
which results without prior reinforcement:
• Latent learning and Observational learning

9. LATENT LEARNING
• Is the type of learning in which a new
behaviour is acquired but is not demonstrated
until some incentive is provided for displaying
it.
• Latent learning occurs without reinforcement
• For example in the studies demonstrating
latent learning psychologists examined the
behaviour of rats in a maze.(figure1).

10. LATENT LEARNING CONT..

11. LATENT LEARNING CONT..
• Three groups of rats were used to run in a
complex maze.
• Rats in group one found food each time they
reached the goal box.
• Rats in group two found the goal box empty each
time they reached it.
• The third group of rats found no food at the end
of the maze for the first 10 days, but did find food
in the goal box starting on the 11th day.

12. LATENT LEARNING CONT..
• The key finding is this: on day 11, the rats in
group three discovered food in the goal box for
the first time.
• By the very next day, they were performing just
as well as the group one rats who had been
reinforced all along.
• According to Tolman, during day one to ten, the
group three rats were learning the spatial layout
of the maze and they wandered about it.

13. LATENT LEARNING CONT..
• They were not being reinforced by food for
the first ten days, but they gained knowledge
and developed their cognitive maps.
• This learning remained “latent” (hidden) until
the rats discovered a good reason on day 11
to get to the goal box quickly, and then it
immediately was manifested in performance
the next day.

14. LATENT LEARNING CONT..
• Like Tolman’s rats we may “learn how” to
do something (gain knowledge), but not
display that knowledge outwardly
(performance) until some future time.
• Tolman’s experiments suggests that rats
developed cognitive maps when they were
reinforced with food for running the maze.

15. LATENT LEARNING CONT..
• Moreover, Tolman’s experiments suggests
that cognitive maps could be learned
without reinforcement, posing an even
greater challenge to the behaviourist view
point.

16. OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING
• Observational learning-is the learning through
watching and imitating the behaviours of
others.
• Classical conditioning and operant
conditioning emphasize the role of direct
experiences in learning, such as directly
experiencing a reinforcing or punishing
stimulus following a particular behaviour.

17. OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING CONT..
• However, much of human learning occurs
indirectly, by watching what others do then
imitating it.
• According to psychologists albert Bandura and
colleagues, a major part of human learning
consists of observational learning.
• Bandura conducted an experiment to
demonstrate the ability of models to stimulate
learning.

18. OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING CONT..
• In his experiment young children were
exposed to a film of an adult wildly hitting a 5-
feet–tall inflatable punching toy called a Bobo
doll.
• Later the children were given the opportunity
to play with the Bobo doll themselves and
sure enough, most displayed the same kind of
behaviour, in some cases mimicking the
aggressive behaviour almost identically.

19. OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING CONT..
• Not only negative behaviours are acquired
through observational learning.
• In another experiment, children who were
afraid of dogs were exposed to a model-
dubbed the fearless peer-playing with a dog.
• After exposure, observers were considerable
more likely to approach a strange dog than
were children who had not viewed the
fearless peer.

20. OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING CONT..
• From this observations Bandura concluded
that observational learning is the result of
cognitive processes that are “actively
judgmental and constructive” not merely
“mechanical copying”.
• Further, he suggested that there are four
cognitive processes which interact to
determine whether imitation will occur.

21. OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING CONT..
• First, you must pay attention to the other
person’s behaviour.
• Second, you must form and store a mental
representation of the behaviour to be imitated
• Third, you must be able to transform this
mental representation into actions that you
are capable of reproducing.

22. OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING CONT..
• These three factors attentions, memory and
motor skills are necessary for learning to take
place through observation.
• Fourth, there must be some motivation for
you to imitate the behaviour. This factor is
very important to the actual performance of
the learned behaviour.

23. OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING CONT..
• Note:
Observational learning is particularly
important in acquiring skills in which the
operant conditioning technique of shaping is
inappropriate.
Not all behaviour that we witness is learned or
carried out–one crucial factor that determines
whether we later imitate a model is whether
the model is rewarded for his or her behaviour

24. END OF THE LESSON
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